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In the open-air Hearst Greek Theater at Berkeley, Calif, one day last week, 8,000 new students sat waiting. As the warm sun beat down on them, the band blared out Hail to California. A huge, hearty figure strode on stage. The yell leader called for a "Six." The big man stood listening to the cheer with a big smile. Then he called for another chorus of Hail to California; he helped out with his bathtub baritone. Then silence fell. Robert Gordon Sproul, president of the nation's largest university (41,451 full-time students), began to speak. As everybody had known he would, he struck just the right note.
"I hope you will not take this personally," he said, "but I think that there are 10,000 too many of you. You would all be happier if somehow the 10,000 could go elsewhere. But whether you belong here or not I welcome you. You are the most attractive and handsome group of newcomers I have ever seen, especially the girls. [Giggles from the audience.]
"Of course, I have made the same compliment to other classes, but then I had never seen the class of 1951. You will find the campus cluttered with shacks, tenements, huts and barracks. Where the goober-hangers- are going to find a place I don't know [laughter]. Somehow we will make out. . . . The general level of education . . . must be raised if we are to disappoint the Kremlin with the vigor of our society. . . . You must work hard here, and you must think. That is probably harder work than you have ever done. . . ."
Then, once again, everybody sang Hail to California. At the University of California, school was open.
That night Robert Gordon Sproul (rhymes with jowl) put on a boiled shirt and shook hands with 3,000 of his new charges at a party in the women's gymnasium. Next day he and Mrs. Sproul boarded the streamlined Southern Pacific Lark for the second of his eight campuses, Cal's jealous younger sister, the University of California at Los Angeles, to go through the routine again. He still had a long way to go" to cover all his domain. Says Bob Sproul: "Sure it's tough, but I do it purposely. I do it with the intention of making my person the visible unity of the university."
Sky High, Ocean Deep. Californians boast about their eight-campused university in the same extravagant, affectionate way that they talk about their climate and their oranges. Their enthusiasm is adjectival: the university is big, varied, young, impatient, aggressive, progressive. Especially big. Its interests run as deep as the ocean and as high as the sky. At Scripps Institution in La Jolla (pronounced La Hoya), Cal oceanographers study the depths of the Pacific, and at Lick Observatory on Mt. Hamilton, Cal astronomers scan the stars. The university operates the atom-bomb city of Los Alamos, N.Mex. It owns ranches, waterworks, apartment buildings, forests, and the world's biggest cyclotron. On its 10,000 acres grow tomatoes, peaches, oranges, olives, avocados, alfalfa. A man can get frostbite or burn to a crisp without leaving university premises. The university employs 12,000 professors, janitors, secretaries and swineherds. It will spend $36,990,000 this year to run its eight campuses.*