Author Archives: lisa

’32 football team first to be called Red Raiders (p. 311)

Posted on June 21, 2012 | Comments Off on ’32 football team first to be called Red Raiders (p. 311)
1932 Football Team, Sports-12, p311

The coaches were: Richard C. Harlow (1922-26), George W. Hauser (1926-27), Earl C. Abell, ’16 (1928), and Andrew “Andy” Kerr (1929-46). All made genuine contributions but it was Andy and his teams who became legendary. His gridiron innovations, which he insisted be executed with mathematical precision, and the impact of his character on his players are a legacy of great value.

The outstanding 1932 team will always be remembered in Colgate annals as “unbeaten, untied, unscored on,-and uninvited” to play in the post-season Rose Bowl game. This team incidentally was the first to be called “Red Raiders.” Their new uniforms of maroon pants, white jerseys trimmed with maroon, and white helmets were responsible for the designation which all successive football teams have borne. The unbeaten 1925 team inaugurated a 23-year period in which Colgate either defeated or tied its arch-rival, Syracuse. Hamilton College reappeared on the schedule for the last time in 1926 and ’27. Four

Comments Off on ’32 football team first to be called Red Raiders (p. 311)

Posted in Chapter 14, p. 311, The Cutten Period 1922-1942, timeline

Tagged ,

p. 310 – The Cutten Period, 1922-1942

Posted on June 21, 2012 | Comments Off on p. 310 – The Cutten Period, 1922-1942
John F. (Jack) Rourke, Bio File, p310
                     
Andrew (Andy) Kerr, A0999-1, Folder 9, p310

 

Dr. (Doc) Ellery C. Huntington, Bio File, p310

Comments Off on p. 310 – The Cutten Period, 1922-1942

Posted in Chapter 14, p. 310, The Cutten Period 1922-1942

Seven Oaks golf course completed (p. 309)

Posted on June 21, 2012 | Comments Off on Seven Oaks golf course completed (p. 309)

had lived before migrating to the United States, was completed in 1928. The next year James Dalgety came as the first coach and golf professional. When new Huntington Gymnasium pool, the gift of James C. Colgate, was put in use, swimming was added as a sport in1926 under the coaching of J. Howard Starr of the Physical Education Department.

Dr. Cutten sought to foster winter sports, especially as an outlet for student energy. Hockey which had an intermittent existence since 1916, partly because winter weather sometimes failed to provide the necessary ice, returned in 1928 as a minor sport and in 1929 had become a permanent part of the program. Ten years later skiing gained recognized athletic status and won popularity under the sponsorship of David W. Trainer, of the Geology Department, a Dartmouth alumnus who as an undergraduate had been active in the Dartmouth Outing Club. In appreciation of his efforts the ski slope behind the Huntington Gymnasium was named Trainer Hill.

In addition to the required two years of freshman-sophomore physical education, Colgate in 1930 introduced an intramural program. Supervised by the Physical Education Department, it afforded all students opportunity for athletic competition on the basis of fraternities and other groups and elicited a wide response. Several sports, such as golf, tennis, handball, squash, and swimming were stressed as those which could be carried over into the post-college years.

Colgate’s football record of the ’20’s and ’30’s matched, and in some instances surpassed, that of the preceding decades. Students, alumni, faculty, trustees, and townspeople shared in giving the team enthusiastic support. There probably were no followers more eager than the President of the University and the President of the Trustees. Dr. Cutten, the former Yale center, who occasionally took a hand in coaching, could always be relied on for rousing speeches at student and alumni rallies; Mr. Colgate repeatedly stressed the ideals of good sportsmanship, as well as the “will to win” theme. The editor of the Alumni News, recognizing in 1927 that at Colgate and many other colleges there was undue emphasis on football, believed that instead of trying to “drive the customers away from the side-show” greater effort should be made to get them interested in the “main tent”-i.e. the intellectual life of the college. In developing the Colgate Plan the University was attempting to demonstrate the worth of this approach.

