College News, 1928-05-02, Vol. 14, No. 23

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The College News
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VOL. XIV.   No.2:p
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BRYN MAWR   (AND WAYNE). PA..   WEDNESDAY. MAY 2.1928
PRICE.   10  CENTS
SEVENTH MAY DAY CROWNS COMPLETION OF
STUDENTS' HALL AFTER 28 YEARS' EFFORTS
Miss   Applebee,   Mrs.   Collins
and Mr. King Direct
Festivities.
HISTORY   IS    RECALLED
On Friday and Saturday of this week
Bryn Mawr College wiU celebrate its
seventh and perhaps its greatest, big
May Day. Two things contribute to its
special importance�first, it coincides with
the completion of the Students' Build-
ing, Goodhart Hall, the raising of a fund
for which was the original raison d'etre
of the festival; and second, it is the last
in which Miss Constance Applebee, who
has become in her years at Bryn Mawr
the very spirit, the driving force, of May
Day, takes an active' part.
In other years other directors have
produced magnificent May Days, but wfr
of the present one are persuaded tlrat
there has never been leadership to equal
the triumphant triumvirate of Miss
Applebee, the Manager, Mrs. Collins,
the Director, and Mr. King, the director
of plays. May Day this year has re-
ceived no outside direction. Everything
has been done by the students of the
college, and by its permanent staff. The
aim has been to make the present cele-
bration as simple as possible,.jvithout sac-
rificing any of its character or beauty,
and without  neglecting a single detail.
Goodhart  Proof Against Rain.
As for Goodhart Hall, its inaugura-
tion coincides almost miraculously with
the seventh big May Day. If it rains,
there is some conSolation in the thought
that the new red plush seats in the audi-
torium, given by the classes of 19:20.
.1930, and 1931, will be used for the first
time; that the rest of the building, so
largely contributed to by all the other
classes which have graduated from Bryn
Mawr, appears for the first time in its
full glory, rising from slopes at last
cleared and smoothed and sown with
grass; and that the whole edifice is com-
plete to the topmost of the six dressing-
rooms which speak so eloquently of great
dramatic productions of  the future.
Already proud parents from North
and South and West are journeying to-
wards the Main Line. Do they realize
that for their benefit the great proces-
sion rehearses its spacing, and deep laid
plans are evolved   at  all   night   sessions   the meeting broke up, all of us promis-
Art Club Exhibition
The Bryn Mawr Art Club invites
you to visit its annual exhibition
to be held in Rockefeller Hall
during May J>ay and the week
following.                     �     mi
to make it certain that "every mother
shall see every child?". At any rate
every conceivable hotel room and board-
ing house will be as filled with travel-
ers as were the English inns in April in
Chaucer's day, when folk longed to "go
on pilgrimages."
New Programme Designs.        e
The programmes, for which the de-
signs* were made by Elizabeth Shippcn
Green Elliott, are ready for distribution.
The delightful drawings with flieir sharp
outlines, of which not the least charming
are a map of the college, and a sketch
of the Green, in- which we can recognize
more than one familiar face, and the
gay red and black lettering make this
perhaps the most attractive of all the
May Day programmes. And yet the
first one, the cover of which was de-
signed by Miss Violet Oakley, was long
considered the most beautiful that could
be imagined, and was used in 1900, 1900,
1910, and 1914. The price of each pro-
gramme will be one dollar.
The plays, of which there are six.
counting the one which will be presented
by students of the Phoebe Anna Thome
Model School, and the dancing, are de-
scribed in other parts of this issue. But
the procession and the pageant, and in-
deed the whole celebration which will
take form on fne day after tomorrow
will be immeasurably superior to any
journalistic description. Those who see
will not care to read, and those who
read will have only a faint inkling of
what they have missed. But since the
tradition of May Day. practically unique
iji this country, is almost as important as
the thing itself, it is well to know some-
thing of the history of our celebration.
