Graduate Manager
In 1925, Cunningham was named graduate manager for the Associated Students at the Southern Branch of the University of California, a position that had generally the same duties and powers as that of an association general manager. As such, he accomplished tasks like arranging for the Grizzlies, as the athletics teams were known, to play against the Oregon State Aggies in the basketball pavilion at the University of Southern California and with Occidental College in the Olympic Auditorium. In 1928 he was secretary of the Coaches' and Managers' Association of the Pacific Coast Conference.
He was credited with bringing Bill Spalding to the campus as football coach and starting improvements that landed the university in the Pacific Coast Conference. He oversaw the transition of the Associated Students organization when the university moved from the old Vermont Avenue campus to the new campus in Westwood in 1929.
In 1931 a move began at UCLA to bring in a manager who had actually graduated from the Los Angeles campus, with tennis coach William C. Ackerman as the favorite. Cunningham was offered a one-year extension on his contract, but a student protest resulted in the term being extended to two years, with Ackerman to take over at the end of that time.
In one of his final acts as graduate manager, Cunningham told a City Council session in December 1932 that UCLA would not approve a council decision to give the University of Southern California Trojans eight preferred dates at the Los Angeles Coliseum for the succeeding ten years while the UCLA Bruins were to receive only five. The matter was eventually settled by agreement.
Read more about this topic: Stephen W. Cunningham
Famous quotes containing the words graduate and/or manager:
“In the United States, it is now possible for a person eighteen years of age, female as well as male, to graduate from high school, college, or university without ever having cared for, or even held, a baby; without ever having comforted or assisted another human being who really needed help. . . . No society can long sustain itself unless its members have learned the sensitivities, motivations, and skills involved in assisting and caring for other human beings.”
—Urie Bronfenbrenner (b. 1917)
“Nothing could his enemies do but it rebounded to his infinite advantage,—that is, to the advantage of his cause.... No theatrical manager could have arranged things so wisely to give effect to his behavior and words. And who, think you, was the manager? Who placed the slave-woman and her child, whom he stooped to kiss for a symbol, between his prison and the gallows?”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)