Roosevelt University - Vanguard Yearbook (Chicago, IL)

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T JL HE PUBLICATION of the first Roosevelt College annual is a significant event. In it posterity will find the pictures, the names, and the activities of many of the students whose faith—no less than ours—made possible the historic founding of Roosevelt College. I like to think that future student generations will turn to this book with pride and say: “These men and women believed in a principle and made it work.” Our graduates are living proof that the pioneering spirit is not dead in America; they prove that equality of opportunity is still a vital ideal; they proclaim the inalienable human right to achieve according to one’s ability; they are witnesses of the democratic principle that people can bind themselves together by ideas instead of by the interests of social class, creed, or color. To you graduates: Best of luck! Your splendid effort for attainment of these ideals has only begun. That is the meaning of your “commencement.” Chicago and our nation needs your community leadership. World citizenship—though its form is at present over- shadowed by international strife—is not beyond your grasp. To the things you believe in has now been added definite skills and certain intellectual tools. The history of your college—measured in years—is brief, but you are the heirs of a long and noble moral and intellectual tradition. It is the tradition of Franklin Roosevelt, Thomas Jefferson, and many others who have given America an unshakeable belief in man’s ability to do something about the problems of war and his own social environment; it is the tradition of expanding human freedom— everywhere in the world; it is the tradition which calls for enoblement of the status of the individual. Edward J. Sparling

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EDWARD J. SPARLING President

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WAYNE A. R. LEYS Dean of Faculties The Class of 1948 has not only gone to college — the members of this class have helped to create a college. The building of a scholarly community is the focussing of the universe in a single place. Thus, some of you have helped establish the study of Chemistry on the fifth floor of the Auditorium Build- ing, the cultivation of arts and crafts on the fourth floor, the inauguration of mathematical, ethical, business, sociological, linguistic, and other studies on other floors. You have noted the new insights that were added to the college community when an anthro- pologist joined the staff, when bacteriologists were recruited, when musicians came to us from hither and yon. You cooperated with specialists and amateurs in activities outside of the classroom. I congratulate you upon your graduation from a new school. I predict that you will be rewarded by the achievement of creative will and know-how many years prior to the time of life when cre- ativity is normally possible. Unfortunately, the necessary disciplines of education usually have a deadening effect upon the imagination of young people. I expect an unusually large part of the class of 1948 to have both skill and the divine fire. WAYNE A. R. LEYS