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

Page 18 text:

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

Page 17 text:

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

Page 19 text:

temporarily in that position for nearly a year until the services of Dr. Silas Evans were secured. Nineteen-hundred-and-seventeen and 1918— gallant, crazy days were these for those who went away and for those whose sword was education. German was torn from the curric- ulum of the Los Angeles city schools. Editor of the Occidental, Raymond L. Buell, wrote a moderate editorial of protest and city-wide resentment forced his resignation. Military drill replaced college athletics and a mess hall was erected on the campus which was to serve later as a general dining room until the building of the College Union. Every hour was faced with unexpected, unforeseen events as administration, faculty, and student body strained through two hard, teetering years. On a simple bronze plaque in the quiet sunlit tranquility of the south side of Johnson Hall are the names of those who never came back. WILLIAM ORR MCCONNELL, D.S.C. ' 14 ALBERT SIMONS ' l$ CARL BRANDSTETNER ' 17 WILFRED CARROL BRYAM ' 17 RALPH EMERSON KELLOGG ' 18 THEODORE C. KOETHEN ' iQ RAYMOND WELLES BARTON ' ll greater love hath no man than this Not even the chaotic coma of War could halt the continuity of chang e that marked Occidental as a progressive educational institution. From the cloud of those dark days the college emerged under the leadership of President Silas Evans on the accredited list of the Association of American Universities. In igi6 the major-minor plan of curricular organiza- tion was put into effect. At about the same time graduate study with its inherent potentiality of a Master ' s Degree became possible for those students who asked more of Occidental than simply a Bachelor of Arts Degree. And then too, long before John Dewy raised a confusing and evolutionary head, the college was taking preliminary steps toward the awarding of verified teacher ' s credentials by wooing the State of California for this right. In these first years on the new campus the women were possessed of greater gregarious tendency than the men and produced four embryo sororities in half that number of years. In 1915 La Cadena, the present Gamma Kappa Theta ' s, bloomed into existence to be followed the next year by Mariposa, Siempre Vive, and La Casa de Las Colinas— Zeta Tau Zeta, Beta Phi Delta and Kappa Epsilon Chi, respectively. Reckless was the Occidental Automobile Club that under the presidency of Ward 15