Stanford University - Quad Yearbook (Palo Alto, CA)

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JHanforb Quab 1902 The First Decade of the University HE hard-pressed History Major of the year 2501. set to write a thesis on “ The First Decade of the University, will doubtless complain of the paucity of material, of the difficulty of making anything out of that inchoate period. (Tins, on the assumption that the big scrapbooks in the Secretary s office, the private memoirs of Bristow Adams, and this particular volume of the Quad shall all alike have succumbed to the gnawing tooth of time.) Still, if the aforesaid H. M. does credit to his department, he will doubtless be able to dig up 1 1 'm • many an odd bit. which, fused by the historical imagination, will naturally take shape under the following heads: I. The Pre-Natal Period. II. The Golden Age. III. In the Breakers. IV. The Renaissance. I. The Pre-Natal Period.— Not much out of this period can hope to survive to the twenty-sixth century. Already the point of inception has faded into that misty past when the present Freshman class were babes in arms. Six years it was from Charter to Opening Day. A brief enough span, as looked at from the year 2501, but from the stand| oint of a nineteenth century enterprise a very’ long preparation. Thus candidates in plenty for four times all the possible positions in the Faculty were lined up before a single building was sha| ed. Would-be students were hardly less impatient. Will II. M. catch any impression of the seemingly slow movement of the founders, of the long conferences, the hesitations, the tentative planning and replanning? What grist it all was for the newspapers! Will the magnificence of their heralding, the splendid, roseate vistas of the real estate agent enliven a bit an otherwise prosy introduction ? Will the advice so diligently sought, so lavishly, overwhelmingly inured out, add its spice and piquancy to the tale? Finally the hurrying of the private car across country to n

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JKanforb (Juab 1902 Tile new school can treat its students as men and not as Children. In dealing with undergraduates in college work the methods of the university will always be more effective than the methods of the nursery. The nursery should cease where the university begins, and the university student should not do his work in the child's fear of the rod behind the mirror.” The new university can. in some measure, free itself from the shackles of the examination system. There is room, also, for reform in the matter of entrance requirements. What the university really wants is to have students trained to see and to think ; practical ” life requires the same, and when this demand is really met, the university work and the work of life will each rest on a sound foundation. The new university can at once recognize itself as a servant of the people, not as an organism existing for its own sake, or for the sake of any class or faction. The rest of the discussion is summed up in these words: The new university in America can discard the worn-out part of the educational methods and machinery of past ages, and of other lands, and can address itself directly to the life and work of the people of a great republic, and of the coming twentieth century.” The Stanford of today is no longer a new institution. It has made a record of its own. it has scored successes and failures. By its record it must be judged. This judgment it is not for me to give, but Stanford University may decide whether it has departed from its ideals, and whether those it has discarded are exchanged for those of higher value. Simplicity of mechanism is certainly a trait of the Stanford of today. No professor or student wise enough to act or speak for himself has found any check to his speech or action. No professor or student has l een asked to refrain from any line of investigation or to proclaim any kind of doctrine as the truth. That freedom of s| eech which is the badge of immaturity the University has not encouraged. It is part of its duty to distinguish journalism from scholarship. In no institution do students and teachers come nearer together than at Stanford. That is what the Quadrangle is for. In the field of investigation Stanford has taken its full part. This their lengthening line of publications shows. And these researches are a natural growth. There is no prize to the instructor who can show the greatest output of printed pages. The curriculum of Stanford has been and will continue to be one for each man or woman who comes here. Those who have the minds of men are not treated as children. There is no candy after the medicine and no “rod behind the mirror.” The University freely exercises its self-preserving faculty of letting go those who belong somewhere else. The examination system and the entrance requirements still hamper us more or less as necessary evils That the University belongs to all it can help and that every interest in the community may be helped by it, we think that the experience of Stanford has clearly proved. California is a l etter State to live in than it was ten years ago. Today, the pressure of Higher Kducation is greater to the square mile in California than in anywhere else in the world. Nowhere else is the path from the farmhouse to the college so well trodden. It requires no prophet to forecast the intellectual preeminence of California, and in this the new University, the two new Universities, for the growth of the one means the development of the other, has taken its full part. David Starr Jordan. 12

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JManforb $uab 1902 Baltimore, Gilman's westward pointing, and then a day in March, 1891, when Andrew I). White and Mrs. Comstock talked to the founders and settled the fate of the University. Some university there would have been, anyway. But this University, with its golden glamour, its winds of freedom, its happy-go-luckyism. its buoyancy, its energy, its modernness — this University exists ! ecause David Starr Jordan was chosen President. However little or much of all this reaches down to the twenty-sixth century, there will emerge out of the pre-natal period a noble plan of buildings well realized, a masterful President, an energetic Faculty, and a modern, progressive program. II. The Golden Age.— n 1890-91 the University of California had, in the colleges at Berkeley, 450 students. At Stanford it was determined to prepare for a possible 200. On the natal day, October 1, 1891, over 400 appeared. The first Register showed 559, distancing Berkeley by thirty. It was a truly cosmopolitan crowd. Not even Charley Field would maintain that all were equally fitted for the higher education. But in 2601 nobody will guess that. And if all were not “ beer and skittles,” if there were also difficulties, unexpected, appalling, crudenesses unimaginable, President Jordan did not let on, Fesler is silenced, and the History Major will never suspect. In the receding vista of six centuries the taming of Encina, the reign of Zion, the lusty exploits of the Pioneer Class will all alike ap| ear as threads of light in the golden garment. The earnestness, the enthusiasm, the intoxicating delight of fresh beginnings; the rollicking tread of the President speeding from one appointment to another; the stirring air of expansion ; the vigor, independence, achievement — these are the local colors with which H. M. will touch up his musty tale. “That tired feeling” which sometimes comes over University faculties will have no place in the Golden Age. HI. In the Breakers.— There was a sudden pull-up. Two years had been completed. The experiment had been made to go, and the results commanded the respect of the educational world. Plans for enlargement were all but perfected. The salary roll had been doubled. At first there was only the feeling of sorrow and loss in the death of Mr. Stanford. Only Mrs. Stanford and President Jordan divined the coming storm. Would even they have had the courage to face it if they could have foreseen the four long years of strain, the prolonged panic, the government suit, the threatened collapse of pro| erties, the importunities of heirs, the numbing sense of utter lack of needed moneys ? At any rate, the undaunted, unconquerable courage of the one, and the fertile, irrepressible buoyancy of the other — that sublime pretense that all was right — prevented the catastrophe which all of Mrs. Stanford's advisers regarded as inevitable. It would be a pity if the History Major of 2501 were to miss the essential spirit of this day of trial. It gave a meaning to sacrifice. It consecrated the University. There will never be any more wholesome academic life than breathed through those days of doubt and trial. IV. The Renaissance.— As suddenly as the trial had come, so suddenly it (Kissed away. Almost before we were aware, when we had almost trained ourselves not to expect it, the good ship sailed into calm waters. H. M. will see it in the new buildings, in the tremulous feeling betokening an imminent expansion in every corner of the University. He will see it also in the internal readjustment and reorganization, in the loss of mere abandon and happy-go-luckvism, in more concentration, higher standards, more sense of responsibility, the dignity, the poise, the solidity that comes of stability and fairly .adequate resources. 'Hie I)ecade closes on the threshold of great things. Great things will come because they have l een prepared for, because the heart of the University is sound, liecause the Stanford spirit is wholesome, manly and womanly. The History Major will summarize the First Decade by finding m it the kernel and promise of all that was to come after, the enduring foundation of a noble superstructure. O. L. E. »4