One-Third of a Campus: Ruth Crawford Mitchell and Second-Generation Americans at the University of Pittsburgh

It was confusing to him. He was in a world which had a set of rules all its own. He knew the other rules—the rules of his own world. But these were different. Men actually lived their four years away at the University, and sent children after them. It was a wild, improbable thing to have fallen into, and the day student looked at his fellows, could distinguish them no differences among them at first, and felt lost. His evenings were spent in the company of old friends and in the old places; his days at the college. And he plunged from past to present; present to past. They told him about loyalty, and he went home to think about it. But at home it became dim and unreal. Then he went back, the next morning, and they told him of loyalty again, of the mighty traditions. If he took it to heart he could only do so above the sickening realization that at four o'clock he must be on Trolley 13 again. And it was hard to take the traditions over the river.Samuel Lipschutz, B.A.University of Pennsylvania, 1929Many of our alumni and some of our students, supported by more than a few of our faculty and corporation, have seriously queried whether or no Brown, in common with other institutions located in a like environment, has in her student body too large a proportion of socially undesirable students. We are most emphatically not concerned with Jew-baiting. I am proud to say that race and creed are still not valid causes for concern in the liberal community founded by Roger Williams. But some of us are worried by the influx of alien blood into what was not so long ago a homogeneous group of students prevailingly Baptist and Anglo-Saxon. Says one alumnus, “A certain type of student is far below the standard we should like to see. I refer to those called carpet-baggers! They live in or near Providence, arrive at the University in the morning in time for their first class, park themselves, their books, and their lunch in the Union, leave the college the minute their last class is over, take no part in college life, absorb all they can, give back nothing of benefit, and probably will prove no credit to the University as alumni.” Surely some of you have heard the same tale.—Kenneth O. MasonDean of Freshmen, Brown University, 1927Were colleges obliged to address the dilemmas faced by the many firstand second-generation Americans who enrolled after World War I? No, replied many administrators who espoused exclusion or assimilation, or who expressed indifference. These attitudes meant that many students would never learn to navigate the turbulent waters of campus social life. Dropout rates were significant even before the Great Crash created insurmountable financial difficulties for numerous undergraduates. The testimony of peers who remained suggested that success often came despite institutional hostility.