It is a history, of course, which indi-
rectly goes back to the days of Queen
Elizabeth, farther even, than that to the
slopes^ of Sicily when Theocritus was
writing hjs pastorals; but May Day at
Bryn Mawr has a special history of its
own. which is best told in the words of
its original founder, Evangeline Walker
Andrews, of the class of 1893. The fol-
lowing are excerpts frora a news article,
published  in   1924:
"History of May Day.
"One afternoon in March. 1900. a
group of students, mainly seniors, came
to my house to discuss the possibilities
of giving an outdoor entertainment by
means of which a substantial sum of
money might be raised towards a Stu-
dents' Building, needed almost as much
then as now. For two hours or more
we discussed plans without producing
any that seemed' to express what we lik�d
to- call the  sfrirk of  Bryn  Mawr;  and
ing that we would try to think of some-
thing concrete and entertaining to pre-
sent at the Mass Meeting to be held the
following evening.
"Then while I stood watching my
guests, as talking'and laughing they
crossed the athletic field, climbed the
steps on the opposite side, and drifted�'
a charming little procession�across the
campus towards Denbigh aikl The Pem-
brokes�at that very moment the inspi-
ration came, literally out of the blue
sky of Bryn Mawr. Of .course I With
an F.nglish setting all made for us, roll-
ing hills and well-tilled fields; grey stone,
ivy-covered building of Elizabethan
architecture, with spring and May corny
ing over the hills', and youth, almost five
hundred strong, waiting merely for the
word�why not an Elizabethan May
Day? Not the gambols of the court
with which every one was familiar, but
those of the common people with their
planting of the May Pole on the village
green, their country dances, games and
plays, and pageants, with Robin Hood
and his band, Maid Marian, the hobby
horses, the Worthies Nine, and all the
gay grotesque and charming festivities
and characters beloved by the rustics of
Elizabethan England? It was entirely
suitable that the May Day sports and
pastimes, suppressed by Puritan Old
England as well as by Puritan New Eng-
land, should be revived without its evils
by the adventurous and talented young
Elizabethans of Bryn Mawr. Such was
the idea that took possession of me as
I stood enjoying the color and rhythm
of �that little procession of students
acrfcs the campus on a bleak afternoon
"Tfe suggestion that we should revive
an Elizabethan May Day on the Bryn
Mawr campus was received by cheers
that made the gymnasium ring with an
enthusiasm that promised success from
the start; and from that moment until
May 1�six short weeks, one of them
a college holiday.�even- undergraduate,
and many Alumnae, both in New York
and Philadelphia, worked incessantly,
giving most generously of time, interest
and labor. Having the idea was a sim-
ple enough matter, and more *r less
familiarity with the period made not too
difficult the necessary research work and
the arrangement of the programme; but
had it not been for the fine spirit of co-
operatjon"~-on the part of groups and
individuals, who subordinated personal
preferences and worked for the glory
of the whole, the task of casting, train-
ing and costuming^ almost five hundred
persons in so short a time would have
corrrcicrjro on page srx
Athletic Elections
Rebecca Wills, '29, has been
elected President of the Athletic
Association for next year. Miss
Wills is the most all around ath-
lete of her class. Besides having
been' on the Varsity hockey team,
she has been captain of the 1929
' swimming team, a member of '2!)'s
gym team.1' and is one of the cham-
pion tumblers on the green in May
Day.
Helen Luiise Taylor, '30, was
chosen Vice President. Miss Tay-
lor is a swimmer and hockey
player, but most famous as a win-
ter sport's champion, and as Hall
President of Pembroke East.
Louise, Littlchalc, '80, has been
elected Treasurer; M. E. Froth-
iugha'm, '111. Secretary, and Elea-
nor Totten, '31, Sophomore mcni-
Iwr, for 1928-29.
BASIS OF MODERN
SCIENCE IN PAST
Millikan Tells of Most Signifi-
cant Work of Physi-
*   .         cists.
LESSON      TO      YOUTH
SCHOLARS AND
FELLOWS FOR '28-'29
Announcements   of   Awards
for Distinguished Aca-
�   deirtic Work.
