Occidental College - La Encina Yearbook (Los Angeles, CA)

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In the home of Robert G. Cleland, whieh came to be known as The House, lived a number of young men attending the college. High in the hole of a sycamore tree in the front yard nested a family of owls. From this co-incidence came the Owls who were later to become the Owl and Key fraternity, and eventually Phi Gamma Delta. Another group banded to- gether on campus assumed a popular name of Apes. Rivals they were to the Owls and later, in days far removed, rivals they remain as Alpha Tau Omega. The year 1900 emerged with eight girls in the Occidental Academy in the process of forming a secret society they chose to call the L.I.Z. Today they find perpetuation as Alphas. In igoi another group of coeds assumed the letters of D.O.T. At present their future lies in the hands of Delta Omicron Tau, though they almost became something extinct when an early annual pictured the members in daring and decollete garb which incited immediate action from a shocked faculty. Not that the Alpha ' s predecessors fared any more serenely when they saw reason to present in the college auditorium a dramatic fan fare that featured the famous athlete J. P. Hagerman surrounded in his inebriated dreams by sweethearts from a highly romantic past. To every college and university there are certain generations, particular classes, whose imprints are stamped with the imperishable die of their individuals and their activities. Such a unity was the class of 1905. Out of that graduation year came the foundation of the Asso- ciated Students Organization, the presentation of class numerals, the ivy procession at com- mencement time, and the tradition of planting each year a tree. ITiere were in that group many men whom the college remembers and still knows — Arthur Buell, Dan Hammack, Horace Cleland, Fred Schauer, Dwight Chapin, J. P. Hagerman, and Robinson Jeffers, who is now one of America ' s most outstanding poets. Reversing the accepted order from the ridiculous to the sublime, the same century ' s turning that produced the above class and its people saw marching men of quite a different mood. With a band organized to play popular funeral dirges, the night-shirt parade started tramping the streets of Highland Park to raise college spirits and the ire of the residents of the locality. Though faculty action finally banned the band, musical and night-shirt-clad, the wild souls of later yesterdays and today find solace still in spasmodic streamlined pa jama revivals. Important was the year 1911 because the Board of Trustees made three decisions, namely to discontinue the Academy, to grant the college complete freedom from Presbyterian eccle- siastical control, and to move the campus from Highland Park to its present Eagle Rock location. Certainly unique is the reason for this last move. The Highland Park home of the college was bisected by a transcontinental railroad that encountered at that particular point »3

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the two main wings of Bullock ' s Department Store was once used as a straight-a-way by the Occidental trackmen! Personal losses borne in the fire, and the failure of the Board of Trustees to approve of his financial program for the college caused Rev. Condit to give up his office of President for a pastorate in the Northwest, and his difficult position was filled by Rev. Guy W. Wads- worth late in August of 1897. In that paragraph telling of Rev. Wadsworth ' s resignation. Dr. Cleland not only pays fine tribute, but offers a brief summation of the college ' s progress in the years of his leadership. All concerning those years is not told here for space is limited. Friends made by the school and who made it what it is today are passed over. Trials, tribu- lations, successes, and the heat of the so-called Occidental spirit are hinted at only in the mute evidence of prosaic facts. Honor, where honor is due remains a part of The History oi Occidental College . . . Now, for a flight of years. In August of 1905, Dr. Guy W. Wadsworth resigned— His devotion and effectiveness were reflected in the growth of the college during the eight years of his administration — a growth evidenced by the development of the new campus in Highland Park, the erection of three large buildings, the establishment of a substantial endowment fund, and a great increase in faculty personnel and student enrollment. When Dr. Wadsworth became presi- dent in 1897 there were eight instructors on the faculty, nine students in college and thirty- eight in the academy. When he resigned there were twenty-four members of the faculty, one-hundrcd-and-eight students in the college and one-hundred-thirty-four in the academy. In its resolution of regret over Dr. Wadsworth ' s resignation the Board said, He has followed the vicissitudes of the college through darkness as well as sunshine, sacrificing his financial and personal interests, until he was unquestionably one of the most potent factors in bring- ing Occidental College from its humble beginnings to its present commanding position. To temporarily fill the chair left vacant by Dr. Wadsworth, Rev. Wm. S. Young was appointed acting president. This position he filled with a fidelity that was his own, effectively for over a year, laboring without a salary, doing his whole duty. Then, in September, 1906, John Willis Baer assumed the reins for the college ' s guidance. Here, definitely, began a distinctive era in Occidental ' s growing. To be present at his inauguration came Benjamin Ide Wheeler, president of the University of California, David Starr Jordan, president of Leland Stanford University, and principal speaker, Robert E. Speer, secretary of the Presbyterian Board of Foreign Missions. But what of the college life of those times that saw three presidents in a span of two years? Wliere were found those beginnings that have established the many ties with today, through names, through institutions, and through happenings? 12

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one of the hardest uphill grades west of the Rocky Mountains. Whenever a locomotive pounded through on regular daily schedule, classes had to be halted in reverence to the greater noise. An alumnus of those undergraduate days tells that all social functions of the college were arranged to start in the evening after the eight-fifteen. In June of the year 1914 construction on the new campus was far enough under way to enable Commencement exercises to be held there. The following fall saw the beginning of the procession of neophytes and graduates that were to possess no other physical alma mater than the one they know this year of 1937. For it was then that the college emerged from youth and adolescence to its place of dignity in maturity. The school was in progress culturally. Journalism assumed a dual role in 1906 with the year book, La Encina, growing from the Occidental into an entitv of its own, and the latter assuming the newspaper complexion that it still retains. At the same time there appeared the Men ' s Glee Club which shortly won prominent recognition, though the women of the college were mute until 1913. Those years too, witnessed the production of Greek dramas created and sponsored by Dr. William D. Ward. This was definitely to the school ' s enrichment. Under the sycamore trees where foresomes now golf at the Anandale, Mrs. Julia Pipal in the spring of 1912 presented the first May fete. In 1914 Occidental College celebrated its twent ' -fifth anniversary, which was two years later than the quarter centennial birthday of the college really was, with a banquet upon th{ top floor of the old Hamburger ' s Department Store, in Los Angeles. In that prosaic and unacademic place and subsequently upon a campus that was new and as yet naked of all but the ideas of what might be ahead. Dr. Baer proposed plans for a greater Occidental. Unfortunate it was that Icarius-like the College should try its new wings at the sun up of World War. A Million Dollar Campaign — free lunches at Hotel Alexandria, publicitv shouted to the very skies, scientific techniques, efficiency results — was a strange phenomena for a college that had been slowly building stone upon stone. Tlie outcome was not a financial success. In October of 1916, eight months after the campaign ' s disintegration. Dr. Baer resigned as President of Occidental. This move was met with spontaneous and genuine regret. He is remembered for the greatness he had done in building, and giving to Occidental College such friends as Theodore Roosevelt and William Howard Taft. His administration was an era of lights and shadows. Beloved by all within and without the sanctum he controlled, John Willis Baer brought a color and a growth-spirit to Occidental that it has, fortunately, never outgrown. He was followed into the office of president by Dean Thomas G. Burt who served