Current town-gown tension harkens back to Civil War, Mudd exhibit shows
Former president of the University John Maclean received a letter from a concerned parent in September 1861. Joseph Casey’s son, Isaac, had just been expelled from the University — then known as the College of New Jersey — for dousing a southern student under a pump on campus.“You can no more keep loyal and disloyal students together in the College of New Jersey, without producing collision and disturbance, than you can bring fire and powder together without producing ignition and explosion,” Casey’s letter to Maclean read.