Bowdoin College Bowdoin Digital Commons Bowdoin Alumni Magazines Special Collections and Archives 1-1-1928 Bowdoin Alumnus Volume 2 (1927-1928) Bowdoin College Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.bowdoin.edu/alumni-magazines Recommended Citation Bowdoin College, "Bowdoin Alumnus Volume 2 (1927-1928)" (1928). Bowdoin Alumni Magazines. 2. https://digitalcommons.bowdoin.edu/alumni-magazines/2 This Book is brought to you for free and open access by the Special Collections and Archives at Bowdoin Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Bowdoin Alumni Magazines by an authorized administrator of Bowdoin Digital Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. ' BOWDOIN *>, " 1^3 ALUMNUS NOVEMBER 1927 Volume 2 No. 1 tV"\ »' *"m. " * * ... i .$r •* i P sa ML m T l<Qp\, ^ 3k k;< V. i v I jar~/7< — THE BOWDOIN ALUMNUS Member of the American Alumni Council College year Published by Eowdoin Publishing Company, Brunswick, Maine, four times during the a year. Subscription price, $1.50 a year. Single copies, 40 cents. With Bowdoin Orient, $2.50 Application for entry as second class matter pending. '23, Acting Editor Austin H. MacCormick '15, Editor (on leave) Philip S. Wilder '28, Clarence H. Johnson '28, Business Manager J. Rayner Whipple Managing Editor ADVISORY EDITORIAL BOARD '16 Arthur G. Staples '82 Wallace M. Powers '04 Dwight H. Sayward William M. Emery '89 Philip W. Meserve 'ii Bela W. Norton '18 '22 Wilmot B. Mitchell '90 Robert D. Leigh '14 Edward B. Ham John Clair Minot '96 Walter F. Whittier '27 &- iS Contents for November, 1927 Vol. TT No. 1 PAGE Table of Contexts—Inside Front Cover Editorial—"Sursum Corda"—Professor Wilmot B. Mitchell 'go I Accepted Design for New Union ...... 3 The Best Commencement Ever— 1927 Philip Ricker Shorey '07 . 4 Commander MacMillan in Labrador—Edivard N. Goding '91 7 Review of the Fall Athletic Situation ..... 8 Assistant Professor Malcolm E. Morrell '24 Assistant Professor Roland H. Cobb '17 Analysis of the Student Body • 9 Fall Alumni Day a Success . 10 '81 To Bowdoin College—A Poem by Edgar O. Achorn . 11 Two Bowdoin Physicians Honored . 12 Campus Development Since Commencement . 13 Two 1914 Men Recent Authors • 13 MS of Bowdoin" Xow Popl'lar . 14 General Notes ...... 15 •• "They Sent Their Sons To Bowdoin in the Fall" 17 Shanghai Honors Sterlinc, Fessenden \>6 18 Faculty Notes ...... 19 With the Alumni Bodies .... 20 News From the Classes .... 21 K & : VOLUME TWO NUMBER ONE THE BOWDOIN ALUMNUS Bowdoin College, Brunswick, Maine November, 1927 Sursum Corda! Boas, and As early as 1773 John Messrs. Mencken, Marks, Lewis, Trumbull, a graduate of Montross, and the "Middle-Aged Father" Yale, put his criticisms have to say concerning the lowness of our of the American college higher institutions of learning. Could he into a long satirical poem conclude aught else than that the college is entitled 'The Life and a colossal blunder, a menace, a loafing place Character of Dick Hair- where 600,000 American boys and girls get brain." The purpose of confused, absurd, and pernicious notions the poem, says Mr. about life; that the curriculum is a kind of Trumbull, is to show salmagundi, a chow-chow, with little oi that "ignorance wanders unmolested at our everything and not much of anything; that colleges, examinations are dwindled to mere the A.B. or the S.B. is a "lazy bee rather form and ceremony, and after four years than a busy bee" ; and that the only evi- dozing there, no one is ever refused the dence of a real education that a graduate honors of a degree on account of dullness has is nothing "more vital than the dried and insufficiency," and later he adds skin of a dead sheep?" Nay, would he not "There vice shall lavish all her charms, be obliged to go further and conclude that And rapture fold us in her arms, the average student is a brutal, moronic, Riot shall court the frolic soul, And swearing crown the sparkling bowl." bawdy-minded sensualist, caring nothing From 1773 to 1927 such criticisms have for the finer things of life, and that with not been wanting; but never, it seems, has the exception of a few—a very, very few, the light beat more fiercely upon our col- selected by Mr. Mencken—the 40,000 pro- leges than it does today. They are scru- fessors are either charlatans or dunder- tinized and analyzed and criticized from a heads? hundred points of view. After reading the Has any Bowdoin alumnus come to this excoriations in recent books and magazines, sad conclusion? And is he, because of any fond parent might well conclude