University of California Los Angeles - Bruin Life / Southern Campus Yearbook (Los Angeles, CA)

Page 10 text:

This volume is the first of what we hope will be a long series of Annuals. It is intended to be a record of the students and the student activities in the Southern Branch of the University of California during the first year of its existence. Our school is not really so new as that statement implies. It is really an old school, which had a large student body and a distinctive life and performed great services, transformed into a larger school with altogether unique oppor- tunities ahead of it. It is an integral part of the great University of California. The Regents of the University administer it. The law which transferred the Los Angeles State Normal School to them, directed them to continue to offer courses for teachers. They determined also to provide instruction in all the subjects of the freshman and sophomore years of the college. The law also directed them to limit the enrollment of students to such numbers as could be cared for by the somewhat limited appropriations which the Legislature was able to make. They accordingly limited the number of students to be admitted to the teachers ' courses during our first year to one thousand, and the number in the entering freshman college class to two hundred and fifty. In addition to these numbers we have had during the year, some one hundred seventy-five Ex- Service men sent us for re-education by the Federal Board for Vocational Educa- tion ; about one hundred teachers in training under the provisions of the Smith- Hughes law, and some five hundred small people in the Training School. We have, therefore, numbered more than two thousand students throughout the year. In this, our first year as a part of the University of California, we have all felt a heavy responsibility for the customs and traditions which our life together during these first months should fasten upon the institution for the days to come. We have been particularly concerned about standards of work and standards of student self-government. We have, we think, done something notable in both these particulars. We have developed a feeling of unity and of cordial co-opera- tion, which have made our life together a very real community of endeavor. The school has drive and energy. It also has good will, kindliness and joy in plentiful measure. Thus far I have been speaking for us all. I should like in addition to say something more personal. The students who have prepared this record and the students of whose year together it is a record, are very dear to me and to us all who have been privileged to meet them in the teacher-student relation. They have abundantly proven themselves to be high-minded, aspiring young people in whose future usefulness we have confidence because they have acquitted them- selves in a confidence-begetting manner during this year. Some of them will return for further work next year. Others will not, but will go out from this companionship to their life tasks. Both those of us who stay and those of us who go will learn that to have pursued the same studies in the intimate and conscious life of a new institution, is a bond which will bind us closely through- out the years. We shall all watch, with something of keen personal solicitude, the growth of the new college of the University in whose beginning we have had a part. In ten years, or in twenty, we shall look with amazement upon its development, for it is certain to be greater, far greater, than the imagination of any of us can foresee. In that day we shall prize this volume as an unassuming account of a great undertaking in which we all shared. You who are students will use it as a book of friendships by which you will keep alive the memory of the associations of a splendid period of your lives. And we of the Faculty will bring it out from year to year and by its aid check off the accomplishments and the triumphs which we expect you to win, and are confident that you will win because of the steadfastness and solidity of character which you made us know while here. Ernest C. Moore.

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®l)f IFuturr Since we ha e become a part of one of the great universities of the world, many questions have been asked concerning our future. Yet there ought to be no question except the honest doubt of our immediate ability to undertaice the responsibilities at hand. The pledge of our University is the promise of this great commonwealth, Let there be light. And in the fulfillment of this obligation California is willingly expending many millions of dollars to maintain an institution that serves one of the largest of student bodies. The pledge is now our standard for us to carry forward. Rather, then, than building castles in Spain our task is to frankly ask ourselves wherein is our strength. Our organization is very like the organization of other universities, so wherein they have proved their strength we can measure ours. Three things make a university strong: First, the faculty — that body of men and women, earnest, strong, willing, that brings guidance and inspiration to university halls and by their combined effort set the heart of youth in flame ; second, the student body — that group of men and women, earnest, per- sistent, seeking, that in its turn brings inspiration to the faculty and gathering the elements of preparation for life, carries on to make more free the life of the commonwealth ; third, the alumni — that body of men and women (it seems rather that this group should be in the second class), trained, earnest, with a continuing interest in the standard. Buildings, libraries, wealth, laboratories or numbers are of secondary importance. Those who have been entrusted with the development of our University are seeing to it that we have the best faculty possible — you students this year have most successfully accomplished what you have undertaken — we all expect that as you go from these halls you will have that continuing interest which will keep you a part of the organization. So the future is with us. It will be great in proportion as we are strong. Cloyd H. IM.4RVIX. 10