University of Kansas - Jayhawker Yearbook (Lawrence, KS)

Page 26 text:

:i THE JAYHAWKER (Photo by An Wolj . l THIS YEAR A THOI s li OF THEM STUMBLED IM ELEVENTH STREET TO THE STADIUM NEW, UNTRIED, BUT EAGER TO BE INDUCTED INTO IT ALL

Page 25 text:

To the Youngsters - At first things are pretty much in a whirl for the youngster that ' s new. But after a while, with a little help from here and there, he finds his way around and gets in the K.U. whirl himself. . . . Freshmen: May you enjoy these next 20 pages, while memories are still fresh. We dedicate them to you. But we ' re thinking, too, of the seniors who may fondly recall some freshman days of their own.

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OCTOBER 1939 25 Dear Freshman: AS A K.U. FRESHMAN, in 1886 I was imbedded in the last quarter of the Nineteenth Century. K.U. had three buildings, then, Eraser Hall, a Chemistry building which is now the Journalism Building, and Snow Hall, since torn down which was formally dedicated in the early part of my Freshman year. The Law School was just moving out of the old North College building a quarter of a mile north of Eraser Hall. We had less than 500 students. I knew every man Jack of them and most of the Jills. I have my Freshman picture now, a long-necked, pimply-faced boy with browning red hair, milk eyes and a tremulous chin. In order to brace myself up, I wore a white hat and as a tiepin a rather large gold bull ' s head with chip diamond eyes, and the flashiest clothes I could buy in the home-town clothing store. It took me six months to worm my way into a fraternity by making love to the blackballs. But I had not been on the campus two weeks until I broke into the Weekly Courier- there was no daily with a protesting communication which I signed Herr Most, the name of a famous contemporary anarchist. The com- mujiication put the arrow over me as I walked my humble Freshman way. After I got into the Phi Delt Fraternity, I began to go extra-curricular pretty heavily. Like a fool I broke with my home-town girl and was stepping out. I picked the Pi Phi ' s as the most likely lot of ladies and walked in. By the next year I was saturated with campus politics and before the year was out had been elected to various trustee jobs in campus organizations. I seemed to be born for backstairs politics. Inci- dentally before I quit school, I had been business manager of the Lilerary Review and editor-in-chief of the Annual. I merely mention these things as a horrible example. I was so everlastingly extra curricular that I could not graduate and quit in my Senior year to avoid the embar- rassment of failure. I often wish I had had the benefit of a college education instead of four jears of outside acti vity and a desultory course of reading which made me familiar with most of the books in the little old University Library. How I read ! I cut classes to read. And now after fifty years of the hor- rible example, my message to Freshmen is this: Go to school for your education. Have your fun later. The girls are a delight! Football is a wow! The Fraternity is swell! Massachusetts Street is a pageant of joy! Kansas City is sumpin! But don ' t forget that you are there to learn all you can that ' s in the books. I, who took the other road, greet you as a horrible example. I know how you feel, you poor long-necked, pimply-faced, freckled, milk-eyed, gangly-legged shadows of the boy that was in that Fall of 1886!