University of Louisiana Opening Day Anniversary

[NewsCopy]

The first classes at the University of Louisiana (Southwestern Louisiana Industrial Institute then) were held Sept. 18, 1901.

“A large crowd estimated at over 250 was present,” according to the opening day report in The Advertiser. “The exercises were begun by a brilliant march on the piano by the talented musical director ... Prof. Florent Sontag.”

Dr. Edwin L. Stephens, first president of the school, “made a short but very appropriate address in which he appealed to the friends of education to lend their assistance in making the Southwestern Louisiana Industrial Institute a powerful factor in the educational development of Southwestern Louisiana.

“Dr. Stephens invited all pupils prepared to take the [entrance] examination to pass to their respective classrooms. More than 100 students presented themselves for the examination,” according to the report.

The source of the story

Jim Bradshaw

[Turbine]

LAFAYETTE GAZETTE
September 21, 1901
	OPENING EXERCISES
	With deep earnestness Dr. Stephens-expressed the hope and the belief that the educational work thus begun should prove a great good to the community and parish of Lafayette, to Southwestern Louisiana, and to the entire State. He believed that it would grow to be an important factor among the forces tending to the industrial, the intellectual, and the moral uplift of the generations it is to influence; and he bespoke the sincere purpose of his faculty to do everything in their power to make the institution such a factor. He expressed the conviction that the greatest educational force is the moral ideal -quoting the well-known injunction of- Emerson: "Arm the man; let him learn in season that he is born into a state of war, and that, taking both reputation and life in his hands, he must dare the gibbet and the mob, by the absolute truth of his speech and the unswerving rectitude of his behavior."

[Turbine]

Dr. Stephens-expressed the hope and the belief that the educational work thus begun should prove a great good to the community and parish of Lafayette, to Southwestern Louisiana, and to the entire State.

Stephens was brilliant.

Even in 1901 he had the foresight not to limit the schools scope to the unmentioned town of Lafayette.

His focus:
Community
Parish
Region
Entire State