The Decline of the Sem Bot

After Bessey's death in 1915, the leadership of the society passed to R.J. Pool, who had indeed become a Professor at the University. As the size of the club grew, however, its rigorous demands decreased, and the club became less inclined to toss lits and employ the Socratic Method. The tradition of pie remained, but the important aspects of its consumption and symbolism were all but forgotten. By the late 1920s, the club had degenerated into more of a social scientific club, with its student leader Julia Joyce Harper even petitioning to surviving original members to change the society's name to "Sigma Beta" according to the Greek-ification trend of the period. Roscoe Pound responded to Ms. Harper in May, 1924: "For my part, I should say go on with the Botanical Survey; go on with the Flora of Nebraska; do some big things for botany and let the wearing of pins and sporting of Greek letters be done in connection with some other organization." The society dwindled, however, as the expansion of summer programs to Cedar Rapids and the Black Hills rendered many of the convocations and colloquia superfluous. Students and faculty could travel and learn beyond the campus much more easily, and the smaller groups created within these programs were easier to develop than the expansive ranks the Sem Bot included at its peak, around 1920.

However, the catalyst had served its purpose: it inspired a research-based botany, and later on, biological sciences department. It would be betraying the scientific term catalyst if one did not acknowledge that it was necessary to accelerate this reaction, but was not part of the end product. The Sem Bot, like many other professional societies, faded into oblivion during the 1930s, when scholarships and salaries dwindled significantly. It no longer appeared in the Cornhusker annual after 1931, and the records discontinued after 1936.

The Sem Bot Creed

"I believe in a vegetable kingdom of which the Myxomycetes are not a part. I believe in the Bessyan system of classification. I believe in the nutritive qualities of Canis Pie. I believe in the Schivendenerian algo-lichen hypothesis, in the heteroecism of rusts, in the law of priority, in the use of parentheses in nomenclature and in the decapitalization of specific names. Frigida dies est cum relinquemur! or "Feeble is the day when we are left behind!"