COLLEGE HISTORY 



The entire history of a college can never be written. What 

 an institution is depends upon the ideals and activities of so many 

 individuals that none can trace results to their origin. At first a 

 thought in the mind of one, it is no sooner shared with another 

 than it begins to undergo modification, and as still others become 

 involved, it is further developed and elaborated. 



No college president may claim all of the credit or be charged 

 with all of the blame for his administration. Without his faculty 

 he can do but little that is constructive, and the latter cannot evade 

 a certain degree of responsibility for his errors. The members of 

 the governing board have a part, and often a dominant one, in 

 shaping the destiny of an institution. 



But the makers of college history are not limited to its offi- 

 cers; the student body itself has a considerable influence. You 

 may take a boy in college, but you cannot make him think as you 

 do, always; and the settled thought of a body of students will have 

 its effect on the management. Moreover, many of the students, 

 especially those who are graduated, continue to make college his- 

 tory for many years, or throughout a lifetime. One interested in 

 Alma Mater can help her in hundreds of little ways and sometimes 

 in a few large ones. 



The citizens of the state and the nation have in the aggregate 

 a large, in fact at times a determining effect upon a college. And 

 so we see that the history of a college cannot be completely 

 written, any more than we can trace all of the material atoms of a 

 tree to the rocks, winds, and waters that have held them. As a 

 flower crowns with beauty and perfume the unnumbered details of 

 chemical and physical processes, so our colleges are blossoms grow- 

 ing from the social order which characterizes modern civilization, 

 and who shall say to any: "Thou hadst no part in their produc- 

 tion?" 



The student body knows little of college history in the mak- 

 ing; even many of the faculty do not know what is going on, or ap- 

 preciate the significance of that of which they know. Those in 

 closest touch known only in part. Hence any one who writes college 

 history becomes at once the target for shafts of criticism and cor- 

 rection from those who have seen other things or seen through 

 other glasses. At several periods in the history of our College, 

 feeling has been scourged to such keenness of sensibility that judi- 

 cial consideration of the situation was impossible, and to write of 

 it now is almost to invite rejoinder and controversy. The general 



