California Institute of Technology Cal Tech - Big T Yearbook (Pasadena, CA)

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CLASSES 13 W

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Left to Right: Eldridge Moores - Secretary, Lewis Linson - Treasurer, Keith Brown - Vice President, Fred Newman - Athletic Manager, Ron Forbess - President. eniurs ,. J, Four years ago, when the class of-1959 entered Caltech, the cam- pus was in the midst of an anti-science cycle. What this means, for example, is that around the dinner table, at frosh camp, and in the student houses, any mention of classwork or of the latest advances in physics or biology was greeted with sounds of hissing from all corners of the room. One of the symptons of this attitude was the fact that in i955 three of the outstanding men in the graduating class, outstanding in both activities and scholarship, chose their careers in the fields of medicine, history, and law. Therer was a great deal of effort on the part of the faculty and deans to do away with this attitude at the i955 freshman camp. Even taking this into account, however, the faculty may have been surprised at the small but significant number of freshmen who took in all that the cynical upperclassmenu had to say and then responded with statements about the intellectual and aesthetic values of scientific work. The class of 59 continued to have this positive influence on the school throughout its entire four years, Its members were largely re- sponsible for the creation of the ASCIT educational policies committee and for that committee's many thoughtful recommendations to the faculty on matters of curriculum. It must also be credited with the in- creased relevancy of ASCIT to student affairs and with a resurgence of interest in the arts at Caltech. Extracurricular activities of this kind are among the most val-uable ones a group of students can engage in while they are in an institution devoted to learning.