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Chapter 5 1901-1914 Daniel Boardman Purinton August 1, 1901-July 31, 1911 Thomas Edward Hodges October 1, 1911-August 31, 1914 Conservative Management versus "New Education" BY 1901 THE WEsT VIRGINIA LEGISLATURE had established all institutions in the present system of public higher education with the exception of two community colleges created in 1971. It had not, however, ultimately determined its method of governance for these schools. As the twentieth century began, West Virginia University and its preparatory branches at Keyser and Montgomery each had an individual Board of Regents; the West Virginia Colored Institute and Bluefield Colored Institute each had a Board of Regents, while all other institutions of higher learning were controlled by the Normal School Board of Regents. As if establishing six separate Boards of Regents were not enough, the West Virginia Legislature in the first year of the twentieth century reorganized once again the University's Board of Regents, making it mandatory for the governor to appoint a new bipartisan board, only one of whose members might be from the same senatorial district or the same county. The new Board convened on March 17, 1901, and three days later accepted President Raymond's resignation, effective at the end of the spring term. It vested the powers and 79 80 CONSERVATIVE MANAGEMENT VERSUS "NEW EDUCATION" duties of the office in a former vice-president and acting president, P. B. Reynolds, who would serve as acting president a second time, from March 21, 1901, to August 1, 1901. Thus the search began for new twentieth-century leadership. After the turmoil of President Raymond's administration, state officials considered it necessary to find as the head of WVU not necessarily a modern man but only one who was the opposite of the last president, who had been a liberal in education, a puritan in personal morals, and an outsider to West Virginia. With the resignation of Raymond in hand, C. E. Haworth, editor of the Huntington Herald, wrote Governor A. B. White on May 27, 1901, that "... the general good feeling about the University is very noticeable and the Professors especially are feeling good as if in escape from long imprisonment ." He added, however, that "the school, of course, recovering from a long illness, needs nursing." A few weeks later the kind of nursing the school needed was spelled out in frugal terms by Regent J. B. Finley toW. M. 0. Dawson, Secretary of State, in a letter of April 18, 1901: It is my belief that the expense of the institution should be kept strictly within the appropriations made by the legislature. This State has a great future, but it is wrong to attempt to anticipate that future ten or fifteen years. The State cannot afford to spend the amount of money other states are spending on similar institutions, and it has no endowments by wealthy men. I for one am thankful that it has none, because I believe that an education derived from an institution supported by the taxes of all the people is better than one from an institution built merely for the glorification of some individual. I want to see the institution establish a reputation for good, solid, sound, sane education, and not go off spending money on every new theory, or making a struggle for mere bigness. I have had no opportunity to confer with any member of the new Board, and do not know what their views are, but I feel so strongly the need of a conservative management of the University that I trust the views I have expressed are also theirs. The tax payers of the State and those who have children to educate must be considered, and, while they will gladly support a proper institution , many will do what I know many are now doing; send their children out of the State to older and more conservative institutions, unless there is an inclination to keep the institution on a solid basis and well within the means the State can afford to spend on it. No innovative ideas, economy in education, and retrenchment from what was considered the extravagance of the Raymond administration were the reinstituted policies of former years. A series of Regents' orders in June of 1901 signaled the retreat. One ultimatum stated the president was "authorized to use as much of the current and contingent fund as may be absolutely necessary for keeping the apparatus in the various Departments in repair, but it is distinctly understood that...

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