Comments Off on Seven Oaks golf course completed (p. 309)

Posted in Chapter 14, p. 309, The Cutten Period 1922-1942, timeline

Tagged , , ,

Civilian pilot training program is introduced in response to WWII (p. 308)

Posted on June 21, 2012 | Comments Off on Civilian pilot training program is introduced in response to WWII (p. 308)

thus enabling each house to admit a larger number. Lack of an adequate freshman dining hall delayed putting the recommendations into effect until 1937 when the Student Union Building was opened.

The outbreak of World War II impinged rather little on the usual student interests and activities though the undergraduates were alert to the rush of events. Many were somewhat prone to be skeptical over reports they read, fearing they would become victims of propaganda as they felt the World War I generation had been. By the fall of 1940 Colgate had established a Civilian Pilot Training program under contract with the Civil Aeronautics Authority. The unit had a flying field on Route 20 between Madison and Bouckville, three planes and three instructors, and members of the Physics and Geology Departments taught the ground school courses. Initially 30 students enrolled and up to June, 1942, 159 had completed the program, most of whom made war careers of flying.

The news of Pearl Harbor came shortly before a Christmas Vesper Service at which the Rev. William F. Davison, ’23, preached on “Home for Christmas” to a shocked congregation far removed from the happy spirit associated with the season. As they left the Chapel in the soft white snow-the first of the season-they faced the future with uncertainty. Students were counseled to remain in college to complete as much of their education as possible before going into service. Colgate, like most colleges, adopted an accelerated academic program early in January, 1942, which provided for a three-term year and enabled the Class of 1943 to graduate six months ahead of schedule. Learning and teaching took on a new seriousness. Hamilton’s first blackout, the initial visit of the Red Cross bloodmobile, the collection of scrap metal, new wartime courses such as Map Reading, Democracies and Dictatorships, and Military German, and the presentation of a service flag by the Class of 1932, all served to remind students and faculty that the nation and its colleges were at war, Colgate among them.

The preceding two decades had seen great expansion of the athletic program. Golf was introduced in 1923, though for some years before students had, played on the old course, bounded roughly by the quarry, cemetery and President’s House, which had been constructed in 1917 on the initiative of some faculty and townspeople. A new course, incorporating and expanding the old one and named Seven Oaks for the village in Kent, England, near which the Colgate family

Comments Off on Civilian pilot training program is introduced in response to WWII (p. 308)

Posted in Chapter 14, p. 308, The Cutten Period 1922-1942, timeline

Tagged ,

Fraternity houses built (p. 307)

Posted on June 21, 2012 | Comments Off on Fraternity houses built (p. 307)

organized in 1923, became Gamma Omicron of Sigma Chi in 1930 and Delta Pi Sigma, a local founded in 1928, which became Alpha Upsilon of Phi Kappa Tau in 1937. Thanks to the loyalty of alumni brothers and mortgages, nine of the original eleven fraternities constructed new houses during the period-Beta Theta Pi, 1923; Phi Gamma Delta, 1924; Theta Chi, 1926;  Nu, 1927; Phi Delta Theta, 1927; Alpha Tau Omega, 1928; Lambda Chi Alpha, 1930; Kappa Delta Rho, 1930; and Delta Upsilon, 1931. The Theta Chi house has the distinction of having been the old Hamilton Female Seminary building until that school closed in 1891; it was subsequently used as a summer boarding house and in its later years stood abandoned.

Non-fraternity men had formed various loosely knit organizations to meet their social needs and had been given the use of the social room in West Hall. It was not until 1927, however, that, under the leadership of Edward M. Vinten, ’28, they succeeded in establishing a permanent group, the Colgate Commons Club. It had exclusive use of the West Hall lounge and provided fellowship and recreation for many students who could not afford fraternity membership or for other reasons had not joined the Greek letter societies.

To assist the local chapters in dealing with their problems, several alumni in 1928 formed the Fraternity Alumni Council of Colgate University (Interfraternity Alumni Council) with Frank M. Williams, ’95, as president and Carlton O. Miller, ’14, as secretary. They sought through a sharing of ideas and experience to encourage scholarship among the undergraduate brothers, to assist in constructing fraternity houses and improving business practices, to bring about a more satisfactory tax policy on their real estate, to improve communication and relations among fraternity alumni, parents, faculty, administration and local residents, to aid bringing new fraternities to the campus, and to promote good fellowship among alumni of all the fraternity groups. Their work was to be most helpful.

