June 8, 1902

The “deadening effect of pleasure-seeking” was, according to The New York Times, the theme of President Taylor’s baccalaureate sermon to the Class of 1902. It was students’ tendency at the present time, he said, to think that the best thing to be had at college was a good time. This attitude was destructive to the soul, to physical vigor, to clear thinking and to spiritual insight.

Taylor told the class their “opportunities and training had given them a view over these tendencies as from a mountain top; that they now must descend into the plain and help in the battle against them.”