Students Storm Seattle to Save Their President
A campus revolt at Whitworth College ends with the sudden re-election of Professor Gault after students intervened.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
Peace once more reigns among the trustees and faculty of Whitworth College. Professor Gault, over whose threatened retirement as president of the college a storm has been raging since April 26, was by unanimous vote of the trustees yesterday re-elected as head of the institution for the ensuing year, thus healing a breach which many of the students felt might have resulted in disrupting the college. The meeting was held at the First Presbyterian Church in Seattle. It was over the rumored enforced retirement of these teachers, and particularly Professor Gault, that the row in the college was precipitated. That some of the students believed it was the intention of the board to not retain members of the faculty was evidenced in the fact that six young women went over to Seattle to appear before the trustees. They did not deny that they were there for the purpose of pleading the cause of Professor Gault, who they have contended all along should not be held responsible for their private acts.
“The fact is that all this talk about the failure of the trustees to re-elect a part of the faculty became students in their charge were allowed to attend dances, originated through inference rather than fact.”
In 1904, Whitworth College was based in Tacoma before moving to Spokane. The student protest against a moral crackdown on dancing mirrors the persistent tension between institutional governance and the evolving social lives of young adults in our city.
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