Page:A History of the University of Chicago by Thomas Wakefield Goodspeed.djvu/527

 THE DEVELOPING UNIVERSITY 461 tionally worn by Freshmen, its future name, if it was to have a future, was wholly problematical. This does not exhaust the catalogue of student publications. There were others, but they were ephemeral. They had their day and passed away, those days being too brief for record here. It is impossible to write at all adequately of the developing University without taking into account that most important part of it its alumni. The University had begun with a small body of alumni taken over from the Old University of Chicago. These orphans had loyally accepted their new Alma Mater and led the way in organizing the new Association of Alumni at the close of 1892-93, the new University's first year of instruction. The Uni- versity conferred its first degrees at the June, 1893, Convocation. There were thirty-one Bachelors', Masters', and Doctors' degrees conferred. It is not enough to say that from that time the alumni increased rapidly in numbers. They began to multiply. Very soon organized groups appeared. The first of these was the Divinity Alumni Association, coming in with the Divinity School. Then came the Association of the Doctors of Philosophy. In 1898 the Chicago Alumni Club and the Chicago Alumnae Club were organized. In the Decennial Report President Harper said: It has been interesting to note the readiness with which the alumni in the various sections of the country have come together for the organization of associations. Such associations have been established in Boston, New York, Indianapolis, Chicago, and Omaha. As the number of these local clubs increased from year to year, the need of a central body, which should have charge of all matters which affected the alumni in general, became so evident that in 1909 the Alumni Council was organized. It came to be composed of delegates from the Associations of the College Alumni, of the Doctors of Philosophy, of the Divinity and of the Law Alumni, from the Chicago Alumni and Chicago Alumnae Clubs, with one repre- sentative from the faculty of the University. Before the end of the first quarter-century the organization of more than thirty local alumni clubs in all parts of the United States and in Hawaii, the Philippine Islands, and Japan was reported, a significant attesta- tion of the loyalty of the University's graduates.