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A SALUTARY INFLUENCE and grandson of John G. Morris. Both men regularly contributed articles and editorials on subjects of current interest. Some of Stahley's writings have already been discussed. In his three year tenure, Trowbridge expressed his views on many topics. People in a college town, he thought, had an obligation to support their educational institution. The College needed an experienced, full- time chaplain. Alumni and friends of Gettysburg should do more to attract Lutheran students to the Lutheran schools which they should attend. Faculty members should be chosen because they were qualified teachers, not because they were Lutheran or alumni. Princeton should be praised for its efforts to eliminate hazing. Harvard's president Eliot should be criticized for wanting to shorten the college course to three years. Donors should not make their gifts burdens by attaching conditions to them. Most young men who go to college are looking for a sound education in a progressive environment, and not primarily for instruction in achieving athletic prowess. Through it all, Trowbridge was proud of Gettysburg. "It is the peer of any college of equal age - the superior of very many with greater pretensions." His advice to alumni who do not have a good word to say about their College was to keep quiet.221 Writing in one of the earliest numbers of the College Monthly, in May 1877, Philip M. Bikle commended the alumni for the support which they were giving the new magazine and urged them to evidence their interest in the College in an additional way: by forming district alumni associations. He claimed that these would serve two useful purposes. They would create social occasions for alumni and give them the opportunity to "awaken and maintain a deeper interest" in the prosperity of the College. At the annual meeting of the Alumni Association a month later, Bikle reported that the first district association was about to be established. On July 25, 1877, during a major national railroad strike, the Reunion of Alumni and Students of Pennsylvania College, Resident in Maryland and other Southern States was organized in Frederick. Urged on by periodic reminders in the College Monthly, during the next five years alumni established four more district associations: Japan Branch (1877), Central Pennsylvania (1879), Alma Mater District (1879), and Philadelphia (1882). These associations met once or twice a year. Usually some member read a paper on a serious topic related to education and discussion followed. Although the extensive reports of their meetings carried in the College Monthly easily gave the impression that these associations were taking root and thriving, by 221 As alumni editor for the Mercury, David F. Garland (1888) functioned in the Stahley-Trowbridge tradition. 37