Period of Transition at College Greets Harvard's Class of 1911

"The step in life you Freshmen are now taking," a College dean told his audience, "is from boyhood into manhood." It was essentially the same speech Harvard freshmen had heard for years and would continue to hear for years to come, but to several hundred young men gathered in Phillips Brooks House September 27, 1907, it was an immensely serious speech.

The Class of 1911 began on that evening a career which was to carry its members through four years of transition in the University and 50 years of change in the world beyond the Yard.

The some 725 members of the class were entering a University which was in a state of change in many ways. Physically, there were new additions, with even more expected later. The Weld Boat House was opened in the fall of 1907 to replace an earlier one which had become inadequate for a burgeoning student body.

At the Law School, Langdell Hall was also opened for the first time; it then consisted of only one wing of the present structure, and was used as an addition to Austin Hall, which had formerly been the main building at the Law School. But it was intended that Langdell would eventually become the center of academic activity for the University's law students.

In the Yard, an additional wing was added to the side of Gore Hall, which stood on the present site of Widener Library and then housed most of the University's books.

There were changes and additions to the curriculum during that year and new Faculty members as well. Professor Otto Pfleiderer of the University of Berlin gave a series of lectures on the "History of the German Philosophy of Religion" and there was some excitement over the presence of Paul Clemen, a visiting professor of art from the University of Bonn. Clemen's lectures were especially well-attended by the new freshmen.

In athletics there was more change. The Faculty passed a resolution attacking the over-emphasis on intercollegiate athletics and cut sharply the number of sports events which would receive University sanction. Later, winter events were abolished altogether and the students reacted angrily.

Following a petition which was signed by many outraged undergraduates, the Faculty re-instated winter sports and established a Student Council to act as a link between students and Faculty on athletics problems.

There was, however, only slight change in the realm of College sports: for the past two years Yale had beaten Harvard 6-0 in the annual football classic at Soldiers Field. In 1907, however, Yale won 12-0.

There were also novelties in other extra-curricular activities which added to the confusion of that freshman year. Departing from the traditional political disinterestedness of American college students, several undergraduate political organizations sprang into existence on the Harvard campus and the elections of 1908--between Taft and Bryant--were followed with interest.

The Harvard Dramatic Club was also added to the list of extra-curricular organizations during the school year 1907-08 along with other new activities which student interest was then pursuing.

Required attendance at Chapel had earlier been abandoned in the belief that religion should be purely "voluntary" but the University continued to sponsor events of a religious nature. The Bishop of London spoke before a large audience at Sanders Theatre and there were numbers of other ministers invited to speak throughout the year.

The Class of 1911 had entered Harvard on the three-hundredth anniversary of the birth of its founder and one of the events of the year was the celebration of John Harvard's tercentenary.

By the time their freshman year had come to a close, the members of the Class of 1911 were beginning to adjust to the life of the College. Only a very small number left the class at the end of its first year.

Whatever confidence the sophomores of the Class of 1908 possessed, they still faced changes. The greatest transition which took place during the academic season 1908-09 was the resignation of President Charles W. Eliot and the appointment of A. Lawrence Lowell to fill his office.

With the passing of Eliot, an important era in the history of the University ended.

Immediately after his appointment was announced, Lowell, then a professor of Government, called for increased communication between students and administration. "We must work together," he told a group of students, "in building up the noblest institution in our land."

Another administrative change which was greatly to influence the University also took place during the sophomore year of the Class of 1911. In early September, the Graduate School of Business Administration was officially opened with the intention of helping to meet "what is believed to be a growing need for efficient and systematic business training."

Later in the fall, the Crimson beat Yale in football for the first time in seven years. The championship game ended with a score of 4-0 after a close fight on the playing fields of New Haven.

The Class of 1911 returned for its junior year to be met with the news that William James, Professor of Philosophy, Emeritus, had died during the summer recess. In a CRIMSON editorial, James was called Harvard's "greatest figure in the world of thought."

Physical change continued. In the center of the Square, plans for the new subway to Park Square in Boston were finally materializing. Work was also begun on the Larz Anderson Bridge which was to extend across the Charles just below Soldiers Field. The Stadium itself was enlarged and the Dental School moved into a newly completed building in Brookline.

It was not until their final year at the College that the members of Harvard '11 could enter a community of relative stability. The changes which occupied their entire college career were finally being completed: construction on the MTA, the bridge, and the other structures was finished by the spring of 1911. The administrative changes which occupied the inauguration of a new University president were generally completed by this final year, and the seniors could relax in the secure atmosphere. Only the plans for a new Germanic museum and an unusually successful season of sports offered new topics of conversation.

In the beginning of the year a College official rose in Phillips Brooks House to tell an audience of incoming freshmen, "you are approaching a time of crisis in your education." Members of the Class of 1911, seniors then, could very well have recalled the time when they too were approaching that "time of crisis." But now they had completed four years of a time of change, preparing them for the five decades of even greater transition which stood before them.HARVARD STADIUM Had Athletics Gone too Far?