Page 34 - 1917 February - To Dragma

TO DRAGMA OF ALPHA 0 MIC RON PI 135

RANDOLPH-MACON

BY LUCY R. SOMERVILLE, K , ' 1 6

Alumna Assistant Editor for Kappa

You have heard our Twentieth Anniversary is to he celehrated with
KAPPA. You are planning to come, we hope, and you are wonder-
ing what K A P P A and Randolph-Macon are like, we are sure. A
favorite theme subject for R-M freshmen is "Who I am and Why I
Came to College." I n this article the College must seek to tell "What
R-M Is and Why You Should Come to I t . " I f at times this article
seems to have the air of a college catalogue, you will forgive me, I
hope, for it seems impossible to handle information in anything other
than an encyclopedic manner.

Randolph-Macon owes its existence to the genius of one man, Dr.
William Waugh Smith, and this perhaps accounts for the spirit
which permeates the College, which is distinctively Randolph-Macon,
and which makes Randolph-Macon the greatest of all colleges to
those who have once been under the shadow of its walls. As the
breath of life cannot be carved into a statue, no matter how skil-
fully wrought, so a spirit, no matter how intensive, cannot be trans-
lated into a concrete form. To know the Randolph-Macon spirit
is to possess it, and until that possession is yours, you are no daughter
of the College, but an alien without understanding of the world about
you.

In September, 1893, the College was opened with 78 students rep-
resenting 11 states; the first graduating class, 1896, consisted of
two members; in 1 9 1 6 there were 6 2 4 students representing 3 6
states and foreign countries, and 9 8 degrees were conferred. This
in brief is the history of the growth of the College. Applications for
admission exceed the accommodations for students each year, and as
new dormitories have been erected, they have been fully occupied.
The value of the holdings of the college is conservatively estimated at
$871,125, and the equipments of its laboratories is probably the most
complete in the South. Randolph-Macon had the first psychology
laboratory in the South and one of the first in the country, and has
kept its apparati in advance of that of most colleges in this country.
Randolph-Macon stands for and emphasizes the value of a purely
classical education.

A peculiar feature of the arrangement of the buildings at Ran-
dolph-Macon is the fact that all of them, except New Hall (dormi-
tory) and gymnasium, are connected by a corridor over 6 0 0 feet
long. In the mind of our Founder, Dr. Smith, this corridor was to
be the melting pot of the College. Along it are entrances to the