University of California Berkeley - Blue and Gold Yearbook (Berkeley, CA)

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(ninety ; IGHT well we remember how the eminent factotum of North Hall, country-man of that great bishop whose name we honor, shut and locked the door upon us there in the Assembly Room ; thus official recognition was given to ' 95 ' s existence as a unitary and discrete part of the University of California. It was on that pleasant morning in the fall of ' 91, when we were for the first time assembled in a body. After we had been equipped with wise counsel, sufficient, if applied with economy, to last us our whole four years, the same Jimmy opened the door again, and the class of ' 95 was ushered forth, fairly started on its course, with all its troubles and all its triumphs yet before it. The mass of class histories might, borrowing a suggestion from Pope, appro- priately entitle themselves, On the Importance of a Class to Itself. At each stage of the four years, a class fondly fancies itself and its doings of great import to the University and of great interest to the world. But in the course of years there now and then appears a class that attains something higher than this merely subjective greatness aud internal magnitude; there are not lacking reasons for giving ' 95 a place in this noble category, as one of the few, the immortal numerals that were not born to die. To begin with, the very time of its appearing on the scene, and the period within which its course has been run, suggest its peculiar and elevated place in University history. For future chroniclers will, it is quite certain, date from the fall of ' 91 a new and distinct epoch in our Alma Mater ' s career. It will become more and more apparent, as time rolls on, that at that time there are to be discerned the first unmistakable marks of what it would be no extreme hyperbole to call the New University. Now two things happened in that autumn. One was the opening of an educational establishment at Palo Alto; the other was the entrance into Berkeley of the class of ' 95. What the former meant for the University of California is only less obvious than what the latter meant; and thus it was, first of all, ' 95 8 happy fortune to be the first class, all of whose four years were passed after the University had felt the appreciably enlivening influence of a near-by rival of great advertising ability. Perhaps, 23