Oberlin College - Hi-O-Hi Yearbook (Oberlin, OH)

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.u ; .1 t V: '. t7 In; I Lx; II 'N ' - JV? Japl igbqp 6M ; 2:, Amiga . 9 9:5 fa; 02:7i ,3 as, m7 $1W.,lil . - . 7? 5a? . X 0,9 1 K ', 'tyf iXX J 1;: x l . 911.1iztt'xl: . n .rv - 'f kw i dlwlgaucL. ' .4 4K... 7g JIJ r1 X r ' rigs : ; A kl: , 'II II, ' 1. Ck 9x1- o XF' i We . r, 'i J . K, imrt f 2 ,2, 1 $1.8,i: . '1 , h e as IN: I t ltURlA-l'h Hlll IUK H H Hist. lRl'Xi H INN; OBHUJN Sl'l'Dl-ZX IS UP 'l'HE CLASS OF 1852 I. R. Shipherd. Rcsuu'r and nephew of the Founder. is at the upper right. 1869 After the Civil War, when major colleges and universities like Cornell, Michigan and Harvard decided to experiment with coeducation, investigators were sent to Oberlin to see how it was done. They found out that if you were really careful about it, it wasn't so dangerous after all. Much the same thing happened 10 or 12 years ago when Oberlin reversed course and made the cover of Life magazine for its daring experiments in co-ed dorms. Coeducation at Oberlin had one other happy consequence. According to Lucien Warner, the donor for the original Warner concert hall, the Oberlin Music Conservatory tat least its voice departmentt was made possible by coeducation. Oberlin was the first college in America with enough sopranos. Musical Union and the choir at First Church were regular features of campus life by the 18405, and the Conservatory of Music formally joined the College in 1867. 11

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1860 The Civil War changed Oberlin, just as it changed the rest of the country. The war reshuffled people's values quite thoroughly. The fighting itself twhich cost 500,000 lives, a figure to which Oberlin contributed more than its sharei forced a reassessment of pre-war perfectionist enthusiasm. Where before the war much energy had been spent on attacking conventional institutions because they corrupted human behavior, now for the rest of the century efforts were aimed at building up and fortifying institutions in order to control behavior in the interest of peaceful stability. For Oberlin this meant building the endowment tit tripled in the 18005i, enlarging the size of the student body tit doubled in the ,BOSX and rebuilding the physical campus on and around Tappan Square almost from scratch. Another long-term result of the Civil War was a strong psychological bond between Oberlin and the Republican party, the party of union and moral virtue. All the statistics suggest an overwhelming Republican majority among students, faculty, trustees and townspeople that lasted well into the 20th Century. Though the bond began to fray after World War I and The Great Depression, it took Barry Goldwater to inspire Oberlin's first Democratic presidential majority in 1964. The town has been mostly Democratic ever since. 10 XIXRIXXXI'I PXRKER UHCUMB Hmul IHiin

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Iii 1870 The arrival or organized athletics was another sympton of the post-civil war atmosphere. Velocipede racing on West College Street became a neighborhood nuisance 30 years before Oberlin became a bicycle town. I HHI'Y HXH .V D f0LOXIU HUI XBUFT mm, 12