St. College Faculty Correspondence Collection (c. 1900)

Overview

The St. College Faculty Correspondence Collection is a digital assemblage of early‑20th‑century documents relating to the administration, faculty deliberations, and diploma practices of St. College. Housed by the Arke Institute, the collection is cataloged as a “Collection” type and is dated to the year 1900. Materials are presented in scanned image format (JPEG) with accompanying OCR transcriptions, and are primarily composed in English.

Background

The provenance of the collection derives from the internal records of St. College, a higher‑education institution whose faculty engaged in a series of administrative disputes in the spring of 1900. The correspondence reflects tensions over the issuance of an “invalid diploma,” a matter that prompted faculty meetings, resolutions, pledges, and ultimately a formal refusal by an unnamed faculty member to endorse the document. The creator of the documents is unknown, and the collection was digitized and made publicly accessible through the Arke Institute’s PINAX repository.

Contents

The core item in the collection is a scanned letter (file scan_1.jpg) authored by an unidentified faculty member. The OCR text reveals a candid expression of dissent: the writer refuses to sign the contested diploma, critiques the faculty’s reliance on “resolutions” and “pledges,” and calls for a reconstruction of regulations to prevent recurrence of the perceived wrongdoing. The letter references a faculty meeting held in the spring of 1900, the “Cause” for which the writer remains committed, and a broader concern that the faculty may continue to act improperly without substantive procedural reform. Supplementary metadata (relationships.json) links the document to entities such as “stcollege,” “stcollegefaculty,” “invaliddiploma,” “facultymeetingspring1900,” and thematic tags including “resolution,” “pledge,” and “wrongaction.”

Scope

The collection is limited to correspondence from circa 1900 concerning St. College’s faculty governance and diploma legitimacy. Geographic focus is confined to the institution itself, with no external institutional records included. Subject matter encompasses higher‑education administration, faculty decision‑making processes, and the ethical considerations surrounding academic credentials. While the current digital holdings consist of a single scanned letter, the collection’s metadata suggests the potential for additional related documents—such as meeting minutes, resolutions, and further correspondence—pertaining to the same dispute.