SUNY Plattsburgh - Cardinal Yearbook (Plattsburgh, NY)

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there would be sone persons dissatisfied and disappointed. In those troubled days before the Junior Prom when some ol you Seniors and some of us Juniors locked horns over various matters of principle or expediency, I did my best to give you people a square deal, for in spite of your degraded miserable position I realized that you were not entirely beyond redemption. I took with you the same position Woodrow Wilson does toward the poor benighted peons of Mexico, and I believe that just as these peons have been outraged and exploited by the corrupt grandees of that troubled country, so I believe a good share of the rank and file of you Seniors have been overridden and mistreated by a small faction of self- constituted leaders in your Class. The policy of this Junior Class toward you Seniors has been one of watchful waiting but we are determined that none of those persons who have taken it upon themselves to guide your ship of state shall do anything to insult or sully the Junior honor and dignity. The time allotted to me this afternoon is short and 1 must therefore reluctant- ly cease to recount the brave deeds of my colleagues, and proceed to point out a few of your many mistakes. 1 take it, each of you Seniors has some explanation tucked away in a earner of your cranium why you have made such a mess of things this year. I am not a Senior and therefore 1 am capable of dealing with your problems in a spirit of impartiality and fairmmdedness. It is my hope not only to analyze carefully your shortcomings but to point out to you the true road to suc- cess. I do not expect to effect a complete transformation in your entire moral and mental make-up for you know, as well as I, that you cannot at one step traverse the long path leading upward to the light. But if I interpret rightly the desires and w.shes of my constituents, I shall show how natures, now quite dwarfed and stunt- ed, may eventually develop into things of beauty (and be a joy forever?). First I would advise you to be more alert and ever on the quivive. It took the Junior Class to show up your stupid methods when, we took the Class Yell you had been preparing for weeks and gave it one morning at roll call. The most aggravating feature of the whole affair was that this peculiar yell was found in a mine in Mineville by our otherwise good friend Gertrude Hamden, and had been secretly conveyed to these Halls where Ham and his followers received it with great glee and a joyous beating of torn toms. The yell was kept under close guard, was rehearsed faithfully for six weeks, and was just about to be let loose on a waiting world when suddenly the Juniors gave it one morning in the study- hall. Of course you were all awe-stricken. You felt like those reveling Britishers that Christmas Eve in Trenton when Washington secretly crossed the Delaware and presented the city and all in it as a Christmas gift to the American people. The point I wish to emphasize in citing this instance is that you must, as a Class wake up, and I call upon all fairminded men and women to say whether or not this instance doesn ' t prove the truth of my assertion that the Class of 1914 hes not been a wide-a-wake class. One more weak point in your history has been the utter disregard of au- thority, of law, and of order you have always shown. Your president and the rank and file have been continually at odds. One little faction declares that things are all going wrong and the retort courteous of President Ham is Go chase your- self . Your Class has been vacillating, fluctuating, and hesitating. How could

