a series of prize contests, debates for sophomores and
juniors, and orations for seniors. For these first and second prizes
were awarded at public exhibitions, which never failed to arouse great
interest. This traditional emphasis on public speaking has been
maintained consistently down to the present time, and many distinguished
alumni of the University have been numbered among the contestants.

For many years the two societies Alpha Nu and Adelphi have occupied two
rooms on the fourth floor of University Hall, the only student
organizations entirely independent of Faculty patronage thus recognized.
Why they have not come to occupy the prominent place that two similar
organizations hold at Princeton, the Clio and Whig societies, whose two
marble temples are one of the distinguishing marks of Princeton's
Campus, is a matter for speculation. Probably the fact that Princeton
long remained a college while Michigan early became a university with a
more inclusive curriculum, will best explain it. As it is, however,
these societies have in the past done a great service for the University
and deserve to survive. They are not, however, the only student
organizations which have had exercise in public speaking as their reason
for existence, for many such have come and gone, only to be remembered
by their own student generation and by the heavy weight of their
classical names. Such were a multitude of debating clubs which sprang up
in the "60's" under such impressive titles as "Homotrapezoi,"
"Philozetian," "Panarmonian," or, in the Law Department, the less
pretentious "Douglas," "Clay," and "Lincoln" Societies which were the
forerunners of the present Jeffersonian and Webster Societies. A
latter-day organization has been the long popular "Toastmaster's Club"
which aims to perpetuate the doubtful joys of after-dinner oratory.
Other means of self-expression for those oratorically bent, were those
formal exhibitions of which the long-popular annual Junior Exhibition
was the most prominent. Nowadays, the only vestige of student
participation in programs of this character remains in the annual Class
Day Exercises.

Another organization which stimulated interest in platform speaking was
the Students' Lecture Association, which was until recently one of the
most successful undergraduate enterprises. It was organized in
September, 1854, and continued for nearly sixty years to bring
distinguished and sometimes, judged by later-day standa