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

Page 31 text:

The Charter Day speakers take their places on the stage. In 1853, Congress gave the state of California 46,000 acres of public lands to be used for a of learning. Nine years later, the Morrill Act offered a grant of 150,000 acres of land to those states which would establish an and mechanical arts college. So in 1866, the Legislature chartered an Mining, and Mechanical Arts College. The founders of the College of California offered buildings and lands to this school, on the condition that a complete University be established. This offer was accepted and Governor H. H. Haight, on March 23, 1868, the date celebrated each year as Charter Day, signed the new act into law. The University was open for instruction by September, 1869 at the College of California site in Oakland, while buildings were being constructed at Berkeley. In 1962, the University was honored to have the late President John F. Kennedy as its Charter Day speaker. Last year, Walter Schirra, U. S. Astronaut, spoke to the audience on the importance of the space age. Adlai Stevenson Chancellor Strong The banners of each graduating class are displayed in the Alumni procession.

Page 30 text:

Charter Day U Thant Charter Day ceremonies began with a formal procession. Last to enter the Greek Theater was the president ' s delegation. President Kerr The University ' s ninety-sixth anniversary was celebrated April 2, with the appearance of U Thant, Secretary General of the United Nations. He and his official party were honored at a dinner party in San Francisco that evening, sponsored by the Berkeley Alumni Association. Charter Day is an important date to University of California undergraduates, graduates, faculty and administration alike. It is the day when the anniversary of the establishment of the is celebrated. Three separate movements in the founding of UC on March 23, 1868 — one originating in state action, one in private initiative, and one in federal legislation. In 1853, a group of Congregationalists and Presbyterians, led by Reverend Henry Durant and Reverend Samuel Hopkins Willey, opened a college school, the Contra Costa Academy, in Oakland. In 1855, they incorporated the College of California, and two years later received the tract of land north of Oakland. The townsite near this tract was given the name Berkeley.

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President Kerr Once more Blue and Gold captures and preserves a year rich in student traditions and activities for you who have helped to make it memorable. Nineteen Sixty-four will be remembered as a decisive year for the Berkeley no less than of the current graduating class. In the future, many students who might have elected to study at Berkeley will attend the newer of the University, for Berkeley will have reached its maximum enrollment. Each year will continue to bring new students, but the total number will stand at the present level. You who are members of the Class of 1964 have become alumni of the University of California and in that capacity you are a special group with a special role to perform. You can bring a sense of the community to the University, and at the same time interpret the meaning of the University to the larger public. And the essential meaning of the University is contained in the fundamental values to which all universities are committed: devotion to truth; respect for fact; cultivation of reason. I hope this year ' s Blue and Gold, in keeping alive for you the memories of your student years, will also remind you of those unchanging values. Clark Kerr