Page 29 - 1926 February - To Dragma

192 TO DRAGMA OF ALPHA OMICRON PI

first Chancellor, was erected. The last of the buildings, the
handsome new Commons, was erected in 1918, with funds con-
tributed in part by the city of Clarksville.

About 1900 the church began to realize that the university,
situated as it was on the northernmost border of the territory
of the four co-operating synods—Nashville, Alabama, Memphis
and Mississippi—was badly located with reference to the terri-
tory it was presumed to serve. A n attempt was made to move
the institution to Atlanta, but the directors vigorously opposed
this movement. A decree of the supreme court forbade the
removal f r o m Clarksville to Atlanta. Inasmuch as the majority
of the students came from Mississippi and West Tennessee, and
inasmuch as Memphis, the leading city of the state, had no col-
lege of arts and sciences in or near it, the eyes of the church
turned to that city as the central and strategic location of the
institution.

I n January, 1920, a committee reported that a transfer to
Memphis could be effected, and that the Chamber of Commerce
of Memphis pledged itself to raise five hundred thousand dol-
lars f o r the college, provided it came to this city with one million
dollars of additional assets. A campaign committee was appoint-
ed to raise as speedily as possible the funds f o r the removal.
The campaign for one million five hundred thousand dollars was
brought to a successful conclusion in May, 1922.

Meanwhile the campaign committee secured a beautiful cam-
pus of one hundred and twenty four acres on the North Parkway
opposite Overton Park, and secured a quarry at Bald Knob,
Arkansas, as the permanent source of stone f o r the buildings.
The directors determined to build in the collegiate Gothic type of
architecture. Architects were engaged and the contracts were
let in the spring of 1925.

The institution opened f o r its fifty-first session in Memphis,
under the official name of Southwestern, Sept. 24, 1925.

Southwestern favors the policy of selecting carefully all
students; this selection to be made on the basis of moral char-
acter, intellectual fitness and preparation; qualities of leadership,
and potentialities of usefulness to church and state, and to limit
the number of students accepted by her ability to give them
the best advantages, such advantages as they have a right to