The Lutheran Pioneer St. Louis — 1922, Page 37

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The Lutheran Pioneer.

37

collection, but its members find that conditions are
such that a further delay would be inexcusable.
What if a child while in school would be injured
by a falling board, or suppose a sudden squall should
come up (as it often does in that locality), and
wreck the whole building while the people were
gathered for worship? Were such a thing to
happen, it would mean the ruin of our mission!
Neither should we have any kind of an excuse to
offer, since the building has for years been unfit
for use. Do Nov rorcer NaroLeonvi.iE!
Eprror.

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The Needs of Immanuel College.

II.

From what has been said one can readily see
that the physical equipment of Immanuel College is
such that it must be greatly handicapped in doing
the work it is intended to do and that it is pre-
vented from being the influential missionary factor
it could be and should be. We have no doubt that
God has chosen Immanuel College to do a great
work, but as matters now stand, our school is wholly
inadequate to do what is expected of it.

The present college-building should be used for
administrative purposes,- and a recitation hall and
two separate buildings should be erected as soon as
possible to serve as dormitories for the girls and
boys. Since we draw our students from all over the
Southern States, we are in duty bound to provide
living- and sleeping-quarters for them. Immanuel
College would fail in its great purpose if it were to
serve merely as a high school for Greensboro and its
immediate vicinity. While day-students are not re-
jected, we feel that we can do our work best when
students are under our constant care and supervision
and not only during the time of an ordinary school-
day. ‘Those students are, therefore, most desirable
who live in the college.

However, the present improvised dormitory in
the attic will hold only half of the enrolled boys
comfortably. What shall we do with the others?
Dismiss fifty per cent. of our present male boarding
students? Surely not! We feel that we should
keep all we have and provide room comfortably to
care for them. It is our conviction that we should
have accommodations for at least one hundred male
boarding students, in order that we may have a suf-
ficiently large number of students from among
whom to select our future missionary workers. And
this reason alone should be sufficient to encourage

us to erect an adequate dormitory for the boys, as
soon as possible after one has been provided for
the girls.

The Synodical Conference has voted an appro-
priation of $30,000 for a girls’ dormitory. If this
resolution is not carried out this year, no one need
be surprised if the number of girl students should
diminish, since the present accommodations for our
female boarding students are so very unsatisfactory.
This, however, would be deplorable in more ways
than one. For one thing, let us not lose sight of
the fact that some of the most successful teachers
in our Colored Mission are former girl students of
Immanuel College, and their fine success causes us
to wish that we might have many more girls to send
out as well-equipped teachers of our mission-schools.
3ut unless we enlarge our present capacity by build-
ing a dormitory to provide decent accommodations
for a larger number of girls, the number of grad-
uate female teachers is bound to remain small. We
should have dormitory accommodations for a num-
ber of female boarding students sufficiently large to
permit us to select the very best and most promising ~
among them to supply the wants of our schools.

Then we should greatly desire to have many girl
boarding students for another reason, and that a
very, very important one. ‘Many of our Colored
girls do not get the proper home-training. Now,
Immanuel College has not the purpose to give
Colored girls what is generally called a higher edu-
cation, but it greatly desires to give them a better
training in the ways of Christianity. This school
wants to train them to be better and more useful
women, to make better wives in the future, and
to fit them better to train their children “in the
nurture and admonition of the Lord.” Every day
the students hear a short, helpful talk in the chapel,
study Bible History and the Catechism in the class-
room, and breathe a Christian atmosphere. A few
years of such training, together with practical in-
struction in home-making at the hands of a com-
petent Christian matron, can only prove a blessing
to the future wives and mothers of the Negro race.

Dear reader, has the writer succeeded in con-
vincing you that Immanuel College is in need, in
great need, of your help? Oh, do help us, so that
funds sufficient to supply its most urgent wants may
be at hand! Synodical Conference has granted an
appropriation, and some contributions have come
in, but far from enough to carry out the resolution
of the Conference. All the resolutions of the
Synodical Conference can be of no avail unless we