When LOG editors implored their January 1917 readers to think carefully before casting votes in the upcoming Student Council election, they praised the council as “one of our best institutions…Few schools, if any, allow the boys so much student government.”   Some considered this a perilous experiment in school keeping and democracy, but Loomis boys and their headmaster, Mr. Batchelder, prided themselves on the entirely student-elected council and officers. America’s entrance into World War I just a few months later added significance to the school’s representative government and helped to transform the definition of democracy for The Loomis Institute.

From his hiring in 1912, two years before the school opened, Mr. Batchelder envisioned a school “emphasiz[ing] the American ideal of democracy; a community made up of many men of different kinds, each respecting the ideals of the others and working for the common good.” The Loomis School’s combination of agricultural, business and college preparatory curriculums and its ability to educate students tuition-free attracted young people from various backgrounds and allowed them to work towards the common good. Mr. Batchelder reported to the Loomis Family Association in 1915 that the school had already become known as “a school of citizenship”, and a LOG editorial published the next year echoed the headmaster’s thoughts as it heralded the school’s requirements that all students clean their own rooms, wait on table in the dining hall and perform work for the school as practical lessons in citizenship. “True democracy is teaching the boy how to associate with all kinds of honest citizens, to do his own work on time, and, above all, not to acquire snobbishness or false pride.”

The first boarding students lived in Mason and Taylor and formed committees to oversee use of their social rooms. During the school’s second year, students called for an expanded role for these committees. Mr. Batchelder counseled them to visit the Kent School to observe a working student government before drawing up a formal constitution, which he referred to as a “distinctively American privilege of settling matters for all time by a sacred document.” This constitution, approved by student vote in 1916, broke from that of other schools by creating a council elected solely by students—each dormitory elected three representatives; day fellows also elected three. Most other schools’ councils included members appointed by the headmaster or faculty. The Loomis council selected its officers, oversaw the discipline of the school, assigned jobs to students, and took up matters about the welfare of the school. An unusual provision allowed for meetings to be called at the request of “any ten members of the student body.”  Female day students participated fully in the Loomis School’s Girls Division, but they were disenfranchised from this student government. The Student Council remained the voice of the Loomis fellows for the duration of the Girls Division.

President Woodrow Wilson’s declaration of war against enemy nations in early April 1917 transformed the school culture in many ways, especially the discourse about the meaning and practice of democracy. Mr. Batchelder observed “[t]he war makes boys more anxious than ever to be of service [to the school],” and some set out to make the student government at Loomis more democratic. They proposed an amendment to the constitution—ratified and put into action in January 1918—stating that boarding representatives be elected by direct vote of the entire boarding school. The Loomiscellany commented that this made the council “the true embodiment of democracy” and The LOG celebrated the direct popular vote as the achievement of the “highest goal” of a self-governing school.

Events during the fall of 1918 tested these lofty ideals. According to Mr. Batchelder, “[w]e were in the dark days of the war, short-handed in the faculty…To make matters worse, the scourge of influenza struck us in the first days of the term, and the president of the council was…taken ill…and left school…Between the general disorganization due to the war and the sickness… morale was at its lowest ebb, and discipline extremely lax.”

In January, two months after the war ended and as school life slowly got back on its feet, the council filled the vacant presidency with the election of senior Hull Maynard ‘19. He surprised many by opening his term with a hard-nosed, successful effort against smoking on campus. He called on those who had taken advantage of the chaos and freedom of the fall to confess their undesirable habit and pledge loyalty to school rules. The president told his constituents that “he was not anxious to punish any individual, but he was determined to end the abuse.” Maynard was widely respected for his council work. The 1919 Loomiscellany reported that under his leadership, “many problems…have been threshed out, many faults eradicated, and many new ideas and customs brought into our daily routine…This year’s council has come the nearest of any to that ever sought-for goal—perfect democracy.”

Borrowing words from President Wilson, Mr. Batchelder noted in a September 1917 speech to fellow headmasters, “When the world shall have been made safe for democracy it will still remain for us schoolmen to make democracy safe for the world by training up boys who know what democracy means, and how to lead.” Hull Maynard, who later became the school’s longtime director of admission, stands as perhaps the first and one of the finest examples of leaders trained at this self-governing school.