President Wilson

The Farmer-Labor Reconstruction League has an opportunity to apply its theories in the Oklahoma Agricultural and Mechanical College at Stillwater, and it is using the opportunity. One of its organizers, George C. Wilson, a former Townleyite, was appointed to the Presidency of the College by Governor Walter, who was elected to office last fall through the efforts of the League. Wilson, who has divided his days between North Dakota and Oklahoma, has taught in the schools of both states. In 1920 he was defeated for state superintendent of public instruction in Oklahoma, Later he was active in the political affairs of the League and a few weeks ago he was appointed to succeed President. J. B. Eskeridge of Oklahoma A. and M., who was deposed, Wilson's appointment was approved by the state board of agriculture, which the governor had reorganized. But the students and citizens of Stillwater rebelled. They appealed to the governor. As a result, Wilson appeared on June 3 accompanied by five officers of the national guard and took over the keys of the college.

President Wilson's first statement of policy was an anticlassical proclamation. " The Classic languages said the new President, " are dead issues. There is no necessity for their inclusion in the curriculum here. It is my intention to teach the children of the farm how to raise better hogs and produce more cotton per acre; that is the reason they are here! "

The incumbent of the chair of ancient languages is reported as replying that the President had less education than half the students. But the agricultural departments may feel differently. President Wilson is in favor of the school of fine arts because " My wife, who was graduated from the college here, would not let me live in the same house with her if I opposed the fine arts school." And modern languages to " enable a student to read a menu card intelligently " will be offered, and a model packing plant may be installed. The President sums it all up thus: " Practical demonstration of the theoretical is my first aim for the college." And apparently he believes in the corollary: if you can't demonstrate it, don't teach it.

No one except the former members of the Oklahoma A. and M. classical department will be impressed by President Wilson's edict that the classics are dead. But there is a certain significance in the attempt to make the college a specialized institution. There is a clear tendency in that direction at present. The difficulties of President Atwood at Clark University (TIME, June 11), are due perhaps as much to opposition to the specialization of that institution as to hostility to Dr. Atwood's methods. And a great deal can doubtless be said for the specialization of various universities. There is no reason why all colleges and universities should be cut to the same pattern. On the contrary educational institutions are chiefly valuable for their singularities. The rush to turn colleges into universities and to duplicate in each university the work of the next has not justified itself in the East and there is no reason to suppose that it will be more successful in the West.