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

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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

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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

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Fowler in 1915 projected hill-climbing races up the slope back of Fowler Hall at the pro- jectile rate of eighteen miles per hour as an extra-curricular activity. The two successive years, however, showed the student mind still to be involved in more academic pursuits as Occi- dental debaters won the intercollegiate championship of Southern California without meeting a single defeat. At the same time Dr. Ward ' s production of the Greek drama, Medea, focused favorable attention upon the campus. On September 21, 1919, Occidental College lost the physical presence, though not the spirit, of one of the dearest friends an institution was ever to possess in the death of Rev. Robert W. Cleland. An issue of La Encina published near that time captured a little of the essence of his being when the editor stated: ... there has never been a day so dark that the sunshine of his presence has not brought light and gladness to the hearts of Occidental students. He was a wise man. From the San Francisco Theological Seminary in the year of 1921 came Dr Remsen DuBois Bird to become President of Occidental College. To catch a hint of all that Dr. Bird is and all that he has done is impossible, yet in three paragraphs of Dr. Cleland ' s history is suggested some of it: . . . Dr. Remsen Bird brought to the presidency of Occidental College certain qualities most needed at the time— spontaneous enthusiasm, extraordinary energy, unusual capacity to make new friends for the college, imagination, a contagious love of beauty, and a seal for contributing for the common good. Under his leadership, surrounded everywhere by new opportunities, the college outgrew the last of its adolescence and came to maturity— changed, as Burke might have said, from the gristle of youth to the hard bone of maturity. The evidence of Occidental ' s material development during this decade is furnished by the following figures: student enrollment expanded from 506 in 1921 to 753; the faculty increased from 35 to 73; and the annual budget rose from about $82,000 to $250,000. A building program of large proportions was also carried on during these years. Through- out the first decade of Dr. Bird ' s administration he had the heartening satisfaction, indeed, of watching each year a new major structure rise upon the campus. With one or two exceptions, each of these buildings represented the devotion, as well as the generosity, of some individual or family to the college. The greater part of them were built as memorials and bear names honored and beloved in the records of the college. All of them symbolize that deep interest and sacrificial spirit which springs of Occidental ' s life. Now that time has moved another decade away, amusing is an incident concerned with the campaign to raise money for the Alumni Gymnasium in 1926. Featuring Will Rogers, noted American humorist, a banquet was given at the Biltmore Hotel for the unusual fee 16