sion of the activities of the Union as
an organization, and a Board of Governors, created upon completion of
the building, composed of the student President of the Union, one member
of the Board of Regents, the Financial Secretary appointed by the
President of the University and four members appointed by the Board of
Directors of the Alumni Association, to have financial control of the
building and organization as a corporation.

With the opening of the University in 1919, when the enrolment exceeded
by 1,500 the previous record attendance in 1916, the Union entered upon
a new and more effective period of service, not entirely equipped and
ready, it is true, but sufficiently prepared to justify at once the
vision of those responsible for the result. Even without any endowment
it demonstrated from the first that it could be maintained as an
essentially self-supporting concern.[3]

[Footnote 3: A careful estimate, made in October, 1920, showed that an
average of 7,500 persons daily passed the doors of the Union. Some 2,200
persons were also served daily in the Tap-Room or cafeteria, in addition
to the regular dining-room service.]

As the Union served the life of the men in the University, other
agencies have come to do the same for the women. Long before the Union
was even thought of, the Women's League maintained headquarters in the
parlors of Barbour Gymnasium, which, with Sarah Caswell Angell Hall and
the adjoining gymnasium, served the women well. These, with the three
recently constructed halls of residence, including the Martha Cook
Building, perhaps the most beautiful and luxurious dormitory ever built
in an American university, will go far towards answering the social
needs of the women. They have at least made the general scale of living
conditions far more favorable for the girls of the University than for
the men, who for many years have been sadly in need of the facilities
offered by such a building as the Union. Fortunately there is every
prospect that some dormitories for men will be forthcoming in the near
future.

The religious life of the students has never been neglected, though the
careful non-sectarianism of the University led it at first to be
regarded with suspicion by the various religious bodies of the State,
and their opposition, sometimes veiled, and sometimes open, proved
embarrassing. It has been shown how this sentiment was met by a
prevailing clerical complexion in the Faculty and an emp