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

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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

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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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of fifty dollars a plate. Tlie loyalty of the college ' s friends and the drawing-card that Will Rogers proved to be, drew several hundred people to the affair. Then fate began to make drastic moves. Tlie morning of the Will Rogers Dinner its namesake was rushed to the hospital for an emergency operation of major seriousness. And at practically the same time President Remsen D. Bird was ordered to bed by his physician. Still the banquet was sched- uled, fifty-dollars a plate minimum and a good many of the guests in their munificence paying a great deal more. Only the tact and good humor of John Willis Bacr, the gracious spirit of Mrs. Will Rogers who left her husband ' s bed-side to attend, and the words of William S. Hart spoken in substitution for his good friend, saved the college from becoming the target of potential ill-will. It ' s nice now to have evidence of concrete existence of the Gymnasium Will Rogers was to have helped raise. And that, incidentally was the last of the major buildings to rise before the recent depression catapulted most everything but dreams of college expansion until in 1932 when the Trustees built two additional homes upon the campus, that of the dean of faculty and the comptroller. Truly, here was evidence of a college becoming a self- sufficing personality, a sanctuary rather than a productive scholastic mechanism turning out die-cast products with the help of disinterested technicians. It is interesting to note that all the eucalyptus trees which lend their tall and graceful beauty to the present campus were planted in 1914 by architect Myron Hunt at the total cost of some five dollars. They were set out from flats as seedlings and their growth has corresponded with Occidental ' s. Through all of these days that passed under the guidance of Dr. Bird and saw the erection of a complete physical campus moved many college generations. Alike were these groups in their ardent love of alma-mater, yet as different from each other as the times they were a part of. Post-war disillusionment and the sophistication of the Menken-ite era came to Occi- dental, setting new standards of morals and of conduct, bedecking itself in blatant cynicism and creating a smart set. On the surge of the boom days Occidental rode the crest of the wave that past the middle twenties did so much to create the rah-rah convention of collegiana in the minds of the great American public. Finally, too near the present to need reminiscence came the depression. Minds were suddenly serious, summer jobs a thing remembered, preparedness a byword and a law. Now emergent from financial depths of personal and institutional worry, the Occidental student sees his college beginning to stride once more booted with attainable ambition. 17