The 1930s were years of Depression, years of preparation for war, years of disillusion. Joe College was dying, and the Daily Bruin was doing its best to finish him off. The Bruin attacked senseless "traditions," over-commercialized and subsidized football, Hell Week, all the evils of big, tax-supported state universities. It attacked, as well, the evils it saw in the world around it: Militarism, radicalism, reaction.

But it did more: It opened its feature pages to opinions of all stripes and persuasions. Communists, racists, fraternity boys and confused little freshmen took turns in presenting their views. "The policy of The Daily Bruin is molded to meet the wishes of the entire student body," said Editor F. Chandler Harris. "It belongs to the students, and the editor feels responsible primarily to them." (CDB, 2/13/35.)11

It was this practice, more than any other one thing, that brought the pepperings of criticism upon the Bruin, and yet, through it all, the Bruin continued to fulfill its first duty to the students, and the first love of the embryo journalists -- publishing the news.

At just about the same time that the stock market collapsed and the world moved into the Great Depression, UCLA made its long-awaited move from its old campus on Vermont Avenue to the raw, redbrick university far away to the west. In the fall of 1929 great convoys of student-driven automobiles and trucks helped move books, supplies and furnishings to the hills of Westwood. The new campus gave UCLA a chance to continue its smooth and continuous growth, from 6,175 in September 1929 to 8,616 ten years later. In 1937-38, UCLA lost one of its last reminders of its days as a Normal School when men finally overtook women in enrollment.

Though there were no streetcars running in front of the new campus, UCLA was still known as a "streetcar college." Most students commuted. Dirt parking lots were muddy in winter, dusty in summer. A strip of fraternities grew up on Gayley Avenue and a string of sororities on Hilgard. The University "regretted" that it could do nothing to help a group of Japanese-American women build a sorority house on Hilgard, forbidden to do so because of racial restrictions in the property deed. There was only one university-owned dormitory -- Mira Hershey Hall, which housed 80 women. Campus politics were in the hands of the fraternities and sororities, and the Daily Bruin, which was its own fraternity and sorority wrapped into one, had to suffer from that fact.

Even before the University made its move from the Vermont campus, the Daily Bruin was looking ahead. It secured passage by Student Council of a resolution that it "continue its policy of publishing leased wire news and news pictures" and "its policy of publishing special sections and pages, such as the Women's Page, the Drama Page, the Literary Review Section." It was also to establish a morning delivery service to "maintain a publication for the community at Westwood as well as the campus public." (SEC, 4/7/27.)

The year before the move, the Bruin unveiled a new Page One flag featuring a view of the new Royce Hall and a cut of the University seal. "Prophetic of the University to come and explanatory of the University that was, is the new heading which adorns the first page of the Daily Bruin," said Editor James F. Wickizer. (CDB, 3/29/28.)

"We moved into offices in Royce Hall in February [1930]," recalled Editor Charles Olton four decades later. "And this was the big thing -- a real, honest-to-goodness city desk, semi-circular, with an editor's slot and all. The paper was printed at the old Hollywood Citizen -- I do mean the OLD Citizen. Composing room in a dingy cellar. I remember it all with great nostalgia." (Questionnaire.)

It was a short-lived period in the basement of Royce. A year later, Kerckhoff Hall was opened, and the student government offices took up their new quarters. The Daily Bruin got one of the bigger allocations -- a large, spare room at the end of the second-floor corridor -- KH 212 (now KH 312). It was so big before it was divided into separate offices in summer 1941 that the Student Council once adjourned an overflow meeting from the KH Memorial Room to the Bruin office to accommodate the crowd. (CDB, 11/27/39.)

Furniture came in spurts. On Monday, April 20, a new copy desk was installed. It remained for decades, gradually growing rougher and pockmarked from generations of copy pencils and rulers banging against its surface.

A new campus, a new Bruin, more pages, a redesigned, modern layout, improved services. One hundred fifty issues were published during 1929-30, the largest being a souvenir issue for the dedication of the new campus, 36 pages, including a sixteen-page rotogravure section. "The paper is delivered to fifty per cent of the homes in the vicinity. Two hundred students were connected with [it] . . . , some spending as many as eight to ten hours a day, at times, in its publication." (CDB, 5/29/30.)