Dissatisfaction with rushing and pledging procedures eventually led, in 1934, to an investigation by a Trustee Committee headed by William M. Parke, ’00. The committee concluded that the problem stemmed primarily from the inability of fraternities, through lack of facilities, to accommodate more than 60 percent of the student body though a great many more wanted the advantages of fraternity life. Drawing on the experience of Dartmouth they recommended that the rushing and pledging be deferred until the end of the freshman year,

Comments Off on Fraternity houses built (p. 307)

Posted in Chapter 14, p. 307, The Cutten Period 1922-1942

Tagged , , , ,

‘Colgate Thirteen’ is organized (p. 306)

Posted on June 21, 2012 | Comments Off on ‘Colgate Thirteen’ is organized (p. 306)

of the English Department and coach. Despite the limited facilities of the Little Theater in the Administration Building and later in Lawrence Hall, Masque and Triangle, the dramatic society, staged some notable productions under his direction. The actual performances were usually given in the village “opera house” or movie theater.

Under the leadership of Professor Hoerrner and, after his retirement in 1934, Professor Thomas Roberts, the Glee Club received wide support and held to its customary high standards. Its quartet made the first commercial recording of Colgate songs in 1926 and in 1929 for the first time the Club gave a joint concert with a girls’ chorus, the Skidmore Glee Club. A smaller and more informal singing group, the Colgate Thirteen, was organized in July, 1942, “to spread Colgate spirit through song.” Beta Theta Pi inaugurated its annual intrafraternity song contest in the spring of 1930. The first of a series of student musical comedies was produced in 1935.

The highlight of the debating program was probably the team’s successful trip to English universities in 1924. Cambridge and Oxford teams visited the campus on their American trips. Able students and effective coaches-Carl A. Kallgren, ’17, Ralph E. Kharas, Lawrence A. Appley, and Jasper (Jack) V. Garland-combined to make excellent records.

The YMCA, renamed successively Colgate University Christian Union and Colgate Christian Association, played an active part in student religious life, especially under the sponsorship of Dr. Alton and Secretaries Shotts and Gregory. After the latter’s resignation in 1933 students with some faculty assistance took greater responsibilities. The Association arranged in 1936 for the first of the all-campus Mother’s Day weekend programs which Beta Theta Pi had inaugurated in 1933.

The two honorary senior societies, Skull and Scroll and Gorgon’s Head, in 1925 vainly attempted to merge as the Mercurius Society in an effort to eliminate campus politics in selecting members. Seven years later, however, they succeeded in consolidating as Konosioni which emphasized service to Colgate as well as recognition for athletic and other attainments. Acknowledgment of freshman and sophomore campus leaders came with the formation of the Maroon Key Club, a junior honorary society, in 1931.

Fraternity life was in its heyday in the 1920’s and ’30’s. Two were added to those already on campus-Theta Pi Delta, a local group

Comments Off on ‘Colgate Thirteen’ is organized (p. 306)

Posted in Chapter 14, p. 306, The Cutten Period 1922-1942, timeline

Tagged , , , , , , , , ,

p. 305 – The Cutten Period, 1922-1942

Posted on June 21, 2012 | Comments Off on p. 305 – The Cutten Period, 1922-1942

freshman caps, attendance at cheer and song practice, and in general maintaining campus traditions, was taken over by the Sophomore Vigilance Committee in 1930. Paddling was a common punishment for violating the rules to be found in the Frosh Bible. By 1939 the senior honorary society, Konosioni, had assumed the duties of the sophomore committee.

Undergraduate support of the honor system had so declined by 1922 that on recommendation of the Students’ Association the faculty abolished it. Many undergraduates had come to believe that the crime was not so much cheating as being caught. Later college generations sought unsuccessfully to create sufficient public sentiment to revive the no-proctoring arrangements.

