Students Demand
Resignation of President Riddick and Restoration of Ag. Program at the
Agricultural and Engineering College
(today’s N.C. State University), 1919
By W.T. “Tom” Bost,
from the Elizabeth City
Independent, April 18, 1919
Raleigh, April
17—Student ultimatum to President Riddick of the Agricultural and Engineering
College, demanding his resignation by noon of yesterday, unfortunately was a manifesto disproportionate to the war
itself, for Dr. Riddick was not in town to receive the terms.
It is a wonderfully
ramified story. The boys, perhaps 200 of the 500 enrolled, predicated their
rebellion on the manifest purpose of the administrative to cut the agricultural
course to the bone. Three professors teaching in that division have either gone
or will go. The boys sent a memorial demanding that the President go and
insisting that agriculture be restored to its pristine glory.
It’s politics of
course, the kind of skullduggery that made Saunders utter a philippic when he
returned home from a 60-day sojourn in the city of easy legislative licker. The
college in West Raleigh and the department of agriculture are enemies. They
watch each other and when the college is not plotting an annexation scheme
whereby the agricultural work would go out to the college; the agricultural
department is deploring the inharmony out there and suggesting that the
institution should cut out agriculture, thus putting the emphasis upon engineering.
Two years ago the
legislature changed the name of the college from the Agricultural and
Mechanical College to North Carolina State College of Agriculture and
Engineering. There was a student conspiracy to call this institution “State
College.” While raged the Battle of Marne Raleigh staged the battle of the
name. War lasted weeks until there was an armistice signed. Then it was agreed
that everyone should stop calling it “State College” without adding “of
agriculture and engineering.” President Riddick liked the change; everybody
drifted into saying “State College” and soon went out the word that city chaps
were ashamed of having attended a rube institution.
Ever since that
foolish episode, there has been a tendency to saddle indifference to agriculture
on Dr. Riddick who is an engineer and may lean to his line. Coupled with this
was the 1919 fight for changing the location of the college from Raleigh to
West Raleigh. President Riddick knowing that he stacked up against an
irrepressible down-town lobby, made himself conspicuously unpopular during the
debates. He lost all; the department of agriculture gained everything.
Without any
spokesmen who would sign his statement, it is declared by collegians in West
Raleigh that there is a systematic campaign against the college. The student
episode is believed to be one of them. The first evidence of a student in the
name of agriculture is the insurgency against Riddick. There is hardly any
doubt who put the boys up to their memorial, but further than the general
knocking of the college by the department employees in Raleigh there is nobody
under suspicion.
Rough Neck Hazing
While students and
their teachers quarrel, up-towners are very sore over an epidemic of hazing and
roughneck exhibitions at the college.
Raleigh boys who
have been attending school and rooming at the college have been forced to
return to their homes in Raleigh. The mode of hazing is said to be intensely
objectionable. It takes the form of hair clipping, painting naked bodies, blacking
men all over and penetrating tricks rowdyism which interfere with the study of
decent students. Twenty members of the freshman class are said to have been
driven away and to spend their time at home. The maternal apron string never
was so popular as it has become since the academic Bolshevists took the college
captive.
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Who was W.T. Bost?
William Thomas
“Tom” Bost was a wonderful political reporter, who covered North Carolina. For
more information on him, see http://ncpedia.org/biography/bost-william-thomas-tom.
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