minister and teacher. He wrote that he entered college “a very simple-minded boy-appreciative faculties wide awake, critical faculties asleep”
and that he found at Colgate what he needed most, “stimulating personalities,”
especially among the faculty. Despite his struggle over religion as part of his intellectual development, he enjoyed college life, “was in on all the fun the campus afforded,”
and was one of the best dancers on the campus. He was a D.U., edited the Salmagundi and was on the Madisonensis staff but public speaking was his major activity and here he excelled, foreshadowing his subsequent eminent pulpit reputation.*
The students’ response to the outbreak of the Spanish-American War was prompt and enthusiastic. They joined the faculty and villagers in patriotic rallies and several from the Seminary and Academy, as well as the College, organized into four companies which drilled throughout the spring of 1898, Harry Fosdick serving as a first lieutenant. At the celebration the next year in honor of Admiral George Dewey, it was Fosdick, as President of the Students Association, who represented the undergraduates with a forceful and polished address, “College Students and American Life.”
The ’90’s saw fraternity life quickened and enriched. By 1894 each group was living in its own house. The D.U.’s already had theirs which had been completed in 1882. The D.K.E.’s acquired the Kern residence on the site of their present house in 1891. The Phi Psi’s built a house in 1892 on the corner of Charles and East Pleasant Streets which later became the University Infirmary. The Betas rented the old President’s House in 1893 and the Phi Gams took over the G.O.C. Lawrence residence on Madison Street. James C. Colgate pointed out to the alumni that all who contributed to the chapter house building funds helped the University in providing student accommodations; approximately half the college students were living in fraternity houses by 1894. Though there were some who questioned the value of fraternities, especially because of the bitter rivalry among them which was occasionally to be found, they were generally held to be a highly desirable feature of campus life. Many of the professors took an active part as helpful “older brothers”
to the undergraduates. Among them was William Newton Clarke, ’61, a D.K.E. who believed fraternities could serve the aims of the University effectively by encouraging
*Harry Emerson Fosdick, The Living of These Days (New York, 1956), 48ff