It's in the air

Editor's note–
Fall reminds us even more that Bloomington is a special place. With the changing of leaves, alumni return to the place they called home for four years and current students celebrate the rich history of a campus that is one of the most beautiful in the nation.

We’re not the first, and won’t be the last generation of students to recognize the qualities that make this place so memorable. That’s why we’ve decided to run the following unsigned editorial, originally published on Sept. 5, 1922, in the Indiana Daily Student. It was most likely written by 1944 Pulitzer Prize winner Ernie Pyle in his time as editor. Enjoy.

Nearly everyone who has ever attended Indiana University will tell you there is no place in the world like Indiana. They sometimes attempt to explain that statement but they cannot. Strangely enough, in their attempt to explain, they fail to mention the assets of the school usually mentioned by its boosters.

They have nothing to say about the remarkable professors whose fame seems so much greater in the outside world than it does to the students who work under them. They do not mention the buildings or equipment or the many advantages carefully compiled in the school catalog. They do not gather together and present facts which a logical speaker would use in convincing folk that this is a great school.

Ex-students recognize the value of all these things, recognize their argumentative value. But when they ejaculate that there is no place in all the world like Indiana, they are thinking about something else. They are thinking of spring days when the campus is bursting with fragrance, vivid with the color of blossoms and new leaves, and when the moon is bright—it is undeniable that spring is nowhere in the world as it is at Indiana.

They are thinking about the autumn evenings when dusk has settled and the last cheers have died out over Jordan Field and another football game has become a memory, another football game which may or may not have been a victory but which was a courageous fight by Indiana men whom everyone in school knew and liked.

They are thinking of “pep” meetings and mass meetings and pow-wows in which Indiana men sounded the ancient battle cry, where sheepish football captains tried to make speeches before a howling crowd of students and equally wild old grads, and where the old songs gave at the same time a sudden impulse to tears and an electric thrill down the backbone.

They are thinking about hundreds of wholesome, pleasant people, who were
their friends. They are thinking something about Indiana which none of them could ever express in words.

These persons who make such broad unqualified statements about Indiana say that they have since tried out living in many other places but that somehow the tang is missing.

Other schools can contain nothing after such moments. Other schools seem to lack the facilities to produce those thrills which certainly can come within but four years of a lifetime.

These are the feelings of those who have been here and have left. Perhaps it is foolish and sentimental but they will affirm it is the truth.