Coe College - Acorn Yearbook (Cedar Rapids, IA)

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THE PRESIDENT HARRY MOREHOUSE GAGE Page 19

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Page 18 OUR SPIRIT The campus is a place where traditions are strong. Nothing is quite so ima perious as a standard erected by students and consecrated by fifty years of faithful observance. Here is no question of law-enforcement. Cbedience is the rule. The constitution and the law are unwritten. But both are well-known and are self-enforcing. Beneath all the clamor of diverging opinions and of conflicting personalities, against the intrusion of other ways and manners from other colleges stands the staunch common sense of the campus. One has to go back through several generations of students to note that spirit, sense, or standards of the campus have changed at all. Always there are new leaders, new students, new enterprises, new plans for the reformation of everybody and everything, new ways of life carefully devised and valiantly proclaimed. But the spirit of the college does not change so readily. lts character is not changed by the vagaries of fashions in thought, manner, and dress. Like the north star it keeps its place and shines steadily. Like the everburning candle at a shrine it gives tone and atmosphere felt and known by everyone who draws near the place. Une wonders if that im- ponderable and intangible thing, the tone and atmosphere of Coe can be sensed from the pages of this book. No words can state it, no pictures can portray it. lt is possible that one might turn the pages of this annual and gain from the whole a bare suggestion of the way it feels to be a student in Coe. This suggestion may be sufficiently alluring to tempt one to come to Coe. But the book will mean most to those in whom these pages will stir memories of what life in Coe really is. Within the circle of those who have lived in the fellowship of the campus in l93O-31 this annual will always kindle the spirit of our college. lt is well that is should do so. For it is one of the greatest merits of our spirit that it casts a shadow on sham and self-seeking and sheds the light of approval on sincerity and unselfish service. Words and pictures tell the truth in part. More effectively the spirit of the campus reveals persons, situations, things as they really are. The spirit of 1881 is the spirit of today! HARRY M. GAGE

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Page 20 DEAN OF COLLEGE g l LOOKING FORWARD The coming year should be the most significent and interesting in the whole history of Coe College-a history that spans a period of eighty years and involves a semi-century of full college activity. It will be the year of the celebration of the Semi-Centennial Jubilee. ln 1952, a hundred years after Williston jones, Daniel Coe, Dr. Ely, judge Greene, and others were placing the first foundation stones of the future college, the class of '32 will be well launched upon lifels voyage. ln 1981-82 they will be assembling to participate in the Centennial Jubilee of Alma Mater, the fiftieth anniversary of their own graduation. Somewhere upon the campus they will gather to recall the Clays of '32 when they were looking out with high anticipations upon the future, to com- pare results, perchance to cast a look forward to the palmy shores not far ahead. During the year the writer of these words will be looking back over the fifty years that have elapsed since he first entered Coe College. He has been student, alumnus, and member of the Faculty. But he likes best to look into the future and build castles. As he sits in his office in the corner of Old Main, there rises before him the benignant presence of his beloved predecessor in the oflice of Dean, Robert A. Condit, who in this very room for many years shed forth the fine luster of his spirit upon generations of students. Together we sit down and look out of the north window. There is plain old Williston Hall, reminder of rugged Williston jones. Over there Marshall l-lall and Women's Gymnasium remind us of the efforts of early builders. They are symbols only of unseen but abiding influences wrought into human lives. Sinclair Memorial Chapel, Carnegie Science Hall, and Voorhees Quadrangle suggest the rapid growth of the College during the second decade of this century. Now we look across B Avenue to the North Campus and see evidence of the loyal spirit of the people of Cedar Rapids embodied in a great structure dedicated to the ideal of a higher physical and spiritual type of manhood. And there just across the avenue, Stewart Memorial Library with its dignity and beauty of architectural design, located as it should be at the very center of the college, typifies the growing power of the alumni and prophesies their future part in the expanding life of the institution. As we continue to look out upon the scene a marvelous picture develops before our eyes. A lovely land and water scape appears with noble buildings, avenues and groups of trees, beautiful lawns and beds of flowers. A spring fed stream of sparkling water flows through the campus from the north forming several lagoons, then on to purify beautiful Cedar Lake, a natural aquarium for innumerable species of water-loving plants and animals, bordered by an arboretum of native and exotic trees and shrubs. Overlooking this scene of natural beauty stands a temple dedicated to the Fine Arts, music, painting, sculpture, anthropology and paleontology. The setting sun is touching the whole scene with golden color. It has been a happy hour of castle building. We must say goodbye,-Cvod be wi' ye. Sincerely, S. W. Srooxsv.