History of University

Tom Brigham with Katy Fry and Herb Nakata at WSU

Fall 2012

Unfiltered history

Tom Brigham, the executive secretary of WSU’s Emeritus Society, stopped by the magazine office some time ago with a box full of interview transcripts, the results of one of the society’s major projects. Had I known how absorbing and distracting the contents would be, I might have been more hesitant to accept delivery.

Seriously, the oral histories contained in the box provide absorbing recollections of WSU history from the early 1950s on. At their best, the interviews combine engrossing storytelling and striking insight. Conducted and transcribed by history graduate student, now instructor, Katy Fry ’06, ’11, the histories provide unfiltered memories of WSU through five … » More …

Fall 2012

The spirit of the land grant institution

Had the intent of the land grant spirit been simply to produce homemakers or farmers or carpenters, Justin Morrill, the author of the act that established the land-grants 150 years ago, might have best looked for his model among the craft guilds of the fifteenth century, wrote Enoch Bryan in 1931, 15 years after he stepped down as the first enduring president of Washington State College. In one of four essays that make up The Spirit of the Land-Grant Institutions (reissued in 1961), Bryan argued that the curriculum prescribed by the land-grant legislation was academic rather than vocational. “It was far broader, far more fundamental,” … » More …

Spring 2012

The Lowell Elm

Harriet Bryan, wife of Washington Agricultural College president Enoch Bryan, planted the Lowell Elm in 1893. She had brought the seedling to her new home from Elmwood, the estate of James Russell Lowell, near Harvard University, where her husband had earned his master of arts degree shortly before becoming Washington State College’s first long-term president. Staff photo

Spring 2012

Time’s Warehouse

As anniversaries go, I suppose a mere decade is not so big a deal, even for a magazine. Many magazines, after all, have lived much longer. Atlantic Monthly’s 154 years aside, even here at Washington State University, Washington State Magazine is a relative youngster. Pow Wow, Washington State College’s first magazine for alumni, debuted in 1910 and ran until 1969, when it was replaced by HillTopics.

Along the way, Pow Wow, to which I last referred a few issues ago, reflected the life of a nascent college. Drawing on the dramatic events of the young twentieth century, dispatches from Washington State College’s few alumni and … » More …

Winter 2007

History was made…The fight for equity for women’s athletics in Washington

Back in the late 1960s, when Jo Washburn was athletic director for women’s intramural sports at Washington State University, she had to stretch $1,200 to cover all the expenses of the volleyball, gymnastics, basketball, field hockey, skiing, and tennis teams