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The Kid has Ambition



There you have him, the youngest freshman in the history of the University of Arizona, at the fountain in front of Old Main!  He is not formally enrolled at the University, of course, because he is only two years old, and not enrolled anywhere, much less at the University.

He is not entirely unlike the first class of students who tried to enroll at the University.  There were thirty-two applicants then, in 1891, but only six of them were admitted as freshmen.  The rest were sent to prep classes.  It was more difficult then.  Arizona was still a territory, and there were no high schools in the territory.

Anyway, as proud as Arizonans are now about the University, they were not overjoyed back then.  The Territorial Legislature, which came to be known as "The Thieving Thirteenth" Legislature of 1885, had decided to allocate funds to establish needed territorial services.  They had $100,000., for instance, to build a mental hospital, and $25,000. to establish a university, and as I recall, money for a prison, too.  Quite naturally, the legislators from Tucson, like most of the rest of the "Thieving Thirteenth", hoped to snag the mental hospital, but the gentlemen from Tucson had trouble getting across the floodwaters of the Salt River, and came to Prescott late.  Backroom deals had already arranged for other cities to get the biggest and most desirable allocations, and Tucson had to settle for the university.

And then there were problems back home in Tucson, too.  Nobody was willing to provide land for the university until, finally, two gamblers and a saloon keeper donated property on which to build the university.  Those thirty-two aspirants first met in what is now called Old Main in 1891.  Most of them took prep classes, also taught by the University, as the University continued to do for more then twenty years.

There is no real evidence that those prep classes still survive, under the guise of academic counseling for very large athletes.  There is no real evidence that such academic counseling for courses such as "Fundamentals of Dribbling a Round Ball", or "Maintaining Balance With One Hand Not on the Ground", are intended to lead to a life in the Physics lab, or at Medical School.

Even so, the kid has a chance.  He knows how streetcars work, and he admires water in the desert.



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