| 1883 |
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Edward Hicks Magill
(1825-1907) |
In response to the Board of Managers wanting a stricter code of conduct to govern students, Edward Hicks Magill, Swarthmore's second president, issued his 100 Rules in 1883. Among them:
"Students are permitted to go into the library only when accompanied by a teacher."
"Students are not allowed to use the railroad trains except by special permission, and to obtain permission to go home or to Philadelphia must have written requests from parents or guardians."
"Students of the two sexes, except brothers and sisters, shall not walk together on the grounds of the College, nor in the neighborhood, nor to or from the railroad station or the skating grounds. They shall not coast upon the same sled."
As a young man, Magill wrote in his journal of assisting "self-emancipated slaves" along the Underground Railroad in Bucks County, Pa. Educated at Yale and Brown Universities, he served as principal of the classical department of Providence High School and then submaster of the Boston Latin School before joining Swarthmore's faculty when it opened in 1869.
Magill taught French and Latin for three years and served as principal of the Swarthmore preparatory school before becoming president in 1872, a position he held for 17 years. He continued to hold teaching positions while president, including professor of mental and moral philosophy. His daughter, Helen Magill White, was a member of the College's first graduating class and later became the first woman to earn a Ph.D. in the United States.
Under Magill, Swarthmore moved farther into the mainstream of American collegiate education. He upgraded the quality of the academic courses, phased out the preparatory school, and began the practice of awarding honorary degrees. Although the idea of higher education for women was still controversial at the time of Swarthmore's founding, Magill, a strong advocate of coeduation, said in 1873:
"Nothing short of co-equal, co-educational advantages, and the same degrees conferred upon both sexes for equal attainments, will meet the demands of the times ...
The time will come when our posterity will read with amazement and incredulity the statement that in the City of Philadelphia, after the middle of the nineteenth century, the question was seriously entertained by a dignified and intelligent body of educators, in advance of their age in many things, whether women were intellectually equal to men and whether the sexes should be educated together in our higher institutions of learning."
The next year, in an address to the Pennsylvania State Teachers' Association, he said:
"[N]o attempt, even unheralded as the announcement of valuable scientific truth, can circumscribe the sphere of woman to the limits assigned her by the past century, or introduce among Americans of today either the physical, intellectual, or spritual serfdom of woman..."
Magill Walk, the main path from the college that leads to the town of Swarthmore, is named for him. An excerpt from "Magill Walk in Maytime:"
"Four score years and some ago,
Planting rows of oaks on row,
Edward Hicks Magill laid claim
To a later, greater fame.
This one presidential duty
Laid a thoroughfare of beauty:
Bright-hued, rustling flower beds,
And nodding oaks above our heads."
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