On Friday, I heard one of my fellow students (who will remain unnamed) ask who the Zumbyes were. Rather sarcastically, I asked if he even knew who the first president of Amherst was. I was met with blank stares. I shouldn’t have been surprised. Ask Amherst students about our history, and most won’t be able to say much more than that around 200 years ago, some Williams students took some books and returned to civilization to found a new college, then Sabrina was stolen a few times, we admitted women, we abolished frats and Tony Marx became president. (The first president of Amherst was Zephaniah Swift Moore, if anyone is interested.)
But we should not be too quick to blame the students because there is really no way for us to absorb our history without active research. The administration has done very little to promote it. The last history of the College (Claude Moore Fuess’s “Amherst: The Story of a New England College”) was published in 1935, and the historical pamphlet “A Harvest of Attainments” sent out to new students admits that “it is designed to convey the important role that philanthropy has played in the life of Amherst College.” (Hint, hint.) Furthermore, there is virtually no official recognition of our past. For instance, where is the statue of — or even the commemorative plaque in honor of — alumnus Melvil Dewey, who invented the Dewey Decimal System, in Frost Library? In fact, there is no recognition of President Moore either (Moore Dormitory was named after a benefactor). And President Calvin Coolidge has only a social dorm and a library in his old fraternity house — which he helped to build — named after him. Even Lord Jeffrey Amherst has no statue. The only Amherst figures who have statues on campus are Reverend Henry Ward Beecher and Noah Webster.
Another issue is the lack of historical architecture on campus. Almost since the beginning of the College, short-sighted administrators and fraternities have been making rather poor building decisions. East College once stood on the current site of Stearns and James, but in 1882 it was demolished to provide a better view of the gorgeous college church, which was demolished in 1948 to provide a space for the Mead Art Museum. Walker Hall, a beautiful Gothic masterpiece that was once an architectural jewel of the College, was knocked down to build Frost Library, and now can only be seen in pictures on A Level and in Val, Alpha Delta Phi fraternity demolished an incredible ornate Italianate manor to build what is now Hitchcock. These are only a few examples.
Unfortunately, this is one tradition that does continue to the current day. In the ongoing renovation of the old fraternity dorms, the administration has held very little consideration for preserving historical interiors. They have removed ballrooms in Mayo-Smith and Hitchcock. They have filled these dorms with ugly (and expensive) modern furniture. They have even removed many secret fraternity rooms. They put up fluorescent lights in the Morris Pratt ballroom. They have removed wood floors all over campus. The list is very long.
But can the administration really be blamed for not maintaining the spirit of Lord Jeff? President Marx went to Wesleyan and transferred to Yale. Deans Boykin-East and Moore went to UMass, and Dean Lieber went to Columbia; only Dean Hart attended Amherst. While I’m sure these administrators do not dislike Amherst or shirk their duties because they did not come here, how can they be expected to truly fight for the spirit of the College if they did not attend it?
Perhaps the reason that the administration has been loath to promote our history is that there have been a few dark chapters. Amherst was basically founded to educate the remnants of the Puritans that still thrived in New England in the early 19th century. Anything deemed even remotely “immoral” was banned. This included cards, dancing, banquets and, of course, alcohol. Today, underage students receive rebukes for drinking, but in the 19th century they would have been expelled. This was, of course, when underage drinking was perfectly legal, and binge drinking very common in the rest of the country. Even restaurants and groceries were warned against as possible corrupting influences. And since, in the words of college historian Fuess, “indecency existed long before the time of jazz and the flapper,” this oppressive attitude was a major problem for students. Periodically, the administration would sponsor religious “revivals” during which the more religious students would mob the more liberal remnant into the chapel, where they would be pressured beyond the point of tears into confessing a greater faith in God. Amherst also has several other unsavory traditions in its past, such as the fraternities and the even-odd class rivalry. The class rivalry was particularly destructive. For instance, in 1858, a school-wide fight between the class of ’61 and the class of ’60 left a door chopped down and a stairway in ruins in South College.
But if we hold the historical figures and acts that we honor today to our current moral standards, it would be a very slippery slope indeed. We would be forced to reject Christopher Columbus, the Founding Fathers, Julius Caesar and probably even the American Revolution. This is why I beg the administration to consider the future of the College and stop the destruction of our valuable historical assets. I also encourage the administration to consider hiring alumni when administrative posts open up, to commission a new college history and to build memorials to some of our great alumni.