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

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

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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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THE COLLEGE