Epitome Year Book 1884: The Gymnasium

Students lament another passing year in which the promised Gymnasium does not come to fruition:

THAT a spellword to conjure up growls and unfulfilled promises! Each succeeding Epitome has devoted a page to an emphatic growl over the absence of a gymnasium, and the students, each in their individual capacities, have growled their gruffest. At many a palaver after chapel have indefinite assurances of its approaching construction been given, and at many more private interviews, with the powers that were and are, have these assurances been reiterated.

But, this term, something more substantial was afforded us. At the Athletic Hop, it was announced from the platform by the President, that a gymnasium was to be built, and that the matter was in the hands of a committee of four of the most energetic trustees, who had been friends of the project from the first. This statement came near literally bringing down the house. The delight and excitement were unbounded. "A site had been selected," we were told. "The architect had been sent for, and would be here Saturday." We almost expected to see the workmen, the piles of brick, and other unsightly but necessary appliances for building, scattered about the campus next morning. But the weeks fly by, and the leaves and chestnut burrs remain undisturbed, while the cold chills of doubt begin to creep up the back of our enthusiasm, and we experience that sickly feeling that comes over a man after he has gushed and enthused over anything, and then finds that he has been taken in. But we still have faith. The extent to which our faith has been developed by simple exercise during our three terms at Lehigh is tremendous. If it was a religious faith, we could say to the whole Rocky Mountain system: "Be thou removed and cast into the sea," and it should be so. It is the first article of our creed, as students of Lehigh, that we are going to have a gymnasium, and we shall continue to hug the delusion to our hearts until we graduate, or receive a death-warrant from the Faculty; then we will hand it down to some confiding Freshman, and bid him cherish it as we have done. Yes, noble Galileo! the gymnasium does move!