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Charge to the Seniors walter j. Mcquillan ' is IN addressing you members of the Class of 1914, there arises in my mind ■! strange visions of those who in the past have played prominent parts in Normal Class Day exercises and who have acquitted themselves with credit and honor in the parts they played. If I can in some small measure follow their example, if I can, in speaking to you this afternoon, make you feel that the class I represent is a class well worth credit and honor, I shall be satisfied. I am entirely conscious of the fact that this year the lines of class rivalry are sharply drawn. The Senior president and myself, while being good friends in the ordinary sense of the term, have not as yet reached that stage of personal intimacy that we go out together nights, so I am thankful, and I suppose you are too, that the sham battle of last year ' s exercises will not be repeated this year. At the outset, I shall relieve you of all uncertainty by letting you know that I intend to extoll the glories of my own class, and also show to you of the senior class that your multitudinous errors have been merely the logical result of your own iniquity and stupidity. I feel that I am safe in saying that the change for the better which so many persons have observed during the last year in this school has been caused by the general all-round ability and the spirit of the sixty-five young men and women I have the honor of representing in these exercises. I am sure that the faculty are all of this opinion, and I am satisfied that the right-thinking people of this community will in the justice of their judgement and the ripeness of their wisdom, award the palm to us for having raised high during the past year the standard of this institu- tion. I am afraid that you Seniors do not fully realize the influence for good that the Class of 1915 has been since its entrance last September. I shall, as far as my depleted vitality and feeble powers of expression allow me, endeavor to make you realize the true worth of the young ladies and gentlemen who sit before you. The spirit, in which we have worked and by which we have accomplished so much, is a spirit you might well have emulated in the days you made your dis- astrous attempt to be the ruling Class of this school. We have labored, not as some of you have in a fruitless search for personal glory, but in a spirit of service with littl e thought for self, and we have striven bravely for the high and noble ideals of school welfare which we have ever held before us. The petty bicker- ing and the Kilkenny cat fights that have so often characterized your class pro- ceedings, have never in the slightest form been present in any of our deliberations. These fights have torn your Class asunder and it was with the intention of sweep- ing up the pieces that we marched in to-day with brooms and dust pans. I am perfectly willing to concede that we juniors in general and I in par- ticular have not been able to satisfy everyone. Very often during the last month I have felt sad when J realized that no matter how I might decide some question,

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it be otherwise when there is continual tug-of-war going on among the members of the Class. This failing is one of your worst and is a good reason in itself why you have failed to show any capacity for leadership. You have shown an unpre- cedented disregard for vested authority. The Senior Class is supposed to be ad- ministered by a body of officers at the head of which is a president. But the Class of 1 9 1 4 is run by a small faction of commercial girls — I say commercial girls, for they are all commercial students with one notorious exception. These girls are continually quarreling among themselves and their only apologia pro vita is to make life miserable for the nominal president. They do not know their own minds and they take it upon themselves to criticize those who do. They have even dared to approach me and attempt to tell me how this or that should be done. If they do that to the Juniors ' president I can in some way imagine what they do to their own president, and I here extend to Ham my deep sympathy. Now 1 feel that there may be some in this audience who take my words with a grain of sa ' t. If any of you doubt the truth of what I say, I can show you an instance right here this afternoon which should relieve your minds of all doubt. Turn to the program you hold in your hands, turn to that part which deals with this afternoon ' s exercises and see if you find there even the name of the Senior President. You cannot find it for the simple reason that this body of self-constituted bosses has relegated him to the rear. 1 am inclined to believe that the notorious exception I have mentioned is responsible in a great measure for this slight to the Senior President, and I suppose this is only another case where the exception proves the rule. The remedies for these abuses should suggest themselves to you and I trust that now since your troubles have been analyzed, you will lose no time in applying the remedy. Before closing 1 would have you turn your gaze once more to the noble body of young ladies and gentlemen I represent. In our ranks are peace and harmony. We have all fought shoulder to shoulder, perfectly willing to bury any personal differences in order to unite on the great issues of class principle. I am proud be- yond measure that during the past three months 1 have borne the brunt of the fight for such a class as this, and that in every troubled situation that confronted me I could feel I had behind me such a s plendid fighting organization. Lengthy exhortation to rally round the flag and desperate efforts to keep our line from wavering have been entirely unnecessary. Like Nelson at Trafalgar all I needed to say was England expects every man to do his duty . This is the last afternoon we shall ever be assembled in this Hall where we have assembled so often In spite of all your faults we hate to see you go. We would like to beat you all over again. But unfortunately that cannot be so. Somatomes we stop the current of our wrath against you and try hard to discover m you a few good qualities, and once in a while we succeed. I feel as though this we j one of those blessed moments, so I want to assure you you are not en- tirely bad. We all hope that as you leave these halls you may meet with some degree of success, we hope that you may be filled with the spirit of service for humanity and that the world will be better because you have lived. My parting message to each and every one of you is, Good bye and good luck I