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

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laboratories have been multiplied. The essence of the change from an educa- tional standpoint is the offering of large opportunities to each individual student. In the old days, whether he liked it or not, the student had to march along narrow ways ; now so multifarious are the opportunities offered that any student can make up pretty nearly any kind of course and can find all sorts of specialties unknown in earlier days to suit his particular needs and his particular point of view. And what is true from the strictly educational standpoint is even more true from the social standpoint. In former days the student had to make his friendships in the limited circle available to him ; now he can pick and choose his circle of friends from thousands instead of being restricted to a few hundred. The opportunities of a great community are open to him. In whatever line of activity he may be interested he can find others like-minded, and whatever sort of society he demands he can obtain it. If his interests be in athletics or journalism or dramatics, if he care about public life or social service or religious endeavor, he can find groups with whom to study or to play. There is no phase of modern activity in the whole United States which is not represented WOMEN S SENIOR HALL 16

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of each other which they themselves possessed. Gone is the old family spirit, and gone forever the old close association which formed the sacred bond among the graduates of former years. Students who graduate from the present University will never be able to get together as the Alumni of the older classes do to celebrate the recollection of old studies and old pranks with the perfect certainty that their classmates cherish the same recollections as themselves. Every student of those former days knew every professor, and classroom peculiarities of professor and student alike form part of the common recollection of all. North Hall steps was a meeting-place for all the students, and all were able to have their voice on social and athletic questions. Athletic contests absorbed the interest of all the students, for the teams were chosen from a smaller number, and the athletic hero was known to all his classmates. It was not so very long ago that an Alumnus of ' the University of California was heard to assert in an Alumni banquet at Los Angeles his horror that his son at the University of California was not personally acquainted with all his classmates. It sounded like irony that such a protest should be made in the city of Los Angeles, where the transformation from the small, sleepy. half-Spanish town of thirty years ago. where every one knew each other, into the great bust- ling metropolis of Southern Cali- fornia, too large for village intimacy, is one of the marvels of modern American life and a just source of pride to the intelligent citizen of that great modern community. But the greater university with its larger number of students has something to offer in compensation for the loss of the old intimacy of small college life. From the strictly educational side, it offers far wider opportunities. It is not only that more courses are offered and that more professors are employed ; it is not only that more subjects are taught and that wider differences in methods of teaching are used : it is not only that the Library has grown and that NEAR PRESIDENT ' S MANSION 15

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in the University of California. He can find among his classmates men from many countries and many races : he can join societies that represent even- group of religious or medical or social beliefs: he can find an opportunity to put forth his views in all kinds of debating clubs and all sorts of journals. Over against the single publication of the Bu E AXD GOLD and the single representation of Skull and Keys plays, he can now read and contribute to all sorts of student publications and can go to student plays almost every month of the college vear. In the place of the two or three social entertainments of the old college. ENTRANCE TO PKESIDENT 5 GARDENS which could only be successful when every one attended, no week now passes without a sufficient number of social entertainments of every sort and kind and at every variety or degree of pretentiousness, from the simple basket picnic to the elaborate dancing functions. Those who knew and loved the simplicity of the old days are horrified with the complexity of interests of the new generation and fail to see that this complexity is the inevitable outcome of the growth of the University. Nowhere is this more striking than in the domain of athletics. The Regents of the University have not only to provide for more lecture rooms and laboratories to meet the increased number of students, but they must sooner 17