University of Virginia - Corks and Curls Yearbook (Charlottesville, VA)

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COOQ- w mi-om 1 1915 Qlurks anti QEIIHS 29 The Student Body of the University of Virginia T is estimated that twenty thousand students have attended the Univer- sity of Virginia from the opening of its doors in l825 to the present time. These twenty thousand men are the real builders of the Unia versity. They are also its most effective and its most interesting asset. When I think of the University, when I attempt to visualize its past and its future, it is not the colonnaded beauty of the buildings that looms largest in my thought, though I have never seen a rarer blend of architectural dignity and distinction; it is not that historic hrst year, when one might. have seen Jefferson and Poe greeting each other on the steps of the Rotunda; it is not the Faculty, able and devoted as they have always been. It is this young, eager, unending student- democracy that grips my imagination. The academic world knows the Uni- versity of Virginia, as it knows every university, chiefly through its President and Faculty; but the man on the street, the world at large, knows it through the students that pass yearly from its halls to embody or to impeach the prin- ciples of their alma mater. Every community of co-workers develops sooner or later a community Spirit, a collective individuality. The French call it esprit de corps, but 1n the case of the University of Virginia I prefer the phrase of Ulrich von Hutten. He called it the iiGemeingeist unter freien Geistern, that equal temper of liberal minds which freedom and responsibility alone can quicken into life and which, when formed, is the most potent influence that a university can release. The Gemeingeistii is very strong at the University of Virginia, so strong that however little a student may learn from the established courses of study, he will learn much or at least absorb much from: the Constant teaching of the Gemeingeistf, alt is hard to analyze this communal spirit but when the Uni- versity of Virginia man looks back on his cdllege years he will agree with me, I think, that four elements stand out preEminent. ' a The first is 'courteSyga' Courtesy born of freedom, self-respect tnot selfa esteeml; and an unbroken de'mOcratiC traditiOn.' Wherever you find a Uni- versity of Virginia man you are pretty apt to hnola man who either broiJght a hne-flavored courtesy with him to the University or imbibed it unconSCiously from the iiGemeingeist. It is a courtesy not merely of form but of spirit, and

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i i '3 t 30 Qlurks ant! Qliutls 1915 it is as evident on the street or street car as it is in the ballroom or lecture hall: Students show it to one another as well as to their professors or to the casual Visitors who come upon the lawn. It is the tradition of the place. The utter absence of hazing is in part a cause and in part an expression of the spirit of courtesy. It is not true that first year men are severely or re- pellently let alone at the University. The only way- a first year man can queer himselff, says a prominent student, iiis by being fresh? The best thing for such a man is not to be maltreated but to be let alone till he finds himself. He will find himself and thus orient himself much more expeditiously by pass- ing through this period of social probation than by being either hazed or em- braced. Courtesy lies between hitting and hugging. The University does neither; and the new man is usually the first to recognize in after years both the justice and the helpfulness of this medial attitude. The devoted efforts that the students are now making to erect a monument to Per mother is, I think, a beautiful example of a sort of knightly courtesy that is none too common in these days. A student discovered a few years ago that the mother of the poet lay buried in the pauper section of old St. John's L in Richmond. Her burial place had strangely escaped the scrutiny of Poe's biographers, but there is no doubt now about the identification of the place. She died at the age of twenty-four with three little children, all to be dependent on charity, crying around her bedside. As soon as the graVe was found, a concerted effort was organized chiefly by the finder and the Raven Society to redeem the neglect of the past and to perpetuate the memory of Elizabeth Arnold Poe by a worthy monument. It was not the love of literature that prompted this action; it was something finer: it was courtesy, an ingrained, in- stinetive, and inspiring courtesy. I don,t wonder that the great sculptor, Paul Wayland Bartlett; said: This is the most beautiful project which has ever been brought to me. Another characteristic trait of the student body is responsiveness. . Every teacher knoWs what it means to talk to unresponsive men. Well, these men are nOt unresponsive. I am speaking, of course, from my own experience and observation here, which extend over only six years; but I have never known a student body more quickly or more cooperatively responsive tothe appeal of reason than the student body of the University of Virginia. Go to them with a proposition that has sense in it, appeal to their loyalty or to their honor or to their moral or intellectual stewardship and you may count on a generous and cooperant response.