A tradition, being something in the nature of a standard, an ideal, or a custom anded down from an organized group to their successors, is itself subject to gradual change contingent upon the changing group. In retrospect one sees a number of near traditions in Wesleyan sidetracked and forgotten. One sees without deploring their loss, because one also sees their places taken by aims and purposes and agencies probably better adapted to serve the ends of the college group.
Speaking concretely, if the Chrestomathean and the Excelsior Literary Societies had survived, their existence today might be regarded as traditional in the college. But who is left to regret the substitution of training under competent teachers in dramatics, forensics, and the principles and practice of speaking? Some of us who had got our only training in this field from the literary societies, sighed at their passing because of lack of interest on the part of the students. But our consolation now is that we probably have today in the college a higher percent of students trained in speech than we ever had under the old system.
In another field we wondered what had become of the spiritual life of the college when interest waned in the Sunday-evening student meeting. It had been a religious praise and testimony service in which many a student gained strength and inspiration for a life dedicated to religious service. Taking the place of the students’ meeting, we see today the Y. M. C. A., the Y. W. C. A., the Ministerial Association, the Life Service group, and possibly other organizations. One has the comfortable feeling that we have probably gained more than we have lost.
While these and some other out-moded phases of college life failed to become traditional, yet their passing suggests something that did. We refer to the principle of growth and adaptation.
Let us say, then. that one of our first great traditions as a school is our easy susceptibility to changes of plan and program that promise to be for our betterment. Let no one believe, either, that this is a sign of instability or of fickleness. Human society changes, human needs change. The mission of a college is to serve human needs. To do this it must change its program to meet the changing needs it is designed to serve.
Some things are fundamental. These are the abiding things. When the founders of the college envisioned it, they saw it as an institution that would foster both sound learning and Christian character. These objectives are traditional aims of the college. If the college ever ceases to have sufficient reason for its continuance, it will be when these objectives are forgotten. We fancy that its security as a college lies in keeping close to these objectives as ideals. We hope that materially the college will never be more sorely tried than during the present depression. But, if it should be, its strength in such a time would lie in the appeal the preservation of these ideals would make to a Christian citizenship that emulates the aims of the founders.
Turning from the emphasis traditionally placed by the college upon sound learning and Christian character, one can find something traditional in the attitude of a great majority of the students toward life and its problems. Millionaire fortunes are few and far between in West Virginia,-the home of most of the students that attend Wesleyan. In most cases either the student is making a great sacrifice and laboring under serious handicaps to obtain the benefits of the college, or the student’s parents are making these sacrifices. In either event, the effect is to make the student feel that he is facing one of life’s serious responsibilities in going to college and, consequently, that he should apply himself with industry to his intellectual pursuits.
There might be some interesting aspects of a millionaire clientele of the college. It might solve some of the problems of material well-being ever present in Wesleyan as in most other colleges. But with such a clientele these would likely appear on the school roster the names of many pampered and irresponsible youth to whose whims we might be tempted to cater. The effect of this type of youth on the institutional standards would, I fear, be such as to render the school less well-adapted to serve the needs of the class of whom, according to Lincoln, the Lord made so many.
Our prayer for colleges, as for ourselves, might well be “give us neither poverty nor riches”; to which we might add “but, if it be Thy will, remove us a little further from the former and a little nearer to the latter.”
It is most interesting to see young people addressing themselves to the tasks of getting ready to meet life’s responsibilities without losing the spirit of youth in their serious pursuits. We wonder whether the founders who have passed beyond can see the enterprise which they started, functioning as they prayed it would in opening opportunity where none had been. If we believe they must be pleased at the genius of the work of their hands. The College has adapted its program to the needs of a living, changing, growing clientele. It has preserved with increasing emphasis its original mandate to stress sound scholarship and Christian character. Its halls are filled with young people who accept opportunity as a challenge to do their best.
[West Virginia Wesleyan College Alumni Magazine 1936-03, p.5]