University of North Carolina Chapel Hill - Yackety Yack Yearbook (Chapel Hill, NC)

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T }t mninttsiiv End tl;t State. £m The University is the head of the educational system of the state. Its life has run for over a century, and it is our oldest public school. It is older than all the present political parties, and doubtless it will survive them all. As the life of to-day is more exacting, more complex and more all embracing than the life of half a century ago, so the university of to-day, being both product and factor of the larger life about it, is broader in its field of work, more intense in its training, freer from artifi- cial and conventional methods and standards and nearer to actual life than the university of former days. There is greater freedom in all things and greater .sys- tem in all things. There is better conduct with fewer rules for conduct. There is less compulsion by author- ity and more compulsion by public sentiment. There is less molding and more developing. The teacher no longer plaues, saws, hammers and chisels the pupil into the required conventional shape, but teacher and student are both students, both teachers, companions, fellow-laborers in the great work of self-development. The university imposes no rigid nor uniform curric- ulum of study. Within reasonable limits each student may select to suit his tastes, talents or necessities. If a degree is sought, the candidite must not only lay the broad foundation of gene ral culture and learning, but must also demonstrate his power of original thought and prolonged investigation by some larger perform- ance than is involved in class-room work. The uni- versity requires for graduation to-day nearly twice as much work as it formerly did, and the quality of the work is even more improved. The university is daily coming into closer touch with the life of the state. It realizes that it exists for the good of the state. The problems before it are the problems that confront the state : problems of crime, of pauperism, of social unhappiness and disorder. It is training minds and training hearts and training bodies that will solve these problems. Its immediate ta.sk, and possibly its greatest, is to build up a system of education whereby each child in the state may achieve the largest possible development of all its faculties. It recognizes its right and its duty to be the head and heart of a life-giving system of education which carries cheer to the humblest cabin, strength to the weakest child, faith and hope to all that love human- ity. For this task it has girt its loins ; in this task it now labors with the zeal that comes from noble im- pulses and the confidence that is inspired by the clear perception of a splendid truth. It will not rest until the coals of learning from its altars have kindled fires that illumine the state. i6

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OLD EAST. CAMPUS VIEW.

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TItc (HWtl Hill mtsian. Manj ' years before the location here of the Univer- sity the place had become fairly well known as a camp- ing ground for the wagoners between Newbern and Salisbury ; between Petersburg and Pittsboro and other places to the south. The famous spring from which they drank is still to be found near the southwest cor- ner of the campus ; a small chapel stood on the lot now occupied by Mrs. Graves ' residence. The two most noted hills on the roads from Petersburg and from Newbern were those leading up to this camping ground. The old Strowd hill (recently abandoned), on what is now called the Durham road, and the hill on the Raleigh road (now also abolished), lying to the north of Piney Prospect. In view of these conditions it is easy to understand how the place came to be called Chapel Hill; and doubtle.ss many a wagoner commented on the appro- priateness of the name when, after a hard struggle, late in the afternoon, he reached the camping ground at the summit and greeted a fellow wagoner who, even after a harder pull, had just brought his loaded wagon up the other hill. Here, after swapping stories (and perhaps horses), these wearj ' travelers would rest under the shade of the oaks, already then more than a cen- tury old, and which for another century since have given pleasure and comfort to thousands of the young men from this and other States. Doubtless then, as now, everyone who has stopped on this hill long enough to drink the pure and never-failing water, to feel the delightful breezes that move across these hills, to enjoj the shade of these splendid trees, and to see the pic- turesque nooks and brooks that abound, has departed with regret. But few students during their college course tramp over the region around Chapel Hill as they should, and among those who were here years ago I often hear expressed the regret that they had not done more of this. Indeed, the life of the average student illustrates how one-sided an affair the ordinary education is. The average man, though himself a part of nature, seems to go through life with the feeling that, outside of him- self and his fellow-men, there is but little in nature worthy of his consideration. If everj- student who so comes to the University would, during his college life, spend one afternoon per week tramping over the hills and through the ravines within a few miles of the place, not .so much with a view to getting exercise, but with an earnest eifort to learn something about the .soils and the rocks, the springs and the wells and the trees and the shrubs and the flowers and the animals which may come in his way, he would not only come to be a more observant man, but he would gain a fund