Purdue University - Debris Yearbook (West Lafayette, IN)

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Twenty Years After By GEORGE ADE, ' g Hold on. Father Time — slow up a bit ! You may be the oldest living Alum- nus, as lean, decrepit and senile as you are shown in every allegorical picture, but, believe me, no youthful member of the track team the Here I am fatherly screi Debris of 1007. Let ' s see— five, ten, fifteen, twenty! Good old Prof. Stevens once told me that the department of my brain marked Mathematics was a resounding vacuum, and yet even I can check off the calendar marks and corroborate the horrifying fact that twenty years have slid stealthily by since we of the class of ' 87 were shooed out of the front door, laden with good advice. Presto, change ! Here it is 1907. To think that lien Taylor and Charley Stafford and I are now qualified to revisit the campus and do the Rip Van Winkle act — to indulge in rambling reminiscences of the good old days and try to convince the irreverent Freshman, who was unburn when we went out into the great world, that life was worth living even during that remote period. Whenever I am given the opportunity to address Purdue can reel off the laps with undergraduates, I find myself impelled to compare the early such amazing persistence eighties with the early naughtics and give the later arrival and such glorious speed. some graphic conception of the revolutionary changes and the tremendous development of the last quarter-century. The com- parative figures are so startling that one is tempted to exhibit them often. In 1887 we had a graduating class of eight. 1 am told that this year the university will graduate from all departments a total of about 425. Here we have the ratio: The Purdue Uni- versity of 1887 was to the Purdue University of 1007 as 8 is to 425. Truly, so far as the physical proportions of the various schools, classes and social organizations are concerned, the 25

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Tecumseh Trail

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growth of twenty years is fairly represented by this amazing ci mtrast. When we were here the college had a few small buildings. Now 11 lias many buildings— some of them very large. The nebulous curriculum has settled itself into definite schools of intensely practical purpose, while the timid and experimental spin of the old time has been supplanted by a triumphant sense of big accomplishments. The student life, which used to be simple and provincial and confined to a few homely ruts, has become, as you might say, cosmopolitan and metropolitan. Formerly our activities were concentrated upon the social rivalries and inner politics of three literary societies. Nowadays the college man who is fairly enterprising and many-sided will claim membership in a fraternity, a glee club, an athletic team, a debating society, a brotherhood of engineers, the track team and the baseball nine. The most remarkable development of the last twenty years— because it is one of which the first ten years gave so little prom- ise — is the gradual enlarging of the student life into many com- plex affiliations. Our class of twenty years ago instituted class day and made a feeble effort to have field day exercises, although, of course, we had no track team, no training, no notion of how to manage track events, and the whole afternoon was as amateurish as the games and sports of a Sunday School picnic. However, some one had to make a start and inoculate Purdue University with the germ of the athletic spirit, and I am happy to say that our class did it. Within five years the whole body of students and professors was overwhelmingly interested in football, baseball ami track sports, and although we have encountered varying fortunes. since athletics at Purdue took such a great boom with the de- velopment of the star football team of 1892, there is every rea- son to believe that the interest will abide and that Purdue will continue to be a factor in intercollegiate athletics of the middle west. Let us hope so. Let us hope also that with the completion of the new gym- nasium every man attending Purdue may be given a course in physical culture under careful supervision. I am a great be- liever in the championship football, baseball and track teams. I have traveled long distances to root for them. 1 have rejoiced in their victories, and when they were badly licked I have ac- companied them to the vale of gloom and mingled my bitter tears with theirs. I am for good winning teams at any rea- sonable cost of time or trouble, or even money properly spent, but also I am an advocate of athletics for all. A college training is about three times as efficacious if it is associated with a hard set of muscles, a good pair of bellows, a jumping circulation and a sound digestion. Purdue will continue to take an absorbing interest in ath- letic sports. No doubt boat-racing will come in. The Wabash River would afford an excellent course during nearly all of the seasons in which rowing would be advisable, and I could not imagine a more glowing spectacle for Commencement Week than a race between four class crews down the river and finish- ing under Main Street Bridge. Football had a little set-back this year, but we have had other set-backs in other years, and we are sure to get back into our stride before long. In baseball and basketball we have al- ways held our own. and in track athletics we have been as good as anybody in the State. We could hardly hope to dominate the big interstate contests with so much important competition.