University of Massachusetts Amherst - Index Yearbook (Amherst, MA)

Page 17 text:

We the students, faculty and administrators of the University of Massachusetts in 1955-1956 have been honored in seeing the first fulfillments of years of dreaming and planning. We have been new dormitories built to house the rapidly increasing student population; we have witnessed the beginnings of a new classroom building and Student Union which will more adequately satisfy the academic and social needs of the campus and, what is most important of all, we have sensed changes in University policy, a dynamic and accommodating force to meet the needs of our dy- namic culture. As we view our campus and see the barren girders of its future classrooms reach- ing upward to the heavens, eager to be clothed, we realize that we too are structures, strong but unfinished.

Page 16 text:

J t)t) t)0— a year of building, a year of change at the University of Massachusetts. We have progressed since 1863 when the Commonwealth, accepting the provisions of the 1862 Morrill Land Grant Act, founded the Agricultural College at Amherst. Five years later when the College was first opened to students, there was a teaching staff of four persons on a campus consisting only of four wooden buildings. A notable stride was made when, by legislative enactment in 1931, the name of the institution was changed to Massachusetts State College. And then, in May, 1947 the College became the University of Massachusetts. Dreams were dreamed; plans were made.

Page 18 text:

■f— dm sl r l 1 ! fl 1 - Step right up and try your strength! lust be trouble parking! Begun from a mass of Potentialed bricks We are but a promise of Future fulfillment Foundation dated With merely The Future A base straining upward And setting no limits. Fog-soft impressions And vivid-sharp dreams. Classes that bored And ones that inspired — These are the things That in sharing built us . . . As the warm rains washed away our winter blanket of snow, figures in familiar yellow and red slickers and brown trench coats sloshed through the mud to the Engineering Building, Liberal Arts, Draper and the C Store. April had come to our Amherst campus bringing the promise and warmth of Spring, the budding of flowers, and the budding of ideas. For the first time in University history centralized voting was used in an all-campus election of class officers and senators-at- large. The Senate took another step in the direction of more democratic and elastic student government by adopting a revised system of Student Government by-laws, new laws to amend our constitution and meet the changing needs of a changing campus.