CUM LAUDE PROSPECTS
Dr. Robert.Millikan, of the Univer-
sity of California, winner of the Nobel
Prize in 192,'t for work on the elec-
tronic charge, and �o-author of Milli-
kan and Gale's famous text-book of
physics, appealed to the younger gen-
eration, through the students of Bryn
Mawr who gathered to hear him speak
in Taylor Hall last Wednesday eve-
ning, not to reject too sweepingly the
discoveries of the past. Although the
new conceptions of physics have
wrought many changes, much of what
we believe today is based on the re,-
searches of our predecessors: we
should hesitate to withdraw a stone
from the. foundations till we know that
we have a better one to take its place.
Yet a startling change has come
over the world in the last twenty years.
There was really very little difference
in the pictures of two hundred years
ago and in those of the 1890's. but those
of the latter period were very differ-
ent from those of today. As the limits
of change are set by zero and infinity,
however, we really can not go much
farther, at least, in the length of skirts.
Physicists arc in a sense responsible
for this metamorphosis; physics is the
basis of differentiation of modern civr
ilizatipn. It makes it inspiring to be
alive because we are-still reshaping; the
CONTINUED" ON PAOB �FOUR
In morning chapel on Friday, April
�27. President Park announced to the
usiid^pantinn crowd of Little May Day
celebrants the Graduate fttllowahipi and
Scholarships, the Undergraduate Scholar-
ships, and various other Honor Awards.
A list of the student* in the three lower
classes, who have a cum laudc average
in their academic work was added to the
usual announcements. Special prize's, of
which the winners were made public, are:
The Essay Prize, awarded to J. Fes-
ler, .'28. with. honorable mention to P.
Burr. '2S; and  '
The   Current   Events   Prize,   won   by"
M.   Perry.  '2x:   F.   Bethel,  '28, second;
B. Rose, '28, third.
The other announcements  follow:
SCHOLARS   AND   FELLOWS
FOR '28-'29
RESIDENT   FELLOWSHIPS   CON-
FERRED   FOR   1928-1929
GREEK:
Virginia Fits Randolph Grace, of New
York City.    A. B., Bryn Mawr Col-
lege,    MMi     Teacher   of   English,
�  Wadleigh   High   School.   New  York
City.   11)23-25.  and  of   Mathematics
and      Ancient      History,      Brcarley
School, Nfcw York City. 1920.   Stu-
dent.  American   School  of  Classical
Studies, Athens, Greece, 1927-28. *
LATIN:
Ruth  Elizabeth  Fainijan, of Amherst,
Mass.    A. B., Mount Holyoke Col-
lege,  192".    Scholar   in   Latin.   Bryn
Mawr   College.   1987-28.    M.   A.   to
be conferred.'1927-28.
ENGLISH:
Rebecca Garrctl Rhoads, of Wilming-
ton.  Delaware:    A. -B.,   Bryn Mawr
College, 1918.    B. Litt., Oxford  (St.
Hugh's  College).  1927.    Scholar  in
English.  Rryn   Mawr  College,  1927-
- - 28.       �                               .....
ROMANCE LANGUAGES:
(French) Jean Gray H'rii/lit, of Lin-
coln University, Penna. A. B., Bryn
Mawr College. 1919, and M. A., Uni-
versity of Pennsylvania, 1926. Stu-
dent at the Sorbonne. 1923-24.
Teacher of French and German,
Wilmington Friends' School. 1919-
2.1; Teacher of French. Holman
School. K)24-2.">. Scholar in French,
Bryn Mawr College, Scm. I, and
Scholar* of the Society of Pennsyl-
vania Women in New York, Sem.
II, 1926-27. and year 1927-28.
(Spanish) Edith Fishtine, of Dorches-
ter, Mass. "A. B., Boston Univer-
sity, 192". Student at the University
of Paris and Madrid, 1925-26, and
at Radcliffe College.  Sem. II,  1926-
CONTINUED ON PAGE SEVEN