University of Oregon - Oregana Yearbook (Eugene, OR)

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dlld THE OREGANA - Monday in October, 1875, and elected the following men to the faculty of the University of Oregon: President, John W. Johnson, a graduate of Yale University who had for seven years been principal of the Portland High School. Professors, Mark Bailey, of McMinnville College, Thomas Con- don. of Pacific University, of Forest Grove. Preparatory department-Mrs. E. Spiller, principal, and Miss Mary E. Stone, assistant. In 1876 the state legislature voted 310,000 a year to be given the University for two years, and created the Board of Regents for the University, whose duty was to guard the interests of the University and to care for the seventy-two sections of land given for the support of a State University at the time the state was admitted to the Union. Judge M. P. Deady, after whom the first University building was later named, was appointed a member of the first Board of Regents by Governor Grover, and served as chairman. By the expenditure of the two 810,000 appropriations voted the University, the second story of Deady hall was ready for occupation in October, 1877. Mrs. Ellen Condon McCornack, one of the three surviving members of the first University of Oregon graduating class in 1878 has given an account of the event. It is interesting to see the pretty evidence of the Oregon Spirit shown in the action of one of the enthusiastic University girls, and also in the tone of an article written by Mrs. McCornack: The Commencement exercises of 1878 were held in the third story of Deady Hall, the whole floor having been fitted up for a large auditorium. The long platform on the north side was beautifully decorated, for one of our enthusiastic University girls, teaching a spring term of school up on the McKenzie river, quietly emptied her trunk to its natural contents and, spreading a thin layer of damp leaf loam over its iioor, brought home a quantity of ferns and mosses and vines that added greatly to the decorations of the evening. For the first Commencement of 1878 was held in the evening of June 14. And the writer has always believed that the six hundred people gathered in the top of Deady Hall were more enthusiastic in their response because of the shadows of evening had softened the crudities of their surroundings, had mellowed the notes of the beautiful music and given a mystical touch that appealed to the imagination of the audience. Daylight appeals more readily Twenty-flvo E I

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JHUJ-KIUGM-L Brhurmv Glasses

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-P THE OREGANA H dd When Deady was the University 1 Two of our number are with to the plain, practical side of life, but the chords of poetry, music and oratory respond more quickly to the touch of the shadowy fing- ers of the night. Be that as it may, the class of 1878 was greeted with a generous enthusiasm, in part as an expression of joy that the Uni- versity of Oregon was fairly start- ed after its trying years of in- fancy. We were not a large class, only five: Charles Whiteaker, M. S. Wallace, George Washburne and Robert S. Bean and the writer. us no more except in pleasant memories. But our place in the history of the University of Oregon must remain unique for we were the first class, the small beginning of all the future greatness of our Alma Mater. I 'il :la wk il' For years when weather permitted assemblies were held in front of Deady under an enormous tree, now known as the assembly tree. Here the students gathered about to hear the speaker of the day. , It was not until 1891 that the University of Oregon had its first student body publication. With gradual growth and increasing at- tendance since the actual opening of the University, on October 9, 1876, Oregon up to this time was still very small, compared with other state universities, or its present size. Since that time, however, athletics has been introduced, many traditions founded and growth and development has been on a much larger scale. This period, per- haps, can be traced best through a study of the student publications, issued since that time. ' The Reflector, a monthly literary and news magazine, was the first publication. Established in 1891 by the Laurean and Eutaxian literary societies-virtually the only organizations and means through which college activity was conducted up to this time-the monthly continued until 1895, when it was succeeded by the Bul- letin. Both papers were printed on six by ten inch paper and con- sisted of twelve pages an issue. The second publication of the student body was the Oregon Monthly which began in 1897 and took the place of the Bulletin, Twenty-slx -5-N