Interclass rivalry was a marked feature of student life in the ’20’s, especially between the Freshmen and sophomores, as had been true in the past. From time to time it was channeled into supervised events such as athletic competitions, the salt rush, and the pushball contest but the most violent encounters were likely to come when the classes held their banquets, usually off-campus, and before Moving Up Day in the spring. In 1923 they pelted each other in the center of the village with decayed eggs and the next year repeated the performance on two successive nights, on the second of which nearly the whole student body seems to have joined them. Irate businessmen with befouled storefronts and innocent bystanders who had been in “line of fire” demanded an end to such misbehavior and town and gown efforts averted it thereafter. The normal relations between students and merchants were very cordial and the latter were among the staunchest supporters of many campus activities, including athletics.

The undergraduate publications of the preceding years continued in the Cutten period. The Maroon editors by the middle ’20’s gave more space to non-athletic news items than formerly and in the spring of 1924 introduced “The Weeping Willow,” a column of comment and gossip which lasted until the fall of 1940 and at times gave considerable spice to the paper. The Salmagundi changed from a Junior to a Senior yearbook in 1934. Banter, the humor magazine, enjoyed the distinction of being suspended by the faculty in 1928 for publishing “objectionable” jokes. The literary magazine, The Willow Path, expired in 1931 for lack of support.

Dramatics made a strong bid for student attention. Russell F. Speirs, a Syracuse graduate in 1923, joined the faculty that year as a member

Comments Off on p. 305 – The Cutten Period, 1922-1942

Posted in Chapter 14, p. 305, The Cutten Period 1922-1942

Tagged , , , , ,

p. 304 – The Cutten Period, 1922-1942

Posted on June 21, 2012 | Comments Off on p. 304 – The Cutten Period, 1922-1942

Sponsored by the chapter, the Phi Society elected annually those sophomores whose first year’s work merited recognition for excellence. Nine members of the Class of 1931 became its initial members in December 1928.

Since the A.B., B.S., and B.Th. degrees were nearly equivalent the faculty in 1926 decided upon one degree, the A.B., with uniform requirements; the B.D. was retained for theological students who had taken two extra years. With the increasing emphasis on the undergraduate work the faculty came to recognize that the college was not prepared to maintain programs for the master’s degrees in arts and science, which had never attracted many students, and in 1926 gradually began to eliminate them; ten years later they had disappeared.

Enrollment in the College in the Cutten period showed a steady gain, save a slight decrease in the Depression years 1932-35, with the total rising from 664 in 1922 to a high of 1,092 in 1939 and declining to 1007 in 1942. Seminary enrollment stayed at about 60 until the removal to Rochester in 1928. It was in the fall of 1930, however, that the enrollment reached the 1,000 mark. Though the totals after 1930 frequently went beyond the 1,000 limit set by the Trustees in 1924 the excess was slight and attrition through the academic year was sufficient to prevent serious overcrowding of facilities.

As was to be expected, student life reflected the spirit and behavior on eastern campuses in the carefree “roaring twenties” and Depression ’30’s. Colgate was noted for its athletic enthusiasm which often overshadowed its genuine non-athletic accomplishment. Mobility became increasingly easier with the greater number of student automobiles. In 1923 it became necessary to restrict owning and operating motor vehicles to juniors and seniors and to require that vehicles be registered at the Registrar’s Office. By 1928 parking had become so much of a problem that the Trustees adopted a set of rules to deal with it. Student dress of the 20’s featured coonskin coats for the more affluent, and sheepskin-lined khaki coats with high collars for their fellows. Red rubber overshoes and maroon sweaters were worn in winter, and distinctive class blazers in the fall and spring. The Class of 1926 seems to have been the first to adopt the blazer which remained in vogue until 1931. Perhaps white bucks were the hallmark of the less flamboyant ’30’s.

Student discipline, long the province of the Senior Governing Board  which concerned itself about such matters as enforcing the wearing of

Comments Off on p. 304 – The Cutten Period, 1922-1942

Posted in Chapter 14, p. 304, The Cutten Period 1922-1942

Tagged , , , , ,

p. 303 – The Cutten Period, 1922-1942

Posted on June 21, 2012 | Comments Off on p. 303 – The Cutten Period, 1922-1942

evaluation the student’s entire concentration program and viewed the comprehensive examination as a means to that end.

