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A SALUTARY INFLUENCE By the time of the Firch fiasco and the failure to receive several other expected large gifts, there is evidence that the administration was either in or rapidly approaching serious trouble. In the 1908 commencement issue, the editor of the Compiler claimed (June 17) that "the administration at one point in the meeting of the Board of Trustees was outvoted by a majority of one, it was lambasted at the class day exercises and was openly criticised at the meeting of the Alumni Association." The situation did not improve. Writing in veiled fashion in the issue of April 21, 1909, the editor of the Gettysburgian insisted that "the institution has advanced markedly along certain lines ... in spite of very unfavorable as well as unfortunate and unnecessary obstacles. The College has labored along well under buffeting from one side and another." While arguing that the student newspaper "must refuse to take any stand in the controversy that seems now to be nearing a climax," the editor called upon "every man whose opinion bears weight, whose action may mean even the slightest difference in the position his Alma Mater will occupy in a few years, to assert himself for the best." It was Hefelbower himself who precipitated the climactic action in June 1909, when he told the trustees that inasmuch as the administration of Pennsylvania College has been criticised and condemned in certain statements purporting to have been issued in the interests of the College and circulated generally among the alumni, students and friends of the College, and feeling that this criticism is unfair to those to whom you have entrusted the educational affairs of the College and cannot result otherwise than in great harm to the Institution and its future growth, I deem it my duty to request your Board to appoint a proper committee to fully investigate existing conditions, and, ... to report . . . any recommendations . . . tending to the betterment or correction of those conditions. The five-man committee which the board appointed met in Gettysburg over a three-day period in October. It listened to the president, as well as to several faculty and board members. The testimony which Hefelbower gave was contained in a strongly worded and unequivocal statement whose categories were followed in the committee's final report.75 Under the heading of educational administration, the president charged that, when he took office in 1904, admission requirements were "forty years behind the times" and the curriculum was "not up to date." He took it to be his "first duty" to correct these defects, and explained in detail both the substantial accomplishments of his administration and what still remained to be done. Under the heading of financial administration, Hefelbower 75Samuel G. Hefelbower to the Committee on Investigation, Gettysburg, October 8, 1909, in GCA. 46