University of California Berkeley - Blue and Gold Yearbook (Berkeley, CA)

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BEN WEED ' S AMPHITHEATER The Light of Other Days A Review of Student Traditions and Customs at the University of California By STUART G. MASTERS THIS is largely the history of things that get suppressed. Many important matters get duly recorded. officers and committees, captains and their teams ; they all go down on the roll of fame as they should. But I sometimes think that the really enduring events slip from the pen of the chronicler and are lost to future generations. Traditions, for instance, rarely get into print. What our college ancestors believed, and fought and bled for are matters about which we know but little and yet would fain be taught. Heretofore the medium for trans- mitting these heroic tales has been by word of mouth, and. for aught you or I can do. there is little reason to believe that any other method will have the same meed of popularity. The Authentic narrative of a college prank is a folk-tale and must be passed along according to legendary precedent. It has fallen to the lot of the writer to present here in brief form a review of this essential undergraduate life at the University of California as it has existed and still exists. Such a narrative must call for infinite patience from the reader, for. as has just been intimated, the written story is a radical departure from the traditional method of procedure. Only the charm of the subject-matter saves the situation. Roughly speaking, there have been at Berkeley, as in every well-regulated college communitv, three ages of undergraduate development. Yet. while we arbitrarily divide the history of student spirit into these three epochs, we cannot fail to appreciate the fact that the ages telescope into each other and that even now these various phases of undergraduate life occasionally appear simultaneously. a depressing and yet. at the same time, a cheering state of things. 17 Old Class IIivs

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lue and (Reid President Wheeler ' s Message UNIVERSITY represents the most permanent form of human institutions. Any appearance of rapid transmutation is likely therefore to be deceptive. Nevertheless I believe the appear- ances of growth this present year are very genuine. They stand for fundamental things. For instance ; a department of architecture has been founded, and a recognized master set at its head. This means that we are not merely to build buildings. We will make buildings teach. The Hall of Mining Engineering built this year sets the standard of what the future university visible is to be. In the Greek Theater a son has taken up the work of his mother and built a structure as unique as it is beautiful and serviceable. California Hall, begun this year, speaks for the generous sympathy of the State. Again, the establishment of the Department of Physiology is significant not alone for the coming of a distinguished scientific man to its headship, nor yet for the building of a laboratory by gift of a public-spirited citizen, but chiefly for its indication of our faith that the spirit of research is the life-breath of university teaching. After all the real character of the University will depend upon the sort of people who teach in it and the sort of people who study in it. The Faculty have gained significantly in strength. The student-body has been notably invigorated by the retirement of about two hundred and fifty students who disclosed at the December examinations a lack of appreciation of the opportunities offered here. Again, the very successful Faculty Club and the most promising San Francisco Alumni Club are both symptomatic of better things in unity of spirit and life. We are drawing together : we are all coming more and more to feel the University is really ours. 16 Creek Theater

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Blue and The Evolution of Barbarians 1905 These three ages, if you please, represent a growth from primal savagery to one of law an d order, in so far as a college community can be safely called law-abiding and orderly. Your first age shows the young barbarian at play. His hand is against every man, and every man ' s hand against him. As a class, the students in a small college are academic Ishmaelites, arrayed against most everything. The first foes are the unfortunate people whose lot places them in the seat of the university ; and there follows naturally the long and picturesque feud between town and gown, traditional but disquieting. This hostility does not always direct itself to the vulgar herd outside the academic pale. The belligerent undergraduate quickly sees in the personnel of his faculty unexcelled opportunities for pursuing his unpacific bent. The professor, being the time-honored (and battle-scarred) enemy of his students, is regarded as the latter ' s legitimate prey. Ergo, more trouble. And a man ' s foes shall be those of his own household. Internal strife in the University ' s loosely-knit family is further increased by a horrid desire to exterminate the youngest. The undergraduate comes in due process of time to regard the timorous freshman more greedily than he does an instructor. Both faculty and freshmen in common have the happy characteristic of being rather off their guard, and hence offer easy marks to the ever-alert upper class men. Perhaps it is because the freshman is considered something of an interloper that he gets a baptism of fire before being assimiliated into the big university family. Here we get the line of demarcation for the first age. Freshman persecution naturally falls to the lot of the sophomore, partly because the second-year man still retains vivid impressions of his own initiation, and partly because the junior and senior are now commencing to receive vague forebodings of another life more sober than the present. a career where hazing perchance plays no part. In thus delegating to the sophomore the entertainment and purification of all intrants, the undergraduates, unconsciously perhaps, inaugurate an age of class spirit. After a hearty exchange of courtesies, the two lower classes view each other askance, and never fail to remember first impressions. These early-formed ideas persist. They last through the college days easily. ' Even the lapse of years fails to eradicate this animosity, and darkness and light are not harder to reconcile than the odd and even number classes. Class spirit brings with it a whole train of customs and traditions. In fact there is nothing that will give a tradition more tenacity than a vigorous class spirit. But class spirit has its day, and it, too, must die out before the new yes, modern- college spirit, which marks our third age. Here, for the first time, the jarring factional and class strife dies out, and, in its place there comes a unification of sentiment and activity in the university family. Instead of the college against itself or its members, there comes the broader spirit of co-operation and fraternity. No one can doubt that this is social elevation. Neither can there be any doubt as to the annihilation of the older forms of college life that it causes ; for the true college spirit of today is not compatible with the crude class spirit of yesterday or the ruder barbarism of the day before. Two factors make college spirit possible and the previous ideals at the same time impossible. The rise of a rival institution and the development of intercollegiate contests call for a real federation of all previously loose factors in the university and a greater responsibility for common interests. The growth of the university ' s numbers, too, is reason enough for abandoning the more strenuous forms of internal partizanship, be they of class, society or caste. Hence, to those of the modern age the survivors of the past say, Yours is a new era. Its ideals are for you to carve. Like pioneers you enter a new country and you can take with you but little from the old. Let that little be of the best. Popular but not Public Each of these three ages has a whole world of history in itself. Some of the stories are lost, sunk into oblivion and never to be revived for lack of a sympathetic tongue to recite the narratives. Some have been handed down from sire to son. A few in our latter day have crept into print. Nearly any old graduate, once his heart waxes warm over the stirring deeds of the dear old days, will let his memory revert to the age in which he lived as a care-free undergraduate. His talk about that time is calculated to surprise one. It may deal with books and recitations. But it is more likely to deal with the romantic history of some undergraduate enterprise, and the less relationship it has to books and recitations the stronger is its hold on his memory. 18 First Labor Day