The Colgate Plan attracted nationwide attention as a somewhat radical experiment in higher education. The President and faculty were asked to discuss it at conferences; articles on it were published; representatives of other institutions carne to the campus to study it. Perhaps its highest recommendations came in the form of adaptations of various segments and the use of its Survey texts by other colleges. Though it was not related to the Colgate Plan, Eugene T. Adams of the Philosophy Department and eight faculty collaborators in 1942 published The American Idea, a discussion of aspects of American culture which served as a basis of a course they taught during part of the World War II period.

Of particular interest, also, were instructional approaches which the Departments of Psychology and Political Science developed independently of the Colgate Plan. Professor Donald A. Laird stressed the experimental approach in psychology and was responsible for setting up a laboratory in 1928 in which undergraduates studied sleep under controlled conditions with themselves as subjects. Dr. Rodney L. Mott of the Political Science Department suggested the Washington Study Group which for the first time spent a semester in the capitol in 1935 under the supervision of Dr. Paul S. Jacobsen, ’27. This innovation aroused the interest of prospective applicants to Colgate, served to stimulate students already enrolled who sought to meet the high standards required for appointment to the group, and afforded a unique opportunity for first-hand, quasi-laboratory experience with many phases of the national government.

As an incentive for high quality work in the new curriculum, commencement programs, beginning in 1932, noted the seniors who had won honors in tutorial work and their departments of concentration. In 1933 the designations “summa,” “magna,” and “cum,” were first used to show outstanding attainment in the whole academic program. To encourage freshman interest in scholarly achievements and to make them aware of Phi Beta Kappa and its’ purposes, the local chapter of the organization in 1928 established the Phi Society in imitation of such a group at Denison University. Professor Frank C. Ewart of the Romance Languages Department had brought the idea before the group and was active in promoting its adoption at other colleges.

Comments Off on p. 303 – The Cutten Period, 1922-1942

Posted in Chapter 14, p. 303, The Cutten Period 1922-1942

Tagged , ,

Capstone of the Colgate Plan (p. 302)

Posted on June 21, 2012 | Comments Off on Capstone of the Colgate Plan (p. 302)

in a department of the school. Provision was also made for. required work in written and spoken English and a reading knowledge of two foreign languages.

The first of the survey courses, that in philosophy and religion prepared by Dr. Alton and Dr. Bewkes, was offered in 1928. Thereafter came biological sciences in 1929; the physical sciences, social sciences, and fine arts in 1930. Since these courses were pioneer cooperative efforts, instructors, drawn from various departments of each school, had to prepare the instructional materials and help each other in the fields where they had no training, and often did their best teaching in what they knew least about because they had to “dig” before meeting their classes. In due time course manuals evolved from mimeographed pages into published textbooks by Harper-Art in the Western World (1935), The Human Organism and the World of Life and Atoms, Rocks and Galaxies (both 1938), and Men, Groups and the Community and Experience, Faith and Reason (both 1940). They won adoption in several colleges which established general education courses.

Honors courses, designed to provide exceptionally able seniors with the opportunity for independent study and to encourage high intellectual attainment, were instituted in 1925, on recommendation of the Committee on Scholastic Standards, as an experiment in four departments. Tutorial seminars, begun on a voluntary basis in 1931 and required of all juniors and seniors beginning in 1934 when the Colgate Plan was in full operation, superseded the honors courses but held to somewhat similar objectives. Each student took a seminar in his department of concentration both semesters of his last two years and was thus enabled to have dose contact with his instructor and to meet weekly with his associates for discussion of the papers they had prepared. The seminar system, which was not peculiar to Colgate, won general approval though there was some question of its value for the less capable students.

The capstone of the Colgate Plan was the comprehensive examination, introduced in 1932, in the field of concentration, required of all seniors following a reading period. Heretofore it had been possible for seniors to avoid final examinations their last semester if they had the requisite general or course standing. The faculty felt that the college course should end in a climax bringing together for analysis and

Comments Off on Capstone of the Colgate Plan (p. 302)

Posted in Chapter 14, p. 302, The Cutten Period 1922-1942

Tagged , ,