A most unusual sight, snow on the Royce quad, January 1932

Bruins arriving to campus by 8 a.m. found an unforgettable panorama: red brick buildings frosted white, trees and shrubs made pillowy, and Royce quad coated with two inches of glistening snow.

It soon became clear that instead of the usual scholarly activities, the revised syllabus would feature snowman-building and a pandemonium of snowball fights.

“ ‘Whizzzz-sock!’ and another Bruin tasted the snow!” the California Daily Bruin cried. Some professors, joining in the diversion, officially dismissed classes. Those professors who tried to charge through the barrage to maintain a semblance of order found that “personalities were not respected,” according to The Bruin.

The playful mayhem was met by a police officer. But as he reached Royce Hall, he was himself ambushed by snowballs from all sides, including those thrown from a balcony overhead.

The administration was understanding of the exuberant spirits. “Let them have their fun,” The Bruin quoted UCLA leaders as saying. This, even after rumors that Provost Ernest Carroll Moore was pelted by a snowball—a claim denied by his office. For three hours, “only the brave ventured out of buildings into the war zone,” The Bruin wrote.

(From UCLA: The First Century: ch. 4, p. 68)
(c) 2011 The Regents of the University of California. All rights reserved.

The charred ruins of California Hall after the mysterious chemistry fire

The cause was not immediately clear to authorities. A chemical fire was one theory. But since a velvet curtain in Millspaugh Hall auditorium was found ablaze at approximately the same time, investigators decided arson was the likely cause of both incidents.

California Hall was a two-story wooden structure originally built during World War I as a barrack for the Student Army Training Corps. Chemistry instruction and labs had been relocated there after constant complaints about foul odors and corrosive fumes from other Science Building tenants.

Few seemed to mind the loss of the antiquated building. The Southern Alumnus ran a tongue-in-cheek story that began: “ ‘Cal’ Hall—the bugaboo of the campus—the butt of many a college wise crack—no longer torments the U.C.L.A. campus.”

“Everyone said that some day ‘Cal’ Hall would burn down,” the article continued, “and [finally] ‘California’ Hall gave up the struggle and submitted to the universal opinion.”

(From UCLA: The First Century: ch. 3, p. 51)
(c) 2011 The Regents of the University of California. All rights reserved.

Founders' Rock, a 75-ton granite boulder from
Perris Valley, was installed in time for the campus site dedication in 1926.

It took 10 days to haul the granite rock 85 miles from a hillside in Perris Valley to Westwood. One day, the crew moved the trailer carrying the 75-ton boulder a mere 10 feet because it was so heavily entrenched in mud. When the rock eventually arrived, it was placed to mark the spot where Dickson and Muma first stood to consider the property as the university’s future home. (For years, Founders’ Rock was a fixture in the middle of the roadway that led into campus—until it was cited as a traffic hazard and moved in 1942, its circular cutout remaining visible opposite the Administration Building’s north façade. In 1965, it was moved again just northeast of the building, later renamed Murphy Hall.)

On October 25, 1926, Governor Richardson, regents and other university leaders, along with a crowd of students, joyfully amassed on the sprawling field to christen their new campus.

“The rock was the only thing there,” recalled Sherman Grancell, who as a freshman piled classmates into his father’s Model T Ford to bear witness. “There was dirt and weeds and Founders’ Rock.”

(From UCLA: The First Century: ch. 3, p. 42)
(c) 2011 The Regents of the University of California. All rights reserved.

The March King, then 74, led the Bruin band with its bombastic tubas and trilling piccolos in a rousing rendition of America’s national march, his venerable “Stars and Stripes Forever.” The band members, attired in newly commissioned uniforms featuring a reversible blue-and-gold cape, continued to play while following Sousa’s car from Fifth Street and Central Avenue to the Biltmore Hotel.

