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PAGE 4

Brann Vs. Baylor
by [?]

. . .

Not only has Baylor demonstrated its unworthiness to be the custodian of young people of either sex, but such unworthiness has been proclaimed in the public prints by Dr. Rufus C. Burleson, who served as its president for almost half a century. I insisted that the salaries paid the faculty at Baylor were insufficient to command the services of first class educators, and that those entrusted with the duty of selecting teachers were incapable of correctly estimating the educational qualifications of others Dr. Burleson goes far beyond that, expressly declaring in the Dallas News that a majority of the present board of managers are not college educated, that for them to properly administer discipline and make wise selection of teachers “is simply impossible.” What, in God’s name, can be expected of an institution containing several hundred young people of both sexes, if it be deficient in dissipline? Of what earthly use is a University if it be not provided with a wisely selected faculty? It now remains to be seen whether the Baptist brethren will mob Dr. Burleson–or sneak up behind him with an assortment of clubs and six-shooters! But that is not the worst that Dr. Burleson says. In a published letter of his now before me he denounces Dr. B. H. Carroll, chairman of the board of trustees and present high muck-a-muck of Baylor, as an ingrate, a self-seeker, a mischief maker and an irremediable liar! Now if Burleson is telling the truth–and I am not prepared to dispute his statements–what can we expect of a University managed by such a man? I am frank to confess that I did not suspect Bro. Carroll to be quite so bad. I knew that he was an intellectual dugout spreading the canvas of a seventy-four, that there was precious little to him but gab and gall; but I did not suppose that he was an habitual falsifier and guilty of base ingratitude. I really hope that Dr. Burleson may be mistaken–that the new boss of Baylor has not contracted such a habit of lying that it is utterly impossible for him to tell the truth. I should dislike to believe all that is said about each other by the two factions of my Baptist brethren now struggling for the control of Baylor. According to Carroll, Dr. Burleson, president emeritus, ought to be in the penitentiary; according to Burleson, Carroll is not a fit associate for a brindle cow. “Speak disrespectfully of Baylor and die!” Good Lord! were I to repeat one-half the Baylor factions are saying about each other I’d wreck the state. Time was when the faculty of Baylor was the pride of the South. Those were the days when many of the noblest men and women of Texas were educated within its walls. They love their alma mater, not for what she is, but for what she was. The old professors are gone, have been supplanted in great part by a lot of priorient little preachers, selected by a board of trustees, half of whom couldn’t tell a Greek root from a rutabaga, pons asinorum from Balaam’s ass. Dr. Burleson seems to be of the opinion that a majority of the Baylorian managers were educated in a mule-pen and dismissed without a diploma–couldn’t tell whether a man were construing Catullus into Sanskrit or pronouncing in Piute a panegeric on a baked pup. Were I not persona non grata I would like to witness the classroom performances of these young professors–chosen with owlish gravity by men who cannot write deer sur without the expenditure of enough nervo-muscular energy to raise a cotton crop, chewing off the tips of their tongues and blotting the paper with their proboscides. Yet for offering to open a night school for the benefit of the Baylorian faculty I was mobbed; for intimating that the hoard of managers had not socked with old Socrates and ripped with old Euripides I was assaulted by one of their number and his brave body guard and beaten with six-shooters and bludgeons until I was insensible.