Occasionally, in theatres or other public places there have been feeble attempts to disturb the performance and interfere with the rights of others, but such attempts have always been promptly checked by civil common sense, if not by the police. — Herbert Baxter Adams
We’re continuing to explore the history of JHU and policing in Baltimore. Today, the university is promoting policing on campus as a measure that will “respond to our community’s growing public safety needs.”1 This view, of police as allies to the university community — including its students — is far from where the story began. In the decades before World War I, police in Baltimore were from time-to-time deployed to safeguard Baltimore residents from the misconduct of Johns Hopkins students.
At Hard Histories, we delved into a fascinating source for better understanding the longer story of JHU and policing, the archives of the student newspaper, the News-Letter. Available to researchers through the JHU Sheridan Libraries digital collection, this student publication offers an illuminating perspective on the relationship between Johns Hopkins students and local police. Sometimes humorous and generally frank, writers for the News-Letter reported on clashes between young men affiliated with JHU and local law enforcement. It was an uneasy relationship.
A reminder, in its earliest years JHU was not located on what is today the Homewood campus in Charles Village. Instead, JHU shared the streets of Baltimore with residents in facilities located at the heart of the city. Student events were hosted by local restaurants, theaters, and catering halls and many students lived in the surrounding neighborhood. (More on the shift to the “privacy” of the Homewood campus in a bit.)
In June 1899, Professor Herbert Baxter Adams took to the pages of the News-Letter to ask “What is Education For?” Adams addressed those students in danger of wasting their college years by failing to “voluntarily conform to the established social order” and embrace an education that instilled “obedience to law and authority.” JHU students, in Adams’s estimation, were not as disorderly as others across the country. Baltimore’s “good government” generally maintained the local “peace.” But, he admitted, “occasionally, in theatres or other public places there have been feeble attempts to disturb the performance and interfere with the rights of others.” Fortunately, in his view, either police or “civic common sense” short-circuited these incidents. Adams warned that “student pranks and misdemeanors do not benefit a civilized community.”2
Student writers at the News-Letter chronicled the pranks and misdemeanors that concerned Adams and then detailed the confrontations with local police that followed. Fraternity parties, the “annual rush,” and “class banquets” brought out police officers who looked to thwart clashes between students and quell what writers termed “riots.” These confrontations were so vexed that the News-Letter sometimes saw police as “helpless” in the face of student melees.3
Historian Nichols Syrett helps to explain this culture that surfaced on the pages of the News-Letter: A brand of fraternal masculinity that pervaded many all-male colleges and universities. In his 2009 book The Company He Keeps: A History of White College Fraternities, Syrett explains how a blend of “class, religiosity, race, sexuality, athleticism, intelligence, and recklessness” ran through the atmosphere among students at Johns Hopkins and many other places.4 Syrett’s study mostly concerns the consequences of this culture for other students, while reports in the JHU News-Letter hint at its impact on residents of Baltimore.
Some students saw JHU’s eventual move away from the city center and to the Homewood Campus as shielding them from clashes with local police. It was said that once JHU moved to Homewood, student life would play out in the private setting of a spacious campus without “frantic landlords or spoil-sport policemen to interfere.”5 Clashes between students and local police might then diminish, and the activities that provoked those confrontations could continue unchecked.
There is more to learn about how JHU went from a place where students lamented their proximity to police to one where that proximity is being invited, orchestrated even, by JHU. And further research may tell us about this shift from the perspective of university leaders.
For us at Hard Histories, this modest origin story is a reminder that the challenges — of what is sometimes referred to as “town and gown” but is more aptly described as the relationship between JHU, police, and the citizens of Baltimore — is an old and entrenched one. Have JHU students gone from being the targets of police authority to the proposed objects of police protection? We are watching as JHU accounts for where it is in 2022.6 We can learn even more through an examination of the changes that have taken place over more than a century.
— MSJ
You can read more about the JHU police department plan here: JHPD Frequently Asked Questions. https://publicsafety.jhu.edu/community-safety/jhpd/jhpd-frequently-asked-questions/
Herbert Baxter Adams, “What is Education For?” News-Letter, June 6, 1899, 1-3.
“Foot Ball,” News-Letter, December 7, 1898, 6. “The Annapolis Concert,” News-Letter, February 7, 1901, 6. “The Annual Rush,” News-Letter, October 21, 1904, 4. “Youngsters Fed,” News-Letter, March 30, 1906, 10-11. “Editorial: [Class Banquet Riots], News-Letter, January 16, 1911, 2. News-Letter, October 16, 1911, 1.
Nicholas L. Syrett, The Company He Keeps: A History of White College Fraternities (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2009).
“The Annual Rush,” News-Letter, October 21, 1904, 4. “Editorial: [Class Banquet Riots], News-Letter, January 16, 1911, 2.
The news coverage is extensive. For a recent overview see Katie Hidalgo Bellows, “Johns Hopkins U. Paused Its Plans for a Campus Police Force. 2 Years Later, Resistance Is Stronger Than Ever,” in the Chronicle of Higher Education.