Location Of New Normal

The state board of education has located the new normal school at Kalamazoo and it is said will get a bonus from that city of $75,000. Vigorous kicks are already going up against the location and Senator W. D. Kelly calls upon the governor to call a halt upon the whole business. He claims the location of the school at Kalamazoo is contrary to the intention of the legislature. He wants the members of the state board to resign and desires the governor to hasten this by putting some kind of pressure upon the members of the board.

Senator Kelly's opposition primarily is based no doubt upon the fact that the state board did not locate the school at Muskegon. Had his home town secured the plum all would have been serene, no doubt. To begin with, another normal school is little needed at this time and the creation of the institution was quite as much for poIitical reasons as for educational. But the legislature having provided for the institution Kalamazoo has some advantages as a location over Muskegon, and its location there will give Senator Kelly and others like him an opportunity to get another school farther north in the near future.

It is true, of course, that distance has considerable to do with many young people going away to school. Many parents hesitate to send their boys and girls away to school where they cannot get home during the school year, or at best not more than once or twice during the year. They desire to have their children where they can know something of their work and surroundings. Such people greatly prefer to send their sons and daughters to an institution of learning near at home. Normal schools easily accessible, therefore, from all parts of the state will undoubtedly call more students into attendance than can be secured by any one large institution, no matter what its standing. Still, it would seem that with our present population all students desiring normal school training can be accommodated without very much travel. But as the legislature has seen fit to provide another school there seems to be quite as many reasons for believing that Kalamazoo will lay as large a portion of the state tributary to the school as any other location and much larger than some others. Kalamazoo has a fine and thickly settled territory on all sides. Of course towns near the lake would draw from only certain directions.

Possibly the location of the institution is not so firmly fixed yet but that it might be changed, but Senator Kelly has scarcely offered sufficient reasons therefor.