University of Iowa - Hawkeye Yearbook (Iowa City, IA)

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PRESIDENT WALTER A. JESSUP m Page Twenty-two

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THE UNIVERSITY WHAT is the University of Iowa? Anybody can answer such a question with ease. The University of Iowa has a campus of three hundred acres, fifty buildings, five or six hundred instructors, eight thousand students, fifteen thou- sand graduates, and unnumbered thousands of former students. It has an excellent equipment, and . . . What? Oh, you mean what it is, not what it has. Well, that ' s not so easy. Doubtless it also is what it has: grounds, buildings, faculty, students, alumni all of these. What besides? Oh, it is a spirit of truth. When it ceases to be that, it will cease to be a university. Next? Well, next it is a fellowship of souls, searching together to learn what truth is. And then? And then it is personality charac- ter. It is a lofty human ideal. Still more? Well, perhaps it may be too much to say that it is God. At least it is in God. It is religion. Further yet? One can go no further. Then sum up the whole matter. It is Alma Mater, our Fostering Mother. B ecause she is all that she is that is the reason why we love her. Page Tvtrnty-tne

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I THE ALUMNI AND THE UNIVERSITY ONE of the greatest sources of satisfaction that conies to professors and adminis- trative officers of a great university arises from the filial affection of the alumni for their Alma Mater. One can not think of an American university without the alumni or conceive of its progress apart from their interest. From the old colonial days, with the founding of Harvard, Yale, Princeton, down to the present day the alumni of our university have played a prominent role. They are the fruits of the university ' s efforts; by them the institutions are to be judged. The alumni form an integral part of a university; you can not get away from this fact. The University of Iowa is proud of her sons and daughters and of the part they have taken in the life of the Commonwealth and of the Nation. Some of them stand at the very summit of state and national and world affairs. Those who have not attained to the heights have, in their modest way, served as leaven to elevate mankind. The University has served them well, and they are handing on the torch to genera- tion after generation of students. In the current Directory of Living Graduates of the University of Iowa upwards of 12,000 men and women are listed, and we are sending forth more than a thousand new graduates every year. Among them are doctors and lawyers, preachers and teachers, scientists and artists, bankers and farmers, engineers and merchants, writers, nurses, soldiers, homemakers they have entered into every field of human endeavor. Their influence has not been merely potential it has been very real. They are beloved of Old Gold. I sometimes wonder how many alumni realize to the full the service which they can and should render to the University. In the conferring of degrees the phrase- ology is employed : With all the rights, privileges, and obligations pertaining thereto here and elsewhere. These rights and privileges are tangible; so are the obligations. The fact is that the obligations of any educated person are very definite, particularly those of a graduate from a state-supported institution. The State of Iowa expends its millions upon the University because its people believe in the power of education in a commonwealth. In return the State has a right to expect something more than perfunctory service; men are too apt to take the state ' s bounty for granted. Not least among the obligations of the graduates and the former students of Iowa is the duty to maintain an understanding sympathy with the effort of the State to educate its citizenry. Fortunately the romantic bond which ties an alumnus to his Alma Mater tends to perpetuate this sympathy and make it effective. So long as such filial love continues, the power of the University to serve will live and increase. The University of Iowa believes in her alumni. I am much pleased that the editors have dedicated the 1926 Hawkeve to them. Page Tvitnty-thrtt