"At the time we had some notion that we could imitate the New York Times," wrote Editor Charles Olton (Questionnaire). And Editor Carl Schaefer said in 1931:


Basing its policy on surveys finding that many students (48 percent in 1934) read no other newspaper (CDB, 9/27/34), the Bruin continued to emphasize world and national news, much to the discontent of the non-news-oriented Student Council members, who wanted more emphasis placed on publicity for social events.



The Thirties began in a typical way: Editor Carl Schaeffer ran afoul of the Student Council and thereby became the first editor since 1926 to serve for only one semester. His successor, Charles Olton, later the owner of a printing plant, remembers Schaeffer as "a much better editor than I ever was. Full of ideas -- and I think an 'exposer' of some of the foolishness of our day." Olton continued:

Olton may have "got chicken," but agitation against compulsory ROTC (which was made voluntary in the 1960s) continued in the Bruin.



The Bruin shared the isolationist sentiment of its time. It warned of the dangers of such "militarists" as Billy Mitchell, who could see a future distant and alien from that envisioned by student editors on the sun-drenched UCLA campus:


Outgoing Editor Sanford J. Mock urged his successor in 1940: "I sincerely hope that you will do all you can to help American students maintain a sane attitude toward the war in Europe. You can't say too many times that we don't have to go to war, that we have our own job to do here and now. If we ever hope to have real democracy, continued peace is essential." (CDB, 1/10/40.)

"The draft was instituted in 1940, and we were against it," recalled Editor Bruce Cassiday. "As you can see, it didn't do much good to fight it." (Questionnaire.)

In 1938 the Bruin sponsored a poll to determine how many students would fight for the United States overseas in an aggressive war. Two hundred ten of the 291 men depositing ballots in the Bruin office said they would not go. (CDB, 1/12/38.) This was the high point for the peace movement at UCLA; in fact, the Peace Committee was made a part of the student body organization (SEC, 10/19/38), thereby taking it out of the radical-agitator class and bringing it into the student establishment.

The Bruin was often wary of attempting too much with too little power to accomplish miracles or stem irresistible tides flowing in the opposite direction. Editors in 1932 and 1933 advised their successors to avoid editorials dealing with the University of Southern California, subsidization of athletes, the Military Science Department, "the Administration and our relations with Berkeley, both of whom [sic] are loaded with dynamite." (CDB, 5/27/32 and 6/2/33.)

Editor Robert Shellaby publicly advised his successor that:


In its crusading, liberal fashion, the Bruin took on professors and "rah-rah" spirit societies. Berating the profs for checking attendance at every class, it complained that the college student of 1934 was "not an irresponsible child whose every step in this bewildering world must be planned for him; he is a self-reliant young man or woman, certain of his actions and with some conception of where they are leading him." (CDB, 3/14/34.)

And of the campaign by Spurs and Sophomore Service (both of them spirit societies) to forbid students from stepping on the University Seal on the floor of the University (now Powell) Library, it said:



Another tradition it attacked was that of "Hell Week," the long-observed hazing period of the fraternities and sororities. It printed a six-part editorial series against this practice in March-April 1934.

On the other hand, the Bruin did its best to preserve the benign tradition of singing school songs in class on Wednesday mornings. Since the 1920s it had been printing the words to these songs in its Wednesday editions, and one year it even printed a "Black List" of professors who did not allow singing in their classes. (CDB, 3/21/34.)

As the Thirties progressed, the Bruin had to defend UCLA from a growing, ill-founded reputation as a Communist-influenced campus, attacking both radicals and conservatives editorially yet maintaining their right to speak through the medium of the Daily Bruin's feature pages.

