Alums on a tumultuous time

I don't think I ever mentioned in this blog that I work for Ohio Today, Ohio University's alumni magazine, as an editorial intern. That was part of my initial inspiration for starting a blog of this nature. Our last issue, which had an election/service theme, included a photo of a 1968 mock Republican convention held on campus. It generated quite a few reader responses! Below are some excerpts from letters that I thought pertained to my last blog entry about campus disturbances and the turbulent times of the late sixties and seventies.

Things were becoming crazily un-buttoned down and not altogether collegiate. There was static in the air, and the times, they were a changin'. -Susan Horner Husted Stuart, BA '68

What really struck me from the photo is that for a bunch of dope-smoking, hippie radicals and outside agitators (as college students were commonly portrayed in the media), we were really a pretty clean-cut and well-dressed bunch. But then again, we mustn't forget that it was a mock Republican convention. -Steven Mills, BA '70

I can't remember much about the details of that convention, only to say that I still have my California delegate badge with its red ribbon attached. I guess I just wanted to be involved at a time when there was so much tension in our country, from the death of Martin Luther King Jr. only weeks before that mock convention, to the continuing social unrest caused by the war in Vietnam. -Ron Moss, BBA '71

Civil disobedience or just plain anarchy?

(Top: Students protested a proposed fee increase in early 1970. A one point, a group "took over" the first floor of Cutler Hall; unfortunately, I don't know for how long or by how many, but it ended more or less peacefully. Bottom: Just last month the Palmerfest block party ended in flames and arrests, as riot police shut it down.)

A healthy dose of civil disobedience is one thing. Rioting is another thing entirely. Unfortunately, one seems to lead to the other in many cases, and OU has a color past when it comes to both. Inspired by some comments on my last entry that mentioned that Cutler Hall was once invaded by protesting students, I decided to explore the topic of civil disobedience at Ohio University, or in some cases, just plain disobedience.  

• The first documented account of notable unrest is from 1826, when Ohio University students staged their first riot. The trigger was pretty pitiful (a student was miffed at then President Wilson’s corrections on his literary composition, which was deemed “unsatisfactory”), but the tension had been mounting for two years. It was then that the faculty discussed the need for more supervision of the Edifice, which served as dormitory. As Manasseh Cutler (whose name was later given to the Edifice building) said, “chambers in colleges are too often made the nurseries of every vice and cage of unclean birds.” In 1825, President Wilson reported to the trustees that there had been “more calls than usual for the exercise of discipline during the last term.” It seems that 1826 riot was almost predictable.
  
• The 1950s saw some rather innocent insurrections, more mischief making than anything else. Most notable is the Orange Riot (1958), which began with a couple boys play catch on East Green with oranges obtained from the dining hall. Gradually, more and more students joined in the fun until a minor war erupted. At one point, three to five thousand people covered East Green, playing and observing. When police and ARAs tried to disperse the crowd, they paid no heed and proceed to different female dorms, urging girls to toss out their underwear. After a few hours, the good-natured crowd turned in, making it memorable but rather uneventful.
  
• By the sixties though, Ohio University had acquired a party school reputation. Each spring, celebrants poured into town (now called the Fort Lauderdale of Ohio) for spring fests and St. Patrick’s Day.
  
• In 1968, an eventful year around the world, a riot erupted. When a nonacademic employees’ union suddenly opted not strike, as was the word on the street, students expecting school to close early were annoyed and acted out. More than two thousand students amassed outside of the president’s house on Park Place, shouting, “Let’s go home” and “We want a strike.” President Alden, his wife, and their young children waiting inside as police moved the crowd away. It dispersed and migrating toward Court Street, only refueling angry sentiments with alcohol. Students returned to Park Place, where they gathered on the construction site of the new library across the street from the Aldens’ home. This time, some lit fires in the street while others picked up bricks and lead pipes from the site and hurled them through the president’s windows.
  
