100 YEARS AGO
Church restoration hits a snag
Restoration of Memorial Church, which was badly damaged in the 1906 earthquake, faced a setback when mosaics from Salviati & Co. of Venice, Italy (above), arrived in a messy heap. Shipped by boat and recovered after the first vessel wrecked, the mosaics themselves had to be repaired because glue used to adhere them to walls had dissolved. Workmen eventually sorted it all out—the church restoration was finally completed in December 1916.
75 YEARS AGO
Stanford men say they won’t fight
As the Battle of Britain raged and Hitler’s armies occupied much of Europe, a Stanford Daily survey in 1941 revealed that a majority of male Stanford students “would not be willing to fight, even if a British victory could be assured by America’s entrance into the war.” Equally notable, 63 percent of campus men indicated that they would not volunteer if the United States entered the war against Germany, and 11 percent declared they would “refuse to fight, even at the risk of imprisonment.” Those sentiments would change dramatically after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.
25 YEARS AGO
Sexual assault: An issue today and then
Prompted by a survey that found 37 percent of graduate women and 29 percent of undergraduate women (as well as 16 percent of graduate men and 10 percent of undergraduate men) had experienced coerced or forced “full sexual activity,” mainly on campus, the university in 1991 created a task force to address sexual assault. A key recommendation of the panel was to create a position of coordinator of sexual assault response services—a position that went unfunded until the ASSU allocated more than $45,000. The task force also recommended changes in the student judicial system and adoption of a sexual conduct policy.
History Corner is produced by the Stanford Historical Society.
