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ADDRESS BY OSCAR SUTRO, PRESIDENT OF THE ALUMNI

ASSOCIATION

The noble structure we are about to dedicate is a monument to a great President, to a greater University, and to its greater Alumni. Under the vitalizing touch of our President our colleges have gradually asserted a forward place in the world of universities. He came to us in 1899, seventeen years ago. We were an institution of no mean proportion it is true, with an enrollment of 2500 students. We were vigorous, willing and liberally supported by the State. President Wheeler has changed us into a great University, which even now numbers 6000 men and women. The institution is animated by the spirit of a great university. No finer or more fundamental thing is taught on the campus today, or will be taught in these halls, if the wise policy of our President is continued, than that which created student self-government and all that its perfection will imply. And that is symbolic of the spirit that rules the University Faculty. Education in facts and things, as Stephen Girard said, rather than in words and signs; or as it has been well put, education in the obvious has become more necessary than investigation of the obscure. To teach knowledge of the conduct of man to man is ever near the thought of our President. It is because President Wheeler peculiarly values the importance of this aspect of collegiate education and because this building symbolizes the growth of our university and of its aims along these lines as well as those of intellectual development that we as alumni rejoice that it is to bear the name of, and honor, Benjamin Ide Wheeler.

The building is a monument to a rejuvenated body of alumni, a body rejuvenated by the work of the last Council and its President, Allen Chickering. It may fairly be said to be the first of the fruits of a tribute laid at the feet of their Alma Mater by loyal sons and daughters. In 1914

the need for additional class rooms was so urgent that an initiative amendment to the State constitution to provide $1,800,000 by the issue of bonds for additional buildings was presented. It was proposed to the voters by petition circulated and signed at the instance of thousands of alumni. A systematic and well ordered campaign was put into operation. By September 1914, every city in the state had its local chairman and publicity director. The state was flooded with literature, showing the desperate need for further buildings. Teachers of all schools were circularized and their help secured. Precinct organizations were created in all the larger cities, and buttonholing brigades organized. The support of our sister university was enlisted and enthusiastically given. The country press was flooded with editorials appropriate to local situations and to furnishing the weary editor with copy. With excellent tact arguments showing the necessity of the buildings were made in detail for those voters who could understand them. For others it was merely explained that to authorize the bonds would not increase taxes of the voters, but that under the revised financial system of the state the burden of debt would fall on the corporations. That argument was most effective. Indeed, the political machine of our graduates was perfectly built, oiled and run. It was a labor of love well done. The election on November 11, 1914, showed an affirmative of 415,020 in favor of the bonds. It was a vote for higher education. The only total affirmative vote that surpassed the vote on the University bond issue out of the fifty-odd propositions submitted to the people was the vote against prohibition. Politicians will find an analysis of the fact of interest. The majority for the bonds was 175,688. The amendment to permit Alameda County to contribute to the Panama-Pacific Exposition almost alone received a larger majority. This amendment, also, it will be observed, cast no burden on the other fiftyseven counties that voted for it. It is a safe deduction from the returns of this election that voters are ready for

public improvement no matter what it costs the other fellow.

The work of the Alumni has only begun. It is for the Alumni to make still more dear to the people of the State the University which the State so generously supports and which is enshrined in the hearts of the half million people who voted for its enlargement. As the University grows, it is for the Alumni to foster and nourish the college spirit which is the flower of university life, and which, unless carefully guarded, may chill and wither in the ever increasing crowds of students. The Alumni must become an institution. The spirit of the Alumni must continue the spirit of college life.

And now North Hall goes, Wheeler Hall comes. Dear old North Hall! whose very steps are carpeted with memories and traditions.

Emblematic is old North Hall of the old University of California, of its intimacies, its plainness, its crudities, its democracy. Emblematic of the growth and increasing splendor of the University is its successor, Wheeler Hall. I might say, "The king is dead. Long live the king!" But North Hall lived, not merely in its rickety old walls, but in its traditions and recollections, and these we of the alumni now house anew in Wheeler Hall, stately and beautiful, and soon to grow to its place together with the hills and oaks of Berkeley in the hearts of the loving sons and daughters of California. For California alumni I fondly paraphrase the prediction that stars will grow cold before this building shall have ceased to be, and the noble work to which it is consecrated shall have been finished.

REMARKS INTRODUCING PROFESSOR LEUSCHNER

The Alumni body may be considered as the superstructure of the University. The real foundation, may I say the props that sustain the superstructure, are found in the Faculty body, for it is really the foundation of the training and the educational value of the University, and as

an able exponent of the Faculty it affords me pleasure (if the form is necessary) to introduce to you Professor Leuschner, Dean of the Graduate School, representing the Faculty of the University.

ADDRESS BY ARMIN O. LEUSCHNER

On October 26, 1914, at a regular meeting of the Academic Council embracing in its membership all of our faculties at Berkeley, there was enacted (over yonder) in California Hall a simple but never to be forgotten academic ceremony, a ceremony as sincere as it was spontaneous. The occasion was the completion on the previous day by Benjamin Ide Wheeler of fifteen years of devoted service as President of the University of California. While a few of us were gathered around the lunch table at the Faculty Club, in the heart of the University family, from which so many real and good things have come to the University, plans were laid to turn the next regular monthly meeting of the Council, then but three days off, into an informal family celebration in recognition of the importance of the event. The one obstacle in the way, the promptness with which the President is accustomed to take the chair, was overcome by causing his Secretary to detain him. At the Council meeting it was my privilege to direct attention to the significance of the day, to move the suspension of the regular business and the appointment of Dean David P. Barrows to address the President in behalf of the Council. To Professor Henry Morse Stephens, the lifelong friend and associate of the President, fell the honorable mission of escorting him into the presence of the Council. In turning over the chair to the President, the temporary chairman, Professor Andrew C. Lawson, in a few simple words acquainted him with the purposes of the Council and then Dean Barrows spoke for us. He reviewed the fifteen years of loyal and distinguished service of the President; he emphasized the unity of the institution as expressed by the

firm bonds uniting students, faculty, and regents and brought about by the President's wise guidance; he proclaimed the flourishing condition of the University in scholarly work and numbers which has given it rank among the first institutions of learning in the world; and finally, in words coming from the fullness of his heart, he assured the President of the loyalty, affection, and admiration of the faculties. The members of the faculty seconded his every word by remaining standing throughout his address.

Well do I remember the President standing before us as he started to respond, his eyes moist, his voice trembling, his heart thrilled with the unexpected, but oh! so welcome, ovation following Dean Barrows' address. Welcome ovation, I say, for was this not the first time in a long fifteen years that a unanimous expression of appreciation of the faculties in meeting assembled had been given? To whom would it not have been welcome after so many years of uncertain toil? We knew without his assurance that it was the supreme moment of his life.

What was enacted in the intimate faculty circle less than two years past, we are today reaffirming in the wider family circle of the University, embracing regents, faculty, students, and alumni, yea indeed before the eyes of the state and the world.

But this occasion on which the cornerstone is being laid of the first building of a new group to rise above the ground as a token of the belief of the people of the State in their university, is also a welcome opportunity for the faculty to express its appreciation to the State of California for its generosity and to the alumni of the University through whose loyalty the initiative measure giving us these sadly-needed buildings was carried to success. This is also a welcome opportunity to do homage and to express our deepest gratitude to that first woman citizen of the State, Mrs. Phoebe Apperson Hearst, through whose wise foresight the home of the University will be as perfect in design and as harmonious in artistic creation, as the truths

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