University of Michigan - Michiganensian Yearbook (Ann Arbor, MI)

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HIS college year, the seventy-second of our Alma Mater, has been one of marked progress in obvious phases and one in which our advances of the sort which appear le s readily to cursory observation have been in certain respects unprecedented. The buildings going up, our greater enrolment, now given as ...inn. give rise to wholesome satisfaction, but we ask that Michigan ' s enhanced equipment and Michigan ' s swelling numbers be chiefly consid- ered ns the pn duct, not the cau-e of our claim to attention. For this University ' s activity is not ne in which a student body and a faculty of inferior ability and ideals are doing a work unworthy of the magnitude of their institution ' s endowed equipment. When Michigan ' s equipment is enlarged, it is because the character of our work, already done, has conclusively proven that we have the capacity to put better facilities to sane scholarly use. It is because work has already been here so done that its larger and more advanced continuation is a logical sequence. When recurring sea- sons find new structures of brick and stone risen on this campus, they find struc- tures which have timely arisen to house a vigorous, soundly grown Michigan not structures kindly doled out to encourage a dawdling, dilletante Michigan to do some- thing worthy of its home. Michigan ' s buildings and size suggest not what she ought to do, but what she has done and is doing. Hence, our satisfaction over our new buildings is allowable, and a brief mention of them can be made with pride which is not mere vaunting. The new Dental Building, ample, convenient and complete, stands across North University and Washtenaw Avenues from Harbour Gymnasium. It has become the home of its Department since the year ' s beginning. On the summit of Observatory Hill surmounting a sixty-eight foot tower, looms the huge copper dome beneath which are being assembled and adjusted the parts of the new reflecting telescope. This telescope has a Cassegrain focal length of sixty feet, and with its reflector it will be possible to use spectroscopes of an equal power with those employed on the largest existing refractors. The excavation for a lengthening and widening of the Marine Tank wing of the New Engineering building is nearly finished. Two stories of the iron-spot brick and Bedford limestone walls of the New Chemistry Building are laid. The building is located on the east side of a proposed Mall running north from the Library to North University Avenue: its western face, 230 feet, is on the Mall, and the north end, 130 feet, is in line with the front of Harbour Gymnasium. Such attention has been paid to ventilating, wiring and plumbing that few if any labora- tories in the country will rank with it. Si uth of the Museum, the beautiful facade of the Alumni Memorial Hall stands finished. Seemly simplicity and dignity have been insisted upon throughout, and such sense of harmony, unity and proportion has controled the disposition of parts and the relations of outline that the whole, esthetically and fitly expresses the lofty sentiment by which the undertaking was inspired. This incomplete survey of our material advance leads to a consideration of the real University activity which made it inevitable. Our press has shared and aided in our progress. The Daily has become a live forum for a discussion of campus problems; giving them emphasis and attention in ratio with their importance. Not unduly emphasizing any one interest it has met, broadly and sincerely, the questions in its field, and its aggressiveness, openness and square facing of interests have given it a place in campus esteem and an influence which are more than a vogue. The Alumnus has welded Michigan sentiment, given mature discussion to Michigan problems and urged policies with judgment. It has increased in circulation until it is not approached in this respect by any similar pub- lication in America. A student literary monthly, the Gargoyle, has been founded

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c y. S u K O I

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in response to a feeling that the undoubted talent here could make such a magazine a meritorious success. In other spheres: the Student ' s Lecture Association has brought to University Hall a line of speakers of national and international prominence; among them, S. S. McClure, Ida M. Tarbell, John Mitchell, Charlemange Tower, and Justice David J. Brewer of the United States Supreme Court; among the Choral Union members were Marcella Sembrich, Anatole Bronstein and Ossip Gabrilowitsch. For the Sixteenth May Festival have been engaged the Theodore Thomas Orchestra, Herbert Wither- spoon, and conspicuous artists new to Ann Arbor. To attempt to enumerate all the distinct achievements in which the progressing University activity has expressed itself is not here necessary, later portions of the book do that, and the accomplished-fact side of these in their number, diversity and quality is not the side which this article would emphasize. We do not so fear a decline and failure of powers that we want a record on which to depend, stand, or rest. Our chief concern is in the present accomplishing of students and faculty in that growing, that kinetic doing, that life which is the Michigan we value. Attempts to define Michigan Spirit have not been successful, perhaps this is be- cause an attempt to define, is an attempt to set boundaries, to establish confines; and this assertive, Michigan something, raises havoc with all endeavor to hermetically enclose it. We can not wisely predict or set limits to its future. We can only indicate the present trend. It is undoubtedly the greatest essential of a University that it build character. That is the bed rock on which all superstructures must have foundation. Yet essential manhood and womanhood, composed of courage, loyalty, kindness, and readiness to serve are not the unique University product. Other institutions of so- ciety do quite as good a work in this regard, and any belief that college advantages are necessary to soundest character is to be ascribed to lamentable academic bigotry. But the work of a true University in enlightening the world, in developing in- tellect, taste and democratic fellowship is not even approximated by any organiza- tion of other sort. So, though a University must insist upon character, in the soundest sense of the term, and Michigan does unsparingly insist, that is not all. There must be an additional attainment to entitle to University eminence. It is the distinction of Michigan: That though she has long found her peers in scholarship only among the highest, her doing is becoming more and more a doing which demands greater mental accuracy, penetration and grasp; for this, the raised standards, the higher requirements in the courses, the more trying examinations speak. That in spite of Ann Arbor ' s established position as the Athens of the West there is a remarkable livening of the doing whose function is the elevation of artis- tic tastes and standards; the creation of such an opera as Culture ; the remarkable production of The Admirable Crichton and the founding of the Ann Arbor Art Association, rev al something of this. That in spite of Michigan ' s recognized pre-eminence as a democratic University, there is under way a movement toward a more united comradeship surpassing the wisest anticipations of a few years past. The certain evidence and apparent hope of this movement is the Michigan Union. HOWARD C. HAWKINS.