A Shameful Condition by Editor

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Mountain View, California · Mar 25, 1908

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 34, No. 13.

A Shameful Condition.

By Editor

We have made mention a time or two of the trouble the faculty of Stanford University is having with some of the students over the drink curse. A number of students had been intoxicated and the committee on discipline had been grappling with the problem, when one of the students became so drunk in a nocturnal carouse that he missed his home and went into another man's house and was groping about in the hallway when he was shot dead for a burglar. This incident so stirred the authorities of the institution that they determined to blot the drink curse from the place.

Professor Jordan, the president of the university, is a strong temperance man himself, and has been working hard to get the saloons and other places where liquors are sold all removed from all the territory that surrounds the school. Indeed, he has expressed the hope that the liquor curse could be driven out of the whole of the Santa Clara Valley in which the school is located.

But on a recent evening a company of the students who are hostile to having their drink supply cut off, formed a procession and made quite an ugly demonstration about the grounds of the school. Among other things they marched to a small village just outside the university grounds to the home of the professor who is at the head of the committee on discipline and called for him to come out. His wife went to the door and informed them that the professor was not at home, and they went away. What they would have done if the professor had been at home is hard to tell. They then marched back thru the university grounds, headed by a band. In their rounds they went past the chapel where Professor Jordan was presiding at a meeting that was being addressed by a leading physician from San Francisco. In going past the chapel the band continued to play and they otherwise kept up their noisy demonstration.

It is sincerely to be hoped that the faculty of the university will take hold of things with a strong hand and root out the curse of both the drink and the lawlessness. But one can not help the suggestion that if such things as this are to be found among the young men that are studying to make our future legislators, doctors, and other leading citizens, what may we expect in the next generation?

The slogan of the presidents of many of these higher institutions of learning is that "they have no time for religion." With the moral foundations thus swept away, we have many clear representations of the results. The attempt is made to teach abstract morals apart from the religion of the Lord Jesus Christ. But such morals are not strong enough to hold when self-interest or self-pleasure comes up for consideration.