The new library exhibition People, Place, Passion provides an opportunity to reflect on the unique and distinctive character of the University of Stirling. The University welcomed its first students in September 1967. The experiences of these pioneering students were collected by Stirling alumnus Alastair Gentleman in 2017 to mark the 50th anniversary of the university. Here he introduces the fruits of his labour of love, The University of Stirling 1967 – The Student’s Tale, which he has generously presented to the University Archives:
When thinking about the University and its 50th anniversary, it occurred to me that other universities are so long-established that we tend not to think of them as ever having been new. This led me to wonder what it would be like if we could have had first hand accounts from the students who were there at the foundation of such institutions as St Andrews, Glasgow, Edinburgh or Oxford universities. What a rich insight that would provide into the day to day lives of the students and the times in which they lived.
It was a simple step from there to realise that we, the 1967 intake of the University of Stirling, were in a position to do just that – to set down our experiences for present and future generations of students and researchers. In contacting as many of that first intake as possible, I hoped to get a representative sample of experiences of Stirling in the late 1960s. I was not to be disappointed. I received a very varied response. Some concentrated on the academic side of Stirling, others on the social. Subject matter stretched from speakers at political meetings to boil-in-the-bag curries which introduced flat-dwelling students to a level of sophisticated cuisine hitherto unknown in student circles. Whatever else was expressed by the contributors, one thing is certain, the affection shown for the University of Stirling is universal as is the feeling that we were indeed privileged to have been present at its birth.
Alastair Gentleman
The University of Stirling 1967 – The Student’s Tale is available for consultation in the University Archives (ref. no. UA/D/5/10).