The University Mutiny: A Student Protest Over Compulsory Drill
When the University of Washington faculty mandated weekly military training for all students, a group of undergraduates went on strike, claiming the time—and their dignity—was their own.
Ten students of the State university were suspended yesterday by the faculty for refusing to drill. They have resolved in a body to ask the faculty to reinstate them on Friday, and declare that should this demand be met with a refusal, they will petition the court for a writ of mandamus to compel their reinstatement. Shortly after the institution opened at the close of the Christmas holidays, the faculty announced that the students, both male and female, would be required to drill once a week. At the first drill held on Wednesday, January 20, fifteen refused to drill. Yesterday, twelve male students—F. Otto Collings, Owen Taylor, O. H. Kerns, H. A. Kerns, Frank Atkins, Henry Ewing, M. E. Durham, Fred Beach, George Neighbor, Edgar McClellan, Louis Simon, and T. M. Alderson—refused. The faculty met and gave the students a choice: drill or be suspended. Simon and Alderson provided excuses and were excused; the remaining ten were suspended. F. Otto Collings, a representative of the group, stated they considered this a fight on principle. He noted that seven of the ten students work to support their tuition, with five of them delivering the Post-Intelligencer daily, and they felt an hour a week of added exercise was an imposition. They have secured legal counsel and intend to challenge the university's authority.
“We have made what we consider a fight upon a principle, and, still deeming ourselves right, although we have been suspended, we shall not let the matter rest here.”
This 1892 labor-adjacent dispute at the University of Washington resonates with today’s debates over student autonomy, the financial precarity of working students, and the limits of institutional authority. It highlights the long history of students organizing as a collective force against policies they deem an imposition on their time and labor.
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