THE STANDARD OF LIVING AMONG STUDENTS, continued
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Title
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THE STANDARD OF LIVING AMONG STUDENTS, continued
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Description
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Hesperiean Student article
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Transcription
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were envious, we varied proceeding by opening the door ourselves and gently tossing a fire-cracker into the middle of their pie. It went off just as Adams reached for it, so he not only failed to save the pastry but burned his fingers. We two first Preps were in a state of siege for some days thereafter.
Poor Adams! The next year, which was to have been his last before graduating, proved to be the last of his life. It seemed so manifest that stinted living and unstinted work had undermined his health that Chancellor Fairfield, the day after the funeral, felt it best to caution the students as a body against the mistake that he had made.
There used to be three large frame buildings, facing upon as many sides of the campus, which were inhabited by students who were boarding themselves. Rivalries in athletics or something else were frequently long continued between the inhabitants of these houses, and when the attempt was made to see which set of boys could perpetrate the most practical jokes on another set the practices came dangerously near to hazing.
Later self-boarding went out of fashion and boarding clubs were formed. I joined one or these because they promised to make me steward. Consequently I was the storm center when battle was joined on the issue of having or not having cod fish, or upon some equally burning question.
Not many children of wealthy parents went to the University of Nebraska in the early days, because those who could afford it, and there were not many such in the state, preferred to go East. The fashion of the day was therefore set by those to whom levish [sic] expenditure was out of the question. In my time one little knot of students was both fast and wealthy, and the impression made upon me by this fact was such that to this day I cannot help feeling that there is something disreputable about being rich. Intellectually I know that this is not the case, and that in some sort the hope of the country lies in those who are "rich but honest." In other colleges I have met those whose simplicity of life was in no wise destroyed by the fact that they had independent incomes, and whose money was used to broaden their education and to enlarge their sympathies and their usefulness in a way not possible for a student to spend a thousand dollars a year and still lead a life that is unostentatious and healthful. In college better than elsewhere men of this class may meet on terms of equality and friendship with those who have no money but what they earn. In college life the unpardonable sin in snobbery. The lines of social cleavage among students should not be those of property but rather those of capacities and tastes. The universities of Oxford and Cambridge were established originally for the education of small boys, but there have been times in the last hundred years when they seemed to serve only as the idling places for the sons of "gentlemen." We look with earnest confidence to the state universities of America to avoid such degeneration, to maintain a standard of living that is simple, elastic, and healthful, and to preserve for coming generations the benefits resulting from a democratic mingling of the capable youth of all classes.
Amos G. Warner '83
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Source
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Hesperian Student
RG 38/01/02
Periodical: Box: 8
Folder: 1
Date: February 15, 1894
Archives and Special Collections, University of Nebraska-Lincoln Libraries