that this, full of grave anxieties for his he had better send his young hopeful to own college? To all such—if such there be Purgatory rather than to college, and any —we can gladly say: "Lift up your old graduate might with reason sorely hearts !" Lack of space compels mere as- grieve at the tragic downfall of his Alma sertion to take the place of detailed proof. Mater. But if the word of one who has for two Suppose for a moment the incredible. score years been intimately associated with Suppose a man should really believe all that the College as student, graduate, or teacher. ! — [ T Ji c B o zv d o i n A I u m n it s and has often looked upon it with a critical the building is now occupied by the Ad- scrutiny born of admiration and desire, may ministrative Offices, while the upper floors be of any encouragement, be rejoices in contain the Cleaveland Cabinet of Mineral- saying that never in his acquaintance witri ogy. Bowdoin has the present been more satis- factory than it is today, or the future more An interesting report by the Committee promising. Never has it been harder to get on Scholarship Aid has recently been pub- into Bowdoin or harder to stay in. Never lished by the College as Bowdoin College before have the physical conditions of the Bulletin number 170 and will be sent to in- College been so good; and the new swim- terested alumni as long as the supply lasts. ming pool, the new athletic field, and the This report includes copies of the applica- new Union will soon make them still better. tion for scholarship aid now used, the letter Never before has the Faculty been so large to sponsors for such applicants, and the and never has it been more earnest in pur- financial record which must be kept by stu- to arouse suit of truth ; never more desirous dents who wish to avail themselves of intellectual interests in the students; never scholarship privileges. more zealous to put the best influences pos- sible around them and help them to be men. Austin H. MacCormick '15, Alumni Sec- And the student body? That do you say retary for the past seven years, is now is the supreme test? It is made up of care- on a year's leave of absence. He is work- fully-selected, eager, alive American boys ing under the auspices of the National So- 550 of them in all. Some of them no doubt ciety of Penal Information, of which he is arc sometimes silly; some, impetuous; some, a Director, and will make the first nation- selfish; some, at times indolent; some, con- wide study of educational work in Ameri- ceited. But by far the greater part, any one can prisons. He will visit every prison in who knows them at all intimately must as- the United States during the year, and will sert—if he have regard for the truth and then compile a report for the Handbook is not striving to say something that is of American Prisons, of which he is joint merely startling — are healthy - minded, editor with Paul W. Garrett. thoughtful, ambitious, eager-hearted young men, sane and sound, and worthy of Bow- Alumni wishing to send messages by doin's best traditions. Sursiim corda radio to Commander Donald B. MacMillan W. B. M. 90. may do so by writing Mr. Clark C. Rodi- mon, 171 1 Park St., Hartford, Conn., who is in communication with the ''Bowdoin" THE COVER twice every day. The use of Massachusetts Hall as the subject of our cover this fall is particularly Donald B. MacMillan's new book, "Etah proper because of the fact that the one hun- and Beyond," has recently appeared at the dred and twenty-fifth anniversary of its book stores. It is published by Houghton, building was observed this year. Here the Mifflin Company and sells for $5. It will first exercises of the College were held, be reviewed in the next issue of the Sept. 2, 1802, and one day later the acorn Alumnus. which later grew to be the mighty Thorn- dike Oak was planted close by its front Have you sent for your copy of Hatch's doorsteps. Once housing the entire College, new History of Bowdoin? Many have not. [2] The B o tv d o in Alumnus] Accepted Design For New Union This building, gift to the College of Hon. Augustus F. Moulton '75, will stand next to the new Swimming Pool, facing the opening between Hyde and Appleton Halls, and with its front on a line with the Heating Station. Tt will contain n spacious two-story lounge, a card room, a dining hall for either cafeteria or waiter service, a private dining room, and rest rooms. Upstairs will be offices for student activities, a few bedrooms for alumni and guests of the College, and a hall for student gatherings.