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.

School spirit

(Top: Spirited “college coeds” during the 1890s. Bottom: My hall mates from freshman year, decked out—in O Zone t-shirts, no less—for the OU-Pitt football game. I’m wearing the baseball cap.)

It’s one thing to say you support Ohio University athletics and another thing entirely to stand on the sidelines bleeding green and white. Looking back, I can’t say I was a die-hard fan. But everyone has a different idea of school spirit and each has a unique way of expressing support. Our common thread is each other and our Ohio University.

“School spirit is an identity,” says O Zone President Tyler McManus. “It’s students who can identify with one another by supporting their school.”

The O Zone is a relatively new addition to OHIO school spirit since its inception eight years ago. The self-proclaimed “premiere student cheering section of the Mid-American Conference” certainly lives up to its claim. See for yourself as it performs the Winning Team/Losing Team chant, which allegedly originated in the sixties but was resurrected in recent years.

Clearly, school spirit is constantly evolving. McManus sees it in how the originality and creativity of students (i.e. crazy outfits) meshes with traditional cheers. “It’s definitely a welcoming of new things but maintaining a tradition,” he says. Also, as student populations have increased over the years, a growing gap has developed between student athletes and students.

“We really try to maintain that although they are athletes at our school, they are students and we are students, and we’re all on the same team,” says McManus. What a team that is. OHIO boasts more than 20,000 students these days, a far cry from the three students it opened for two centuries ago.

And the O Zone—the largest student group on campus—is in fact the largest is has ever been, says McManus. More than 350 members are encouraged to show support at all varsity athletic events, from baseball to golf.

Compared to students like Tyler McManus, I have so few memories of cheering on my school’s athletic teams. Still, I can’t help but feel the same when I hear him so assuredly say, “Yeah, I will be a loyal Bobcat until the day that I die.”

Photo credit - Top image: Courtesy of Richard H. Rudolph, ’43. Scanned from “Ohio University, 1804-2004: The Spirit of a Singular Place” by Betty Hollow.