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

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fund is sufficient, of a men ' s dormitory in honor oi Dr. Roheit Freeman. This fund is not yet fuJJy subscribed but we have every expectation that in the course ot a year, that money will be sufficient to build this very much needed structure. 7. Other appropriations and support enabhng the college to curb and groom the entire periphery, in which we have the assured cooperation oi the City Council, looking to the paving ot the entire Campus Road. In addition to the improvement oi the physical plant and the increase oi endowment, this year has been an occasion oi self scrutiny and constructive criticism oi the college in all its parts. It is very important ior the Row and fulfillment oi an institution like Occidental that there shall he periodic times oi such self examination, looking to larger services and increased significance. Committees oi the Faculty are at work studying the curriculum, the standards oi admission and classification, the relationships that exist among educational forces, the responsibilities oi the college with reference to the secondary education field, and the possibilities oi the college in mutual obligations and satisfactions with reference to our larger community. I think we will look hack on this year and mark it as the occasion in which the real meaning and power and inspiration oi the small residence college shall become clearly recognized and taken advantage oi ior the development oi education, the good oi the individual and the general social satisfaction. Sincerely, Remsen D. Bird Yet inwardly, too, the administrators have been keeping careful physician ' s fingers on the student pulse. Dr. Cleland served in his capacity of Dean of the College for the first semester of 1936-1937. Then, wooed too ardently by the muse historical, he obtained a year ' s leave of absence for research at the Huntington Library. Dr. Coons, Dean of Men, cheerfully assumed a double role and filled Dr. Cleland ' s position. Bringing a wide experience and an unusual depth of understanding of the coed ' s prob- lems, Mrs. Le Boutillier entered Occidental to become the new Dean of Women, with Mrs. Pipal withdrawing to the more congenial task of Social Chairman. To Miss Brady as always flocked the timorous freshmen and confused seniors with matters of majors and minors and problems of scholasticism. Mr. McLain, true to the sturdy dependability of his name, held fast the college purse strings and in his office of Comptroller did his usual much to insure the school of a succeeding fifty years of financial stability. Whenever a particlar job was hard to catalogue but happened to involve a varying but definite degree of worry it was sent to the office of the Graduate Manager, Theodore Brodhead. 19

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Seeking to know of the flight of this college into its fiftieth year, and of what in that year had been accomphshed in the manner of college building, La Encina went into the president ' s office. From the administrative sanctum it emerged triumphant with a letter. Prosaic, indeed, must all words be if some of the grandness of today ' s growing, and tomor- row ' s dream are not caught in these paragraphs by Dr. Remsen Bird who in them expresses the doings of the administrators not as persons, but as a unit with a single goal. You have asked me to give you a statement with reference to the progress oi the college during this Fiftieth Anniversary year. May I say that the plan of celebration ordered by the Committee having the matter in charge began with the Commencement Program closing the year 1935-36 and carries through to the opening convocation of the year 1937-38. We set our sights with reference to the increased equipment, endowment and furnishing of the college to a general amount of % oo,ooo. It was the desire of the Administration that there should he received during this period gifts for essential buildings, endowment, campus grooming and other necessities of the college by outright subscription, bequests, trust funds, or otherwise, to an amount of % oo,ooo. At this time I may announce to you that this sum has been secured and an amount totalling considerably over the goal set without campaign and without cost. Among the outstanding significant units in connection with this planning and equipment are the following: 1. The erection of the Helen Gertrude Emmons Memorial Health Center at a cost of about % o,ooo. 2. The funds for the erection of the Belle WiJber Thorne Hall, for which an original gift was made of 1 0,000, and which has now been increased by Mr. Thome ' s generosity to 200,000. 3. The assurance that funds will be provided for the reorganization of the Central Quadrangle and the planning of the campus in the environs of Thorne Hall at an estimated cost of about 2 ,000 or ,000. 4. The addition to the campus of the property required for the athletic fields which are to be developed beyond the men ' s residence area, an acreage valued conservarively at % o,ooo, which has been presented to the college by an alumnus and trustee, Alphonzo E. Bell. 5. Addirions to endowment by the Carnegie Corporation and other friends of the col- lege to an amount of $100,000 for the permanent funds of the institution. 6. Other subscriptions and special contributions looking to the erection when the 18

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And for those who dimbed this year above undergraduate status there was the discovery of Miss Sarah Young and her work as Alumni Chairman. Faculty leaves have taken from Occidental this year two popular and respected presences in the persons of Mr. Thomas R. Adam of the political science department, and Dr. Alfred Y. Fisher of the English department. The more permanent lode-stone of marriage lured Miss Elizabeth Gilliland from speech courses, and Mr. Burton Richardson left the department of physics for a research nearer to his heart than teaching. But it was not all a matter of exodus, as to the science laboratories and mathematics class- rooms came Mr. V. Bollman and Professor Charles Alexander, while in speech education Miss Gilliland was replaced by Dr. Fleda Brigham. Psychology, now emerged from curricular growing pains into a full-fledged major, found a new chief protagonist in Dr. Wilbur Hulin. The queen science, philosophy, revamped herself, too, upon the refreshing provocation of Mrs. Cornelia Le Boutillier ' s assumption of teaching duties. Balanced on a see-saw of divergent opinions, student body president Guy Nunn, vice- president Alice McDowell and the Executive Council bounced through a tranquil season of student activity and politics with no greater upset approached than the bomb shell possibility .of men and women undergraduates being seated side by side during compulsory chapels. Besides being student body president, Guy Nunn found time within the same year to captain the football team, be elected to Phi Beta Kappa and win a Rhodes ' Scholarship. Vice-presi- dent Alice McDowell achieved both a reputation for gracefully bustling, and making of every A.S.O.C. affair a smoothly turned out product. Helen Hornberger, secretary, wrote a readable hand, attended to all student-body correspondence and hibernated between Execu- tive Council meetings in the music chapel. In February came elections again, and the presidency moved once more to the white house on the corner in the person of Charles Hutchins, while the eminence of vice-presi- dency went to Mary Lou Carr. The scribe ' s duties become those of Catheryn Riseborough, but theirs is a reign that belongs to next year. To Janet Anderson, Peggy Houghton, Virginia Hedges, and Phyllis Cochran, as officers of the Associated Women Students, came the call of the aesthetic as they sponsored the Procession of Lanterns, the benevolence of the Big Sister plan and the May Day Fete. Once they did lower themselves to masculine cooperation and decorated the College Union for the Coed Hop. With pulchritude and personality running an unprecedented high, hazel-eyed Alice McDowell, brunettes Mary Derthick and Peggy Houghton, and titian-haired Martha Messick vied for the honor of May Queen with the prize going to Martha Messick. 20