• In spite of the generally mellow tone of campus life during the mid-to-late seventies, each year seemed to end in conflict and bad publicity. The 1972-73 school year ended with a brick-throwing skirmish against Athens police. And again, in 1976, an otherwise progressive and positive year ended in June when a street confrontation between students and police ended in police firing of wooden bullets at brick-throwing students. The year 1979 marked the tenth time in eleven years that students left the bars late on a warm spring evening and eventually battled police for control of Court Street.
  
• Most recently, OU made the news for the “near-riots” of Palmerfest on May 9, 2009, a debacle that serves as an embarrassing reminder that large crowds, copious amounts of alcohol and nice weather sometimes don’t mix. I was out of town that weekend but was thankful for the Post’s timely and in-depth reporting on the event.
  

This history is certainly nothing to be proud of, but maybe if more students understood that our quiet campus has been periodically stained by senseless violence, they would perhaps want to help break that cycle. 

Photo Credit - First image: Courtesy of Robert E. & Jean R. Mahn Center for Archives and Special Collections. Second image: From the Post web site, taken by Greg Roberts. Third image: From the Post web site, taken by Sam Saccone. 

If bricks could talk

Strolling across College Green at midday, it is likely that you’ve noticed “Alma Mater, Ohio” chiming in the background, as well as the origin of the sound—Cutler Hall. First know as the College Edifice (later as the Center Building and today as Cutler Hall), it has been ushering students to class for almost 200 years. A bell was added to the tower in 1820 (two years after it was built), and students could earn a few bucks to ring it, marking class changes. Not until 1940s were the alma mater chimes added.

If its solid brick walls could talk, they would have more than one interesting tale to tell. Like the time a few frat boys in the early 1900s tied a goat to the roof, a stunt meant to show off to prospective pledges and competing fraternities. Or during WWII, when it stood boarded up and abandoned, a time when OU had adopted the motto “use it up, wear it out, make it do, or do without.” Or when students took over the first floor in protest of a proposed fee increase in 1970.

Or when legendary alumnus John Brough (who went on to become an Ohio governor) first kicked a football over the building in 1830, a feat attempted by subsequent students well into the mid-twentieth century, as seen below.

Photo credits - Images scanned from “Ohio University, 1804-2004: The Spirit of a Singular Place” by Betty Hollow.

More Alden Library, through the years

This is the last post about Alden Library, I promise. I thought that this being a history blog and all, I should include some, well, history about libraries on campus. So here's what I've dug up:

• The first hundred years or so is a little hazy. Sometime in the 1830s, accounts by travelers describe a library with an estimated 2,000 volumes.
• In the late 1870s, several literary societies combined their separate libraries with the university’s. (Below are bookplates identifying volumes collected by two such literary societies.)

• The first official library building on campus was the Carnegie Library (1905-1931), which is now Scripps Hall. Andrew Carnegie, who donated $30,000 toward its construction, required that the library be open to “all Athens citizens, school teachers, and children.
  
• Once the university began to outgrow Carnegie Library, the Chubb Library was built (1931-1969). Now known as Chubb Hall, it houses administrative offices. (Students fill the main study room, below, sometime in the late 1940s.)

• When Ohio University’s fifteenth president, Vernon R. Alden, stated in his 1962 inaugural address that the university’s greatest need was for a new library, he wasn’t exaggerating. His administration saw a doubling of enrollment and faculty, and OU had literally outgrown Chubb Library. Says Dr. Alden, “We had Chubb Library, which was very nice, but even with 8,000 students in those days it wasn’t adequate. And it certainly wasn’t adequate for graduate programs and for the research activities of faculty members.”
  
• Construction on Alden Library began in 1966. (Below, a group of students talk to President Alden near the construction site.)

• Alden Library officially opens in 1969, but the east and west wings weren’t completed until 1972. (Below, students fill the current periodicals area in the early 1980s.)

