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

Page 28 text:

Blue and Gold 19O4 was a big sale. Each reader had the setting for the joke ready and waiting; he read, and generally grinned and enjoyed. To an outsider, unfamiliar with the properties and dead to the point of view, the humor of those days was perhaps puerile and the wit dismal enough. The thought that the editors owed any duty or responsibility beyond looking after their personal safety, hardly occurred to them. In issuing the BLUE AND GOLD they were merely upholding class tradition and the reputations of their respective Junior classes. The time had come for ' 82 or ' 83 or ' 84 to have its fling; we were free to whack each other and to whack everybody, students, males, females, faculty, president, regents, legislators, and the townspeople generally. The idea was to hit them all, so that nobody could feel too lonely and sore over his distinction. It was a sort of an editorial Mardi Gras, and no one must be offended at the little liberties taken with him during the holiday. Such an atmosphere of abandon is necessarily absent in the real univer- sity. Berkeley today is a city; the students are so many and their interests so varied, that they have neither time, opportunity nor capacity to know intimately the members of their own classes, let alone the whole college. A BLUE AND GOLD of today is not a place for recording incidents the humor of which only the few can fully comprehend. A more dignified demeanor has been demanded of the publication. It has come to be under- stood that the BLUE AND GOLD represents something. It is looked to as an expression of what is best in mod ern student life. And this does not mean that the BLUE AND GOLD must eventually degenerate into a ponderous com- pilation of dry statistics and yawning chronologies. Every feature of univer- sity life has its humorous aspect; and it is largely because care-free, happy- hearted university men and women see and enjoy the humor of it all that their college days are never to be forgotten. Notwithstanding the changes from the old days to the new, it is, as it always has been, the mission of the BLUE AND GOLD to express and per- petuate the sunny side of university life. When all things are considered, the earlier issues, however indifferent their qualities otherwise, did that much fairly well. The modern BLUE AND GOLD must achieve by courtlier methods a like result and improve upon it. College men can see the humor of the situation whether you are dancing a jig or posing out a minuet. All that they demand is that you must not take yourself too seriously in either dance. The more dignified pose demands of the modern editor a higher class of work than was demanded of us in the older days, but the opportunities are now greater. There are more types to portray and the editor has a wider field in which to work, and many more heads from which to demand assist- ance. He may not find a Balzac, a Thackeray, or a Clemmens ready to come to his aid at a nod, but our University should bring out annually a sufficient

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' 33 Blue and Gold t9O4 Blue and Gold Editors-Old and New By CHARLES S. WHEELER, Regent, Editor 1884 BLUE AND GOLD. The college bears to the university the same relation which the country town bears to the great city. It is of no moment to the city man who his next-door neighbor is, or what his name or occupation may be. But, in the country town, an egg with a double yolk, or a splinter in the finger of a fellow citizen, will not only furnish table talk for a week, but, after everybody knows it, the town paper will embalm it in the local columns. Twenty years ago an entire Freshman Class could be comfortably housed in a small room in North Hall. In those days every man had an intimate acquaintance with his class-mates, and with the professors and instructors as well. Professors and instructors called each student by name. The blunders and foibles of every man in the institution were known to all. No one was such a hero to his mates that he was not a legitimate target for a joke. No joke was so bad that it did not move in an increasing circle until it rippled over the surface of the whole college. In the situation just pictured is to be found the reason for the difference between the editorial requirements of today and those of twenty years ago. In those days college humor did not have to be universal; purely personal hits would do. The audience to be reached did not live beyond the campus, and any man could call the roll from memory. Three hundred fifty copies

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' 5] Blue and Gold I9O4 number of creative minds to produce at least a fairly clever composite picture of Berkeley life. Rich humor, if not everywhere in evidence, is still waiting for the clever man or woman who searches for it. University life is thrilling with subject matter for the right pens. In the old days the skit, cartoon or pasquinade must not only have a local setting, but it seemed to be rather expected that it would be rudely, even savagely, personal. Close familiarity of the students with each other and with the faculty seemed to give rise to the demand, even if it brought no ethical justification for the supply. The editor of today must still look to the local setting; but happily the taste of his audience is now more generic. To- day the successful writer for the BLUE AND GOLD must appeal to the whole Student Body. It is not possible to do away entirely with pointed allusions; but as a general rule the Student Body will best be reached rather by the depiction of college types than by the portrayal of particular individuals. All will recognize the type, while it will only occasionally happen that mere personalities will reach far enough to justify themselves. But by whatever road the editorial work is approached, the result to be attained must always be the same. Each successive editorial board should seriously set out determined to concenter and hold captive within the covers of its BLUE AND GOLD the sunshine of three hundred and sixty-five Berkelev davs.