Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 83.djvu/273

Rh Even the college student himself has often had personal experience in matters of government. The average age of the college man at graduation is about twenty-three and he has been a possible voter for two years. If he has sufficient maturity to have a voice in the decisions of affairs of state, is it not reasonable to suppose, he asks, that he can be given some small share in the decision of educational matters that immediately affect him?

That the college undergraduate has had as yet so small a share in the conduct and policy of the institution with which he is temporarily connected by no means augurs that his share will continue permanently negligible.

The alumni of a college have but recently been given a representation on boards of trustees. This representation has not always been warmly welcomed by the boards as previously organized, and it has been granted only through the persistent efforts of alumni organizations. These efforts have been made because of a growing feeling that some official medium of communication is necessary between a board of trustees and the undergraduate body. The college has, moreover, been enlarging its activities along lines not strictly academic, and with the increasing interest in college athletics, college dramatics and college musical clubs, appeals have been made to the alumni to assist in financing these enterprises. These appeals have usually been made through class organizations, alumni associations, and the graduate and undergraduate college press, and the very appeals themselves have stimulated interest in general college affairs. One result has therefore apparently been to increase the general contributions of the alumni to their alma mater and this fact has furnished another and perhaps more valid reason for the election of a limited number of trustees by and from the alumni themselves.

Just how effective this representation is in influencing the policy of boards of control is at least a question. The alumni trustees are always in a minority, they hold office for a limited term while their colleagues on the board usually are elected for life, their point of view may not always be that of the other members of the board, yet they are often cautious, if not in reality timid, in expressing views divergent from those of the majority, they represent a body having no legal but only a sentimental relationship to the institution, and they are as a rule only contributors of ideas not signers of checks. But if the direct results of alumni representation seem somewhat negligible, the indirect results of such representation have been most wholesome. It has stimulated the loyalty and the enthusiasm of college graduates in behalf of their own college, it has led to acquaintance among the alumni representatives of different colleges and thus to the exchange of facts, opinions and experiences to the profit of all concerned, it has resulted in a more intelligent