|
100 YEARS AGO (1906)
Nearly 60 graduates of the 1906 “Calamity
Class” attended their delayed commencement
ceremony in Assembly Hall on September 15. As freshmen,
they faced a typhoid epidemic, with several fatalities.
Diphtheria in their second year claimed more victims.
Jane Stanford died under mysterious circumstances during
their junior year, and the April 18 earthquake “shook
the class of 1906 out of college,” noted the student
newspaper, the Daily Palo Alto. In his farewell
to the graduates, President David Starr Jordan said,
“The wrecking of buildings does not wreck a university.
The University exists in the minds, the wills, the souls
of men.” For the first time, all participants
wore caps and gowns.
Student Ben S. Allen read the last
will and testament of the Class of 1906, challenging
the next class to “invent a more effective method
for avoiding final examinations than an earthquake.”
Daily Palo Alto editor Allen had been suspended
from the University in January 1906 for writing an editorial
that criticized the administration’s handling
of hazing and other problems at the men’s dormitory,
Encina Hall. His dismissal rocked the campus; the alumni
magazine devoted 11 pages to the controversy. Readmitted
in fall 1906, he graduated a year late.
Stanford officials replaced football with
rugby as the major fall sport, citing concern
about increased violence in football, commercialization
of collegiate sports, and financial mismanagement by
student athletic committees. The University of California
also made the change. Although the decision was initially
unpopular—students and alumni had not been consulted—by
1915 Stanford fans favored keeping rugby when UC reverted
to football. Santa Clara University served as the Big
Game rugby opponent through 1917. Stanford officially
restored football in 1919, spurred by student preference
for Cal as the Big Game opponent.
75 YEARS AGO (1931)
Stanford’s first president, David Starr
Jordan, 80, died of heart disease on September
19 at his campus home. Jordan’s enthusiasm and
optimism attracted students and faculty who treasured
independent thinking and freedom from the constraints
of academic tradition. Just after the 1906 earthquake
he turned down his dream job—head of the Smithsonian
Institution—saying he needed to rebuild Stanford.
Despite his retirement from the presidency in 1913,
Jordan’s promotion of the world peace movement
before America entered the Great War earned him—and
Stanford—considerable enmity.
50 YEARS AGO (1956)
Construction was under way in the hills behind campus
on a radio telescope designed by Professor
Ronald Bracewell. Its 32 parabolic antennas—aluminum
dishes 10 feet in diameter—were used for an
 |
Stanford News Service |
11-year
project starting in 1959 to study the sun’s surface
and map its temperatures.
25 YEARS AGO (1981)
Professor Arthur Schawlow (right)
was named co-winner of the Nobel Prize in physics for
his contributions to the development of laser spectroscopy,
the examination of substances by how they reflect or
absorb light.
|
