Letterhead
Brooklyn, N.Y. Feb. 6, 1906.
Hon. Timothy L. Woodruff,
N.Y.
My dear Woodruff:-
You have probably received from Mr. Grout copies of the proposed act incorporating a Brooklyn University, which he has sent to all members of the Committee of One Hundred.
This is the way in which that undertaking has thus far been conducted: The Committee of One Hundred authorized Mr. Grout last spring to appoint a Committee of Fifteen to confer with the representatives of various institutions in Brooklyn. Mr. Grout's Committee of Fifteen sent a letter to those institutions asking the appointment of representatives for such conferences.
This letter did not reach us no that our Committee could be appointed earlier than at the May meeting, and before our Committee had time to have a meeting of its own Mr. Grout issued a call for a conference at the Brooklyn Club. None of the other institutions, unless it be the Brooklyn Institute, had been able to have a meeting of its own Conference Committee before that call was issued. At the conference Mr. Benedict and myself reported that the Adelphi Committee had not been able to meet, and was not therefore able as a Committee to make any statement, - we expressed however, our individual opinions. The other institutions there represented, excepting the Brooklyn Institute, were not ready to make any statement of any kind excepting an utterance expressing a vague interest.
No other conference was called during the summer or during the autumn.
Last December Mr. Grout and two or three of his friends met the Polytechnic representatives at a dinner at the Hamilton Club. We were not invited, neither was the representative of any other institution invited. Mr. Swanstrom however, got a special meeting of our Board called in order that we might re-constitute our Conference Committee and be ready to have a session with the Committee of Fifteen. We have never yet received any invitation to meet the Committee of Fifteen, and no other institution, barring that one instance of the Polytechnic dinner, has had any invitation to meet the Committee of Fifteen, so far as we know.
Nevertheless Mr. Grout has evidently had sessions of the Committee of Fifteen, and has drawn up an act of incorporation* and an application to the Board of Regents, and has now summoned the Committee of One Hundred to meet on Wednesday afternoon Feb. 7 in Historical Hall at five o'clock, evidently with the intention of asking it to act finally upon the reports of this Committee of Fifteen. Taking into view the original instructions which the Committee of Fifteen received from the Committee of One Hundred, and taking into view also the liberties which this movement is likely to take with the policies and the prospects of existing institutions, it would seem as though the officers of this college had not had the opportunities which they have a right to expect to discuss with Mr. Grout and his friends the possibility of some form of university development which would meet the approval of all parties. [*This act says that all institutions joining the merger shall surrender to the University of Brooklyn at their property. This seems to contradict Grout's former assurance that he did not seek to disturb Adelphi Academy.]
A Brooklyn University ought to be the outgrowth of the existing colleges here. The energetic cooperation of a man like Mr. Grout and his immediate associates would be highly desirable, but it is certainly highly undesirable that a coterie of citizens of just that sort should force upon the institutions of higher education in Brooklyn a scheme of educational development which they have not had any large share in making.
I am quite ready to admit that it may be necessary to enter into some kind of relation with the city school system. I wish that it might not be so, but it is quite likely that it may be true. Mr. Grout and his friends however, have taken it for granted at the outset that the only kind of plan possible is one which will, so far as undergraduate collegiate instruction is concerned, create here without change an institution modelled upon the C.C.N.Y. There is scarcely an educator of any importance in the United States who knows anything about collegiate and university life, who would not deprecate a duplication of that institution, and would not urge that when a new city institution was to be created it should be framed so as to avoid some of the evils that have attended the origin and management of that school.
For my part I believe that it is foolish indeed to think that a Brooklyn college must be exactly like that college in Manhattan. Improvements are certainly possible, and a careful study of the problem is necessary in order to make certain what those improvements ought to be.
[marginalia] Since dictating the above I have had a conference with Rossiter & Crane. It was our opinion that a letter should be sent to Mr. Grout tomorrow saying that his documents have been received, that some of the propositions therein contained are such that we are unable to act upon them without ample deliberation, and that as we have no opportunity to discuss them with the Committee of 15 we do not feel ready to attend the meeting of the committee of 100. You ought to be the one to sign such a note if it is sent. If you get this tomorrow morning. I wish that you would call me to the phone.
Faithfully Yours
Charles H. Levermore