11, the Graduate Council, to
be discussed in a later chapter, was established by the Alumnae
Association; and on October 5, 1911, the first number of the alumnae
edition of the College News was issued. In the academic year
1912-1913, the Monday holiday was abolished and the new schedule
with recitations from Monday morning until Saturday noon was
established. After the mid-year examinations in 1912, the students
were for the first time told their marks. In 1913, the Village
Improvement Association built and equipped, on the college grounds,
a kindergarten to be under the joint supervision of the Association
and the Department of Education. The building is used as a free
kindergarten for Wellesley children, and also as a practice school
for graduate students in the department. A campaign for an
endowment fund of one million dollars was also started by the
trustees and alumnae under the leadership and with the advice
of the new president. A committee of alumnae was appointed, with
Miss Candace C. Stimson, of the class of '92 as chairman, to
cooperate with the trustees in raising the money, and more than
four hundred thousand dollars had been promised when, in March, 1914,
occurred Wellesley's great catastrophe--which she was to translate
immediately into her great opportunity--the burning of old
College Hall.
If, in the years to come, Wellesley fulfills that great opportunity,
and becomes in spirit and in truth, as well as in outward seeming,
the College Beautiful which her daughters see in their visions
and dream in their dreams, it will be by the soaring, unconquerable
faith--and the prompt and selfless works--of the daughter who said
to a college in ruins, on that March morning, "The members of the
college will report for duty on the appointed date after the spring
vacation," and sent her flock away, comforted, high-hearted,
expectant of miracles.
CHAPTER III
THE FACULTY AND THEIR METHODS
I.
At Wellesley, to a degree unusual in American colleges, whether
for men or women, the faculty determine the general policy of the
college. The president, as chairman of the Academic Council,
is in a very real and democratic sense the representative of the
faculty, not the ruler. In Miss Freeman's day, the excellent
presidential habit of consulting with the heads of departments
was formed, and many of the changes instituted by the young president
were suggested and formulated by her older colleagues. In
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