City College of New York - Microcosm Yearbook (New York, NY)

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Albany. And so. In 1908 tbe College moved to its present site, under the guidance of President Finley, whose inauguration in 1903 marked tbe end of the older, sterner rule, and the begin- ning of a liberal regime. The change was followed by a num- ber of innovations, including a broadened curriculum and the chartering of the Student Council, the first organization of its kind since the suppression of the Senate in 1866. In 1914, when President Mczes succeeded Dr. Finley, Professor Stephen P. Duggan, of our Education Department, said of the retiring president in the Microcosm, “Few college presidents have served shorter tenure of office, few have yielded finer character of service. War clouds gathered in Europe, but the college on the terrace continued «ts growth unhindered and unheeding. The evening session had been estab- lished in 1909. The Microcosm of 1915 registered the grant of the Lcwisohn Stadium, and dedicated itself to the famous philanthropist. The storm broke, and the war engulfed the college as no intellectual movement ever had or ever will. The tread of marching feet resounded through the cor- ridors, men in uniform slept in barracks set up in Lincoln Cor- ridor (recently re-christened the Hall of Patriots when there was no other place to put a statue of Washington presented to the College), and in the Great Hall. The Microcosm fell in with the spirit of the times by failing to appear for several years. The war passed, leaving behind an R. O. T. C. unit strongly intrenched at the College. A large part of the story of the student at the College in the post-war days is taken up with the rising storm of protest against militarism in the college. The movement reached a climax in 1926 when the Campus, under Felix Cohen, took up the fight. The struggle is reflected in the pages of the 1926 Microcosm, edited by Cohen. In the spring of 1926, Frederick Bertrand Robinson became Acting President, and was formally inaugurated in May, 1928, succeeding President Mezes. In his inaugural address, quoted in the Micro- cosm of 1928, President Robinson pledged himself to endeavor “to enrich the community with able scholars; with skilled workers who will cherish the scholar's love for truth; with citizens who will be both loyal and liberal; with thoughtful students who will, with each widening of their horizon of knowle dge catch more in- spiring glimpses of eternal truths that cannot be confined in the formulae of the mortal mind. ( 19 —p

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New fraternities appeared: Chi Pi, Phi Gamma Delta, and the mysterious Fiji Ghoul Society, with its skellvbone insignia and its inscriptions: Leigh, you pugnacious ghoul. Boh, the M (e) c chanical ghoul. Charles, ye co (ugh) (in) g ghoul. George, ye Preponderating ghoul. Jack, ye base ivarbling ghoul. The Microcosm left its adolescent stage to become an adult in 1878, for it emerged from its pamphlet form of the early seventies to resemble its more recent issues. It pointed with pride to its use of a cut for a frontispiece, in which it advertised itself as a harmless balloon of gas for the niggardly sum of twenty-five cents. Stiff, heavy board covers in 1887 and 1889 enclosed over two hundred pages of material, consisting, in very large part, of lists of the rosters of the innumerable organizations. There were fraternities and bicycle clubs, outing clubs and lawn tennis associations, glee clubs and literary so- cieties, football clubs and gymnasium clubs. The 1889 book contained a half- dozen photographs, the subject of one of which was the cast of the presenta- tion of the Dramatic Club, “Engaged”. The role of “Cheviot Hill (a young man of property)” was played by James K. Hackett, 91. “Belinda Treherne”, whom we see in the photograph as a beauteous maiden with curly locks and a flowing white gown, reposing in the manly arms of “Mr. Hill”, was undoubtedly very competently portrayed by Livingston Burrill Morse, 89; while the part of “Maggie (a low- land lassie)” was entrusted to the interpretation of Charles F. Horne, '89. It is also in the Microcosms of these years that we find reference to the Pea Nut Club, the Owl and Scroll, the Tomb and Altar, and that very, very secret society of the “Knights of the Order of HMNSUFSRUQD.” The stiff-collared gentlemen who edited the book of 1900 with black bow tics and hair parted in the middle, installed class pictures into the pages of the Microcosm, put poems and monologues therein, printed on yellow, ragged edge paper, and, in general, managed to produce a compact, neat and sumptuous looking annual, much more comparable than any of its predecessors with the type of book that has been turned out in recent years. The books were bound on the short edge, opening in the manner of a pad held sideways. At that time, the inadequacy of the Twenty-third Street quarters in the face of an increasing student body brought about a need for new buildings, the fight for which was carried by President Webb personally onto the floor of the Legislature at ( 18

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“He made the college buildings and he stuck them on his hill . .