Ruth Taylor Bateman, Associate Professor of Physical Education, 1987

"Ruth Taylor Bateman--yours has been a peripatetic career. Thirty-four years ago you set up shop in the first Alexander Gymnasium, located on the site now occupied by Youngchild Hall, and soon became head of the Physical Education department. When the women's gym was torn down, you picked up your hockey sticks, badminton racket, and skis and trekked across the river to Alexander Gymnasium the second. Then, with the opening of the Buchanan Kiewit Center last year, you were called back across the river to be assistant director of the new facility.

For you life is not a spectator sport. You championed the cause of women on campus through the 1960s and 1970s, actively advising the Women's Recreation Association, helping to organize Women In Support of Athletics at Lawrence, whose acronym, WISAL, you created, and spearheading student and faculty ski trips. It was on one such trip that your inimitable rendition of 'O'er the Fox' brought that ancient song out of mothballs and started it on the road to its current notoriety.

As you have traveled back and forth 'O'er the Fox' yourself, you have done so with professional purpose and with a sense of humor that has helped us all avoid taking ourselves too seriously. Thoreau has said, 'To affect the quality of the day, that is the highest of arts.' You have affected the quality of our days, and we are grateful to you for it.

By the authority vested in me, I now confer upon you the degree of Master of Arts, ad eundem, and admit you to its rights, its privileges, and its obligations."