University of Mississippi - Ole Miss Yearbook (Oxford, MS)

Page 23 text:

, ':'. , K Ulu!- ,f v if f ' ' 1 Q , 4 X 9- .. , X ' H XX X, KR SP 00111 R ver 300 Cost S85,ooo. Capacity, O mpletion. Co UE CNeari

Page 22 text:

in the elysian fields of poetry, under the starry skies of science, amid the fields of human character white to the harvest-in these and in many other realms and spaces our University folk have proved their mettle and helped their kind. Nor should we cease our retrospective glancing without noting our Uni- versity's work in holding up the standard of culture and scholarship during times when she must have been sorely tempted to degrade her standards in order to gain ephemeral popularity. But her history has been one of steady . ,' V ,-ip, i ,Lx 1237, T if. -fp ,,. W .,., ga ,. ,,.f ,Y ' -,1-,A .yu -' I- ,Av 4 -I t, ,,,. - V I I I- r .. t wtf? '37 1.-Vi..5,5 gi: 'Ls.'3 ?1- 'Lg fr . -- - i ,- 1. A 'f' -.41 'yd' 41.49-' v 1s'ff a5-.L -.ln -If .-gp'-T' 4 '- if , W - 7. -57515- M4-7352-J,.'i.M 'iii-wifi 1.-4ffiZd.l'.miFf1'f 1 . 1-fm. . - ence has thus penetrated into every nook Even illiterate day laborers will come to standard-raising, and the pro- cess still goes on. The Uni- versity may be said to have created our high school sys- tem, by raising her stan- darclkand the phrase has a double sense-by abolishing her preparatory department and thus declining to compete with the high schools, and by introducing the system of all affiliated schools. Her influ- and cranny of the State. realize that the University's ideal of the cultured gentleman is every way compatible with com- mon sense and business ability, and that a slate university is a training- school for leaders in all vocations. Mississippi is, perhaps, the most intrinsi- cally democratic state in the Union, and is, therefore, in greatest need of foster- ing her aristocracy of character. In a democracy the leader may come from any walk in lifeg hence the University stands and has stood for access to the highest culture for all the people of the State. And yet, and yet-it must be confessed that the University has not always and altogether been true to her democratic-aristocratic function. At times and in cases undue respect for birth and wealth and sham ideas about the privileges of vicious gentlemen have caused the University to lose favor with the people at large. Never has the University government stood for aught other than a true ideal, but, until very recently, the fulness of time had not come for the University's self-conscious insistence on living up to her ideals. The frank acceptance of the honor principle, the firm organization of the honor systemg 'the knitting together of Faculty, students, alumni, high schools with one another and with the enlightened people of the Stateg the 16

Page 24 text:

taking of the University out of politics , the expanding of professional de- partments, and, finally, the splendid organization of the higher life of the Uni- versity and her neighbor community-these and other good things, some already come, others in the process of coming-are making this University of ours to know and feel and act out her mission. But the future! Real men of an enlightened age do not live in the past, and the present, except as it is a vanishing line between past and future, is nothing but the future as it is a-happening. What shall we make of our University? Our responsibility is great indeed, for, or- dinarily, education, like Christianity, ex- tends its influence from above downward, successful democratic reformers and revolu- tionists are usually aristocrats by nature and training. We University people ought to be the leaders in working out practical and practicable ideals. Now, be it known to all men who by some mischance do not already know, that ideals fnot merely ideasj are the guard-lines of reality. We may not become what we aspire to be, for the uliesh lusteth against the spirit and the spirit against the flesh, but assuredly we seldom become what we do not aim to be. All of us, like the savage, may build better than we knowg but enlightened man builds as well as he can and in accordance with a plan. What shall we plan for the future? The University must be more truly the servant of the people, nolnlesse obligeg the greatest among us must serve the brethreng the greatest must be the servant of all. The Alma Mater ought to merit the love and devo- tion of all our people, for every boy and girl that is nurtured, trained and developed here is a child of that greater if sterner parent, the State, which the University represents in kindly form. No man is too humble to send his child here. No son of a noted sire has any special privileges here. Our aristocracy is that of leadership and service, God's aristocracy and the first-best of nature and nurture. The University must be the advance guard in our State of broad I8