Just one year prior, the band—originally formed in 1925 as a 50-member ROTC unit—was recognized by UCLA’s student council as an official campus organization. Musician Ben Laietsky, who had performed with Sousa’s band, was selected as the UCLA band’s first director. Bugler John V. Vaughn was its first drum major.
Members of the Associated Students executive council were also on hand to celebrate the visit. President Kenneth M. Piper remarked that it was a great honor for the band and UCLA students to participate in what was being rumored as Sousa’s last visit to Los Angeles before retiring from public life.

Sousa died four years later, but the memory of that magical musical day stayed with the Bruin band members for years to come.

(From UCLA: The First Century: ch. 2, p. 33)
(c) 2011 The Regents of the University of California. All rights reserved.

During the Southern Branch’s first year, students were asked to suggest names for the campus yearbook. Among those submitted: The Oski, Southern Bear, Blue and Gold Jr., The Golden Poppy, Utopian, Cali State, Cubangeles, Cubifornian and Southern Campus.

After a student body vote, The Oski, named after Berkeley’s “Oski wow-wow!” cheer (Oski, Berkeley’s official mascot, was not introduced until 1941), was pronounced the victor.

The selection met with widespread disapproval. When it was revealed that the choice was made with fewer than 100 students voting, the matter was reopened. Other names were brought forth and three finalists emerged: El Osito (Spanish for Little Bear), Copa de Oro (Spanish for Gold Cup) and Southern Campus.

An election was held in Millspaugh Hall, and this time the winner, Southern Campus, would stick.

Just prior to the university’s move from Vermont Avenue to Westwood in 1929, Southern Campus Editor J. Brewer Avery tried to rename the publication Twin Towers, in honor of Royce Hall. But that didn’t take.
When Chancellor Franklin D. Murphy arrived in 1960, there was a drive to eliminate the “subservient to Berkeley” connotation. However, none of the names submitted was considered better than Southern Campus, so the name went unchanged.

Southern Campus it would remain for another two decades until, more than 60 years after it was first selected, another effort proved successful. In 1983, the yearbook debuted as Bruin Life, a name that seems destined to be long-lived.

(From UCLA: The First Century: ch. 2, p. 27)
(c) 2011 The Regents of the University of California. All rights reserved.

The Normal School is Dead! Long live the Branch University!” So cried the editorial page of the first issue of the Cub Californian on September 29, 1919.

The hard-won and long-awaited opening of the Southern Branch of the University of California had arrived. Regent Edward A. Dickson and the campus’s newly appointed founding Director Ernest Carroll Moore, along with the emerging Southern Californian constituency that demanded its creation, could feel a deep sense of accomplishment. Fittingly, however, no group was more pleased than the students who would directly benefit.
“We are all starting college life together, in a new institution, with, as yet, undeveloped possibilities,” the student newspaper continued. “The future of the college depends, in a large measure, upon the attitude adopted by the present student body toward the various activities and enterprises of the school.” These early students, dubbed “Pioneers” by Dickson and Moore—a name that was later extended to all students who spent time on the Vermont Avenue campus—included future choreographer Agnes de Mille, Lieutenant Governor Frederick F. Houser, and United Nations Under-Secretary-General and Nobel Peace Prize recipient Ralph J. Bunche.

The Great War had ended a year before the campus’s founding and “normalcy” returned to the nation, as promoted by President Warren G. Harding. Some vestiges of war remained. Approximately 175 disabled veterans, known as the Federal Class, enrolled in courses at the Southern Branch through the Federal Board for Vocational Education.

(From UCLA: The First Century: ch. 2, p. 22)
(c) 2011 The Regents of the University of California. All rights reserved.

“The wonderful thing about writing Fahrenheit 451, which I called The Fireman the first time out, was the fact that I could run up and down stairs in the library and seize books off the shelf, not knowing what I was going to find next, opening the books and discovering quotes to rush back down to the typing room to insert in my novel,” Bradbury continued. “It was a passionate and exciting time for me. Imagine what it was like to be writing a book about book burning and doing it in a library where the passions of all those authors, living and dead, surrounded me.”

(From UCLA: The First Century: ch. 6, p. 110)
(c) 2011 The Regents of the University of California. All rights reserved.