Ohio University - Athena Yearbook (Athens, OH)

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2 1 EAST ■ N-WEST B feo]

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Court and Union Athens, Ohio

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The good old days that really weren ' t Story by Linda Wenmoth ■ -- V i§=»?rV -r-- In Athens, Ohio (that ' s somewhere down among the hills of Appalachia) there ' s this university. It ' s called (among other things) Ohio University, which makes it one of the few univer- sities in the country named after a state that isn ' t University of . . . This distinction, along with the fact (often proudly repeated by University officials) that Ohio University was the first university in the Northwest Terri- tory, are about the only outstanding features that the majority of students, faculty, administrators and friends could ever repeat of the history of Ohio University. The rest is buried somewhere, in old yearbooks or, worse yet, in the University Archives, that verbotten place over in the library that is rarely if ever frequented. To understand better the forces that shaped the University, many of which have contributed directly to the very issues forcing a crisis at Ohio and other universities, it is necessary to go back, not to the dry statistics that fill unopened history books, but to the timely descriptions of life and problems of the University along the various stages of its development. The good old days really weren ' t, at least according to the records kept by the University. Until late in the 1890 ' s, all University students were required to attend chapel twice a day, seven days a week, with the morning devotional being at 5 a.m. In 1 85 1 there was a move to change the starting time to 5:45 a.m., a move that barely passed over loud outcrys bemoaning the lack of Christianity of today ' s students. Chapel was quite the important The Street in Old Athens We Trod Most and Looked at Most.