University’s benefactors to establish a chair of Semitic languages and in September Schmidt resigned to accept appointment to it.
The extent of faculty involvement in their colleague’s case is difficult to determine. Of those in the Seminary, Jones, in addition to Burnham and Loyd, opposed him while Clarke assisted him and McGregory and Brigham, among his friends in the College, appear to have been active in his behalf. Little publicity seems to have been given to the case until after Schmidt resigned when a long account appeared in the New York Sun. Aside from the issue of academic freedom, valid objection can be made to the procedures employed to effect his dismissal. No definite charges were formally made; no investigation of allegations undertaken; nor was he given a hearing and an opportunity to defend himself. Had he possessed a less pugnacious spirit it is entirely possible that the Trustees could have parried outside criticism of his views and permitted him to continue teaching along with the liberal William Newton Clarke. He “was sent away because he was a troubler of the peace,” Dr. Loyd confessed some years later.* At Cornell he was to win great fame as scholar, author and teacher.
The combined enrollment of all three divisions of the University during the ’90’s fluctuated, with a high of 369 in 1891 and a low of 314 in 1898. The College enrollment reached its peak of 167 in 1895 and its low of 125 in 1898; likewise the Academy with 184 in 1891 and 111 in 1894 and the Seminary with 61 in 1892 and 45 in 1891. The number of graduates from the College entering the Seminary declined from 10 in 1890 to 6 in 1898.
The growing secularization of the University caused concern to the theological faculty who were mindful that its original purpose was to provide an educated clergy. The alumni, too, noted changed conditions and complained about the loss of “the old spirit”
which they remembered from the days when a large percentage of the College students went into the ministry.
Student interest in religious matters continued, however, but expressed itself in new forms. In 1891 William H. Cossum, ’87, came to the campus as an agent for the YMCA-related Student Volunteer Movement and organized 57 students from all divisions of the University into the Students Volunteer Band for Foreign Missions. They met for prayer and the study of missions and carried their message and
*Copy, letter, Dr. Hinton S. Lloyd to Rev. E.P. Brigham, January 15, 1902.
