Michigan State University - Red Cedar Log Yearbook (East Lansing, MI)

Page 9 text:

Campus History Sketches By Prof. Frank S. Kedzie tlil'llURNING to this campus ten years from today what first will you seek out to bring it all back again to you,-Lhe College days? XVill it be a familiar room in some Wlorm, an alcove in the library, or :L nook in the wild garden! This campus on that day twhieh I hope will be in June and the sun shiningl will suggest many happy VlYld recollections. The thoughts of hundreds of former students turn hitherwurd, for it is still their college, though they may never have revisited it since their departure years ago. chat surrounds us here and now and what we enjoy together, is the result of faithful, enthusiastic effort the work of student and teacher side by side. A freshman of fifty years ago, should he re- turn today to look up his past record as a student, would not hie himself to the registrar's ofh'ee, but more than likely would wander over across the river tovard the south to see if he could find the remaining evidences of some stump of'a tree he felled in clear- ing; the farm, or trace the route of an underdmin in field number 1'2 0r14. Let us go over the place together in 1911 and hunt up the bench marks of the industrial edu- mtion id m. Old College Hall 0857i Its bricks were made from umpus clay dug from the hill in front of Prof. Vedderk house, at the ex- act point from which 50 years later President Roosevelt gave his semi-eentennial address. This building for thirteen years housed every department and educational feature of the college, except the liVe stock. and 0c tnsionally seleet- OMFM'M 'heEightiex ed specimens of these by night were invited to enjoy its hospitality. 0n the third floor the library, museum, botan- ical and zoological laboratories: the sec- ond floorethe two class rooms and the offices of the President and Secretary; the first floor-the Chemical laboratory on the north and the chapel as it is, with the ex- ception that the stage was on the north side of the room and an opening into the chemi- cal laboratory permitted its use, as :1 lecture V room for lectures in chemistry as well as chapel exercises, accompanied by ethical discussions, which had more 01' less of a praeti 'al trend. tAttendanee at chapel was compulsoryj 1n the basement were the tools and stores for the hort. department.

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PREFACE HE Class of 1911 gave to you the tWVolverine in 1910. In so do- ing', they asked that, if possible, the name iWVolverine', should be perpetuated in such publications in the future. VVith this in mind, and believing that our col- lege should have and will support an annual tWVolven-ine, the present board submits to you, in the name of the Class of 1912, this book. Feeling that a college year-book should be truly and broadly representative of the institution for which it stands, we have endeavored herein to give space to all phases of college activity upon our campus. 'It is our hope that in days to come, these pages will serve to bring back to mind the faces and scenes which are now so familiar, and that you may thus be enabled to re-live the happy undergraduate days. We have given willingly of our time and thought, and crave only appreciation for what we have accomplished, and leniency toward such im- perfections as may appear in this undertaking. We thank all those who have helped, each in his own way, to make these pages a reality; and we trust that this first tiAnnual shall prove but a stepping-stone toward constantly bigger and better M. A. C. lWVolverines.

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W'illiams Hall 0868 vas the first steam-heated building 011 the campus. Up under the roof two of our present college societies, U. L. S. and the i Ties, first found a home. A somewhat crude estimate leads me to the stateu'lent that since the completion of the building each room in this dormitory has been occupied by at least 841i different students. XVhat an interesting assemblage would a home coming reunion for a single student's room produee. Next followed the Chem. Lab., 1871, then old Wells Hall, 1878, and the Li- brary, 1881. When these buildings I have mentioned were new, this kind ot'edueatiou was still newer and was not an altogether acceptable form to the mass of h'Iiehiganis taxpaying citizens. Money for buildings and iimirovements came slowly. This college never had a mushroom growth. But as its students went out to do the world s work, as you will soon do, their willingness to tackle anything and to do honest work strengthened the college little by little, and overfame some strong predjudiees against the new ideas for which the college was established. I had thought in sketching my personal impressions ofthe college as it is today to say something about nionuments-denkmal, the German word, think onee-expresses it best. This that we now enjoy has been brought about by the work of students guided, assisted, helped- but still it is the result of their work whieh has produced what M. A. C. is here and now. So this college is the students7 monument. The buildings, however old and worn or new or grand, are simply the tools with which we work; the reputation of the college, its power to inHuenee our lix'es-this is the monument to the past. Yet the buildings have uainesetVilliams, VVells and A bbot-whieh will remind some of the real old fellows of men whom they worked with at the beginning of M. A. C's struggle. 7The Chemical, Botanical, Horticultural and Baeteriologi 'al laboratories might well have had placed on their comer stones such names as these: R. C. Kedzie, XV. .l. Heal, L. H. Bailey and C. E. Marshall. Still it is not that which remains in the walls that gives strength to the building, but that which you yourself carry away. E El Cl Towering high above the roof of the College hospital is the largest oak tree on the iampus. It was so large that away back in 1861, when all the other native oak trees were topped or beheaded to im- prove their appearance and prolong their lives, this tree was left untouched by the workmen with the sorrowful expectation that in a few years it would die. It still remains in all its native stateliuess. Hi