• In 1979, the library acquires its one-millionth volume, a Bible that dates back to the 13^thcentury.
  
• Goodbye card catalogues. ALICE, the online catalogue, is adopted in 1983.
  
• Hwa-Wei Lee Library Annex on Columbus Road opens in 1998.
  
• Wireless Internet access is made available throughout Alden Library in 2003.
  
• In 2004, the 2^nd floor Learning Commons (pictured below) is created, which remains open to students 24 hours a day.

Photo credits - Bookplate images: Scanned from “Ohio University, 1804-2004: The Spirit of a Singular Place” by Betty Hollow. Images of Chubb Library, Alden Library under construction and Alden Library during the 1980s: Courtesy of Mahn Center for Archives and Special Collections, published by Ohio University Libraries, University Archives available at http://media.library.ohiou.edu/cdm4/browse.php?CISOROOT=/archives.

Fast facts about Alden Library

Did you know?

• Alden Library averages nearly 6,400 entrances a day when a quarter is in session. That multiplies to 1,700,000 entrances just last year.
  
• In the past five years, entrances have gone up 73 percent.
  
• The 2^nd floor Learning Commons is open and staffed 24 hours a day.
  
• The library has a peak usage hour at 2 a.m.
• The Alden Library Web site has about 7.5 million global visitors annually and is recognized as one of the top research libraries in the country.
  
• The illustration on the ALICE online catalogue home page comes from the work of Sir John Tenniel who illustrated Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.
• It inaugurated the now well-known OCLC (Online Computer Library Center) system by becoming the first library in the world to perform online computerized cataloging in 1971.
• Now, with OhioLINK, students and faculty have access to more than 20 million volumes and thousands of electronic journals from more than seventy-five campus libraries across the state.

(Top: A librarian shelves books in "the stacks" of Alden Library during the seventies. Bottom: Senior marketing major Sara Heal sits among her own stack of books.)

Photo Credit - Top image: Courtesy of Robert E. & Jean R. Mahn Center for Archives and Special Collections

Alden Library celebrates 40 years

(Above: An ink drawing depicts Alden Library's Park Place entrance.)

A library is truly a sanctuary for students. Its hallowed walls enclose a wealth of knowledge, quiet spaces for reflection and study, and an overall atmosphere of encouragement and support. I have spent many hours at Ohio University’s Vernon R. Alden Library (otherwise known as just “Alden”), with friends, classmates, group members or alone. It is a resource that I have tapped throughout the years, and I am grateful for it.

That being said, good ol’ Alden Library celebrates its 40^th anniversary of being a center of learning on campus. This past Friday, May 15, I attended the rededication ceremony on the library’s 4^thfloor. Speakers included Becky Watts, the chief of staff and special assistant to the president; Scott Seaman, dean of libraries; Dr. Sam Crowl, Trustee Professor of English; Dr. Kathy Krendl, executive vice president and provost; and, surprise, Dr. Vernon Alden himself, now in his mid-eighties. He served as OU's fifteenth president from 1962 to 1969.

During the original dedication of the library back in '69, Dr. Alden said, “I mentioned the need for only one building specifically in my inaugural address and that was for the need of a new library. A great library is the heart of any great university.” As honoree of Friday's ceremony, he reiterated this statement and his fulfilled promise (seen in photo below).

Alden Library is both figuratively and literally the heart of campus, added Dr. Crowl. “I can’t imagine anywhere else in the world that I could’ve been in an English department that was 20 paces away from 3 million volumes,” he said, referring to the close proximity of Ellis Hall and Alden Library. In addition to books, it holds 46,000 maps and more than 36,000 films, videos and DVDs.

An Ohio University news article couldn’t have put it better: Happy 40^th, Alden Library. Here’s to the next 40 years.

Photo Credit - Top image: Courtesy of Robert E. & Jean R. Mahn Center for Archives and Special Collections

School spirit extras

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