Western Michigan University - Brown and Gold Yearbook (Kalamazoo, MI)

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Western ' s history, for it is with this group that the college is centered about — that all may learn. The student body is one of the hardest things to capture in description. Easy to count — we have statistics. Readily observable — they are easy to watch. Students are the most apparent thing about a campus, but when it comes time to set down the history they are the hardest to write about. They defy generali2,ation and invite it at the same time. They change with the wind and they are conserv ative as only the young can be. In short they are what make the college go, and they are the spirit that cannot be confined by des- cription. However, something can be done to show how Western students have changed in the past fifty years. We must remember that the majority of the early students were women, and it was only with the increase in teacher ' s pay and the addition of non ' teaching courses that men were attracted in large numbers. In fact, nothing indicates that b etter than what happened on November 4, 1913. On that day Western defeated Albion College m a football game by the resounding score of 20 to 3 This so enthused the students that they held a parade from the campus to the business district, tying up all traffic and causing general pandc monium. As an after thought of the parade they crashed the gates of a movie theater. The whole affair caused such a furore among the conservative citizenry that Waldo was submerged by com- plaints. He called a mass meeting of the women students, who outnumbered the men, and endeav- ored to find out what caused them to devastate the countryside. Out of this meeting the Assoc- iated Women Students developed. To anyone reading the old yearbooks and vol- umes of the school newspaper the impression is very strong that the students of yesteryear were uncomplicated and unsophisticated. Whether these are virtues or not is another matter. The point is that years ago Western in many ways resembled what we think of today as a rural con- solidated high school. Perhaps what this process of sophistication amounts to is the relationship between a grade school, a high school, and a col- lege, imagined as steps on a ladder. Forty to fifty years ago — and even much later — Western was one place on this ladder, today it is another. The sophistication process has affected all of the schools — even the first graders watch television. When we think of the students of Western ' s early days we must think of them as simpler and less sophisticated than those of today. Another factor affecting the character of col- lege students is the size of the college. Western began with an enrollment of 107. It did not reach 1000 until 1921-22 (not counting the one war year 1918-19). There were not 2000 students until 1924-25; for seven years during the depression and after it until 1938-39 the enrollment dropped below 2000. In 1945-46 the enrollment was 1,840. The next year it shot to 4,034, which is only slightly under the current enrollment. Now it Vv ' ill be seen that while Western since the was has become a college with an enrollment of about 4500 students, for many years it was a college between 1000 and 2000 students. The difference was very great in the character of the student body, in subtle ways that are difficult to record. A small college is not so much a matter of number of students as of atmosphere. Western was a small college — or at least a different col- lege — before the war. A third factor, that for most of these fifty years Western was a teacher training institute, meant that there was a homogenity of interests and abilities at Western. This tended to set it apart from the more diversified college that re- sulted from the introduction of the general degree in non-teaching fields. And finally, since a college mirrors that world that is about it, Western students have changed because the world has changed. To best understand the students at Western for this fifty year period, turn to the Herald and the Brown and Gold. There you will see them as they saw themselves. Beyond this is almost impossible, for the million odd memories that are stored away in four years cannot be remembered by anyone. The smell of fresh paint in a new building can come across the years from 1904- or 1954. The faces of the girls and the fellows are flashes in the mind ' s eye as you think back about them. A sum- mer ' s afternoon during exam week is the same in 1924 as in 1954 — but for the person that remem- bers it, the experience cannot be separated from the whole. It is part of a much larger thing — his life. Western ' s history is carried in the memories of those who leave it, for to them this college has meant something that only they can know. The student can see the past about him at Western. Prospect Hill still surveys the Kalamazoo valley. The old administration building is still there, and so are the remains of the cable car. And if the present day student looks more deeply he can trace the development of the school, as we have done here. The history of fifty years of service to edu- cation cannot delineate what that service is. If those who leave Western today do so with a clearer understanding of themselves and the world they live in than when they entered Western, then this fifty years may be understood; for that is the goal that this institution has been striving for — the understanding from which all else derives. 18

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