PRESIDENT'S ADDRESS

With as much pride as that with which the small boy first wears his father's hat, we, of 1903, occupy the seats of the faculty on the platform for the first time at chapel this morning and conduct the exercises just as we wish. Enthusiasm for origniality might lead us far from the usual program, but, as usual, there is a welcome for all, and I would wish mine for you to be as impressive as that of Dr. Goucher in the new girls in the fall, if my experience had not been too short to make imitation of his gracious, cordial words impossible, and if I were not sure that none but the underclassmen would take the advice which I might bestow.

But, members of the faculty, 1903 is very glad to exchange place with you for today and to welcome you most cordially to our exercises. The friendships which have grown from the associations of four years will assure us of you r interest, and then you have had a part in helping us attain to this position. Perhaps also, as thoughts of the grave rsponsibilities about to be ours come to us, we may give some good advice for future molding of classes.

We are sure of the sympathy of every alumna prsent, for at some time you were where we stand today. Each song, each joke, will recall some similar one of your college days, and we welcome you most heartily because of the pleasure these reminiscences will bring you and the pleasure your presence brings us and because of the love for your Alma Mater which brings you here.

We welcome you, friends, to these the last chapel exercises we attend as undergraduates. For the last four years your confidence and interest has encouraged and helped us, as your presence does today. But, most of all, we welcome you, our parents. By you these opportunities for liberal culture were offered to us. You have watched us develop from the girls who four years ago were so eager to try college life into the women of today. But to most of you what the Woman's College stands for and it has been our version of it and this hour is a glimpse for you of our real life, an insight into our views, aspirations, and desire, and the enlisting of your sympathy in the life, the real, active life, of the world in which we are to live.

It is strange that the college was not discouraged when you sent us here four years ago because 1903 ought to be a most unlucky class, for

Add the figures, then you'll see
Very quickly what I mean
1-9-0-3
Give the threatening sum 13.

But with 1901 to guide us we overcame all that might have been 'bad luck' and made a good beginning in athletics, and in the following years, working upon the theory that a sound body makes a sound mind, we have tried to extend our enthusiasm for athletics into dramatics, studies, and our life of work. This enthusiasm has been strengthened by contact with men and women interested in higher education and by association with girls studying similar subjects. This life - for it is not preparation for life, but life itself - has been one which we feel must make our usefulness in years to come larger and broader.

For we are American college women with an interest in teh world as women and a more intelligent means of helping because we are college women seeking to measure up to the standard set for us by an Englishman when he said: 'When you see a man or a woman who looks as if he or she could do something honest and valuable, who looks you straight in the eyes, and makes you feel proud that you're a human being and ashamed that you are not a broader, better, honester one - that's an American.'

In college we have tried to do something honest and valuable. We have not taken knowledge alone as our ideal, but believe, with Tennyson, that:

'A higher hand must make her mild
Her footsteps, moving side by side
With Wisdom, like a younger child
For she is earthy of the mind
But wisdom heavenly of the soul.'

So with knowledge we have endeavored to mingle the wisdom of living right, that to-morrow, as American college women, we may leave our Alma Mater ready to do something valuable and honest, to look the world straight in the eyes, and to make all proud to be broader and better human beings.

ALICE DUNNING, 1903

KALENDS