UCLA's reputation as a leftist school was always baseless because its Administration was certainly as conservative as most other college campuses in California, if not more so. As early as 1934, a UCLA-UC Berkeley debate was canceled by Darwin C. Brown, UCLA forensics manager, on the grounds that "Communism cannot be discussed on this campus." (CDB, 3/5/34.) But Director Ernest C. Moore played into the hands of the leftists later that year when he used what appears to have been his favorite method of academic discipline -- suspension -- to rid the University of five students who were planning an open forum on the subject of peace and militarism. The official charge was "their radical activities and unsatisfactory conduct." (Adm, 10/22/34.)

His mistake lay in the fact that four of the five students were members of the Student Council, one of them -- John Burnside -- being student body president. None of the four was at all radical; at the most, they believed perhaps that Communism could be "discussed on this campus." On appeal, President Robert Gordon Sproul reinstated all five -- the four within two weeks and the fifth (who was a Communist) six weeks later.

"Such behavior tempted me to write an editorial blasting Dr. Moore," recalled Editor Chandler Harris. "Counsel by a fraternity brother on the faculty (Dr. H. Arthur Steiner) resulted in an editorial asking for patience on the part of all concerned."



The Bruin showed its essentially moderate (and by today's standards, almost indefensible) position by writing "Finis" to the controversy when the four student officers were reinstated, leaving the Communist -- Celeste Strack -- off in limbo and forgotten: "Now that the whole thing has been settled, it is useless to waste time in futile regrets. The whole thing mast be thoroughly buried and forgotten as soon as possible." (CDB, 11/14/34.) Harris recalled that Dr. Moore later "thanked me rather shyly for the Bruin's editorial restraint." (Questionnaire.)
The newspaper continued to oppose radical activities by urging students to ignore a peace strike scheduled for April 12, 1935.



Its follow-up story on the strike was dripping with scorn.


The Bruin attacked with impartiality the activities of the radical National Student League and a conservative group, the UCLA Americans. One of the student leaders of this latter group "took umbrage at many of the things in the Daily Bruin, particularly the editorial page," recalled Stanley Rubin, editor in 1936-37. He "pursued his resentment against the Daily Bruin and me to the point of charging into the office and physically attacking me. The fight was inconclusive." Rubin identified the angry young student as Max Rafferty, who later became the State Superintendent of Public Instruction. (Questionnaire.) See Page 77 for more on Rafferty.

Meanwhile, because of the radical activities on the UCLA campus, abetted by the Administration's early high-handed methods of dealing with them, UCLA continued to be tainted with a Red brush. But it was not alone. Editor Chandler Harris, who attended a nationwide conference of college editors sponsored by the Hearst Newspapers over the Christmas holidays in 1934, felt no obligation to be charitable to his hosts when he discovered the underlying mood of the entire gathering: "From college newspapers in widely separated parts of the country comes the advance news of a campus Red-Scare to be conducted on a nation-wide basis . . . The motives of the chief scarer, the Hearst string of newspapers, are still obscure . . . " (CDB, 1/15/35.) (The animus of Bruin editors toward the Hearst papers scarcely lessened with the years, particularly when Regent John Francis Neylan, a Hearst attorney, began criticizing both the Daily Bruin and the Daily Californian, the UC at Berkeley newspaper, in the 1950s.)

Editor Stan Rubin gave this advice about the Red scare to his successor: "Public opinion is still too much of a sore spot here. We'll outgrow our fear of the downtown press and our fear of red cries. But that will take time, and meanwhile you must be gentle." (CDB, 5/14/ 37.)

One who was not gentle was Editor Bruce Cassiday, who said in 1940:



The Daily Bruin had a certain professional flair in the years before World War II. One reason was its use of full-size, eight-column pages that demanded a more sober, professional treatment than the tabloid size later did.

By the end of the decade, the Bruin had distilled its method of operation into a statement of internal policy filled with lofty ideals and inspiration:



During this period, the Bruin continued its policy of exchanging stories with the Daily Californian in Berkeley -- often by radio. (CDB, 4/10/35 and 10/31/41.) As part of President Robert Gordon Sproul's emphasis on "One University," the Bruin and the Daily Cal exchanged front-page mats on the Friday before Charter Day activities, Page One of each publication substituting as Page Two of its sister daily.

At one point, the Bruin's desire for a "metropolitan" image took a bizarre turn. On May 29, 1930, a small box in the lower-left corner of Page One informed the reader that "Every story on this page, with the exception of this one, was written by Ted E. Ginsburg, '30, retiring Editorial Advisor. This metropolitan gesture is being tried out for the first time in the Daily Bruin." (CDB, 5/29/30.) The Bruin did not explain just which metropolitan newspaper was in the habit of assigning all its Page One stories to one writer.

Front-page opinion columns were often written by student editors. And columnists often occupied prominent spots on the feature page, which is where the opinion articles ran. One of the best of the columnists was The Dilettant, whose taste in writing ran to off-beat sex and hair fetishes.



The Dilettant was dropped from the feature page shortly after he quoted from Samuel Pepys' description of the trial of a man who exposed himself in Jolly Old London. (CDB, 4/18/34.) His last column revealed pontifically that "love is the result of the tissue conditions of the sex organs." (CDB, 5/2/34.)

This was too much for Editor Robert Shellaby, who threw The Dilettant out of the paper and wrote that the column had "outlived its usefulness . . . [It] wandered beyond the pale of good taste." (CDB, 5/8/34.)

One of the most interesting years was that under the editorship of Gilbert Harrison, who was executive secretary of the University Religious Conference from 1937 to 1941 and later became editor of the national liberal magazine The New Republic. Harrison, editor in 1935-36, subscribed to a Christian Science Monitor news service that enabled him to run complete pages on important national and international events in a manner that no other Los Angeles newspaper was doing at that time.

Harrison was enamored even then of Gertrude Stein. After he graduated from UCLA he met Stein, became a friend and in 1965 published a selection of her works. During his Bruin years, he ran two of Stein's phrases beneath the masthead on the feature page. First, "EVERYBODY WHO SAW IT SAID YES BUT THE PORTRAIT DOES NOT LOOK LIKE MLLE. GERTRUDE. AND PICASSO REPLIED NO DIFFERENCE, IT WILL." Then he switched to "ANYONE TO TEASE A SAINT SERIOUSLY."

Harrison, who was described by his successor, Stanley Rubin, as a "calm, talented man" (Questionnaire), recalls his year of editorship as a period of "enjoyable anarchy." (Questionnaire.) Rubin, who was remembered by Harrison as being "ambitious, industrious, intelligent," later became a writer-producer of films and television.

Harrison's predecessor was Chandler Harris, who remained on the UCLA campus as the University's manager of public information. Harris, according to Harrison, was "kind, quiet and cool . . . he had no failures, that was my department . . . [he was] tall, thin, sallow, quick, a straight man in a comedy act." (Questionnaire.)

Other staff workers during the prewar years were James Pike, a staffer in 1933-34, later the Methodist bishop of California; Jack Stanley, novelist; Louis Banks, managing editor of Fortune magazine; Al Kahn, United Press sportswriter and editor; Robert Brown, member of the New Hampshire state legislature; Hal Keene, San Diego newspaper and television personality; Tom Brady, New York Times correspondent; Louis Turner, treasurer of Systems Development Corp.; Cecil Smith, television editor and columnist, Los Angeles Times; Andrew Hamilton, UCLA public affairs officer and novelist; Flora Lewis, foreign correspondent and columnist; Jack Hauptli, supervising assistant city editor, Seattle Times; Bruce Cassiday, fiction editor, Argosy magazine; Claire Cox, byliner for United Press (later in public relations work); Hal Gilliam, San Francisco Chronicle; Richard K. Pryne, assistant news editor, Seattle Times; William Schallert, actor; May Hobart, society editor of the Hollywood Citizen-News, and William F. Tyree, United Press correspondent.

It was a rich and productive period in the history of the Bruin. Some of the writing, a trifle ragged perhaps by the metropolitan standards the Bruin professed to follow, nevertheless is worth reprinting.


Writing and ideas were the stuff of which the Bruin staff was made. But that is never enough, neither on a University newspaper nor in the life outside the walls. Bruin writers learned that the world is hard, and that the just do not always receive the rewards they think they merit. They learned about such things as campus politics, secret maneuvering and outside pressures.