West Virginia University: Symbol of Unity in a Sectionalized State

Chapter 10: In Sickness and in Health, Till Death Do Us Part; The Inviolate University Campus

Chapter lQ 1946-1958 Governor Okey Patteson In Sickness and in Health, Till Death Do Us Part; The Inviolate University Campus As OF JuNE 30, 1948, an unencumbered balance in the West Virginia treasury showed an excess of $28.5 million. This embarrassment of riches set the stage for innumerable requests throughout West Virginia, perhaps causing politicians of the highly sectionalized mountain state to wish for deficits rather than surpluses. Bracing themselves for their constituents ' requests, the executive and legislative branches of the state government had not long to wait. Fortified for battle with the ammunition of charts and tables showing major student enrollment increases from all counties of the state, the West Virginia University governing board had a ready answer. In behalf of all the state's inhabitants, it called for the immediate expenditure in the 1949-51 biennium of about $17 million to satisfy a much-needed University building program. About three-fourths of its request was earmarked for the undergraduate and graduate sciences: engineering , agriculture, physics, and medicine. The smaller proportion, about one-fourth, it designated for the Library, the School of Music, an arts and sciences classroom building, and dormitories. The budget request was 214 1946-1958 215 well-conceived. In a sense, it was returning the University to the original terms of the Morrill Act of 1862 by emphasizing for a Legislature largely concerned with furthering the extractive industries of the state the more practical, vocational, and therefore more highly visible aspects of higher education. Dealing a body blow to the University building requests, the council of the State Medical Association simultaneously advanced on October 15, 1948, its long-time objective of providing state residents a complete, in-state medical education. It recommended that the University's two-year School of Medicine be expanded to four years, and, in addition, that a four-year dental school be created. It also suggested, without further delay, an appropriation of more than $6 million to finance the proposed schools, and, in defiance of a concept of one unified state university located on a single campus , that the two schools be located in Charleston. Irvin Stewart, respecting the strength if not the wisdom of the West Virginia medical lobby, classified his remarks on the subject of its earlier subcommittee recommendations to the WVU Board of Governors as confidential . Noting that the demand for admission to medical schools normally outran available facilities anywhere in the nation, Stewart questioned the Association's proposition that young West Virginians "are entitled to receive a medical education in this state to the same extent as training is now given those seeking an education in other professions and businesses." He also doubted the Association's prediction that graduation from a medical school in West Virginia would induce a larger number of doctors to settle in the state. "It is my impression," Stewart confided, "that place of internship is a more important factor, but I recognize that as a layman I may be misinformed on the point. New Jersey has no medical school, yet has no reported shortage of general practitioners." For the moment, both the circumspect WVU president and the cautious governing board issued no public broadsides attacking the medical proposals. With respect to maintaining the status quo of a two-year program for its medical students, West Virginia University had worked out a plan with the Medical College of Virginia at Richmond which both neighboring states had come to view as economically favorable to their interests. Under an agreement of January, 1944, West Virginia University annually sent to the Medical College twenty students who enrolled in its junior class. Their eligibility for admission, promotion, and graduation was in accordance with the regulations of the Medical College as the entry requirements of West Virginia students were identical to those for Virginia students. For the privilege, the University agreed to pay the Medical College for each session at the time of registration $1,000 annually for every student enrolled. A minimum payment of $17,000 per session was exacted for in- 216 IN SICKNESS AND IN HEALTH struction in each junior class and a like sum in each senior class, even should the enrollment in either class, or in both, drop below seventeen students. In addition, West Virginia students paid the Medical College the same tuition and fees charged to Virginia students. Diplomas awarded students under the coordinated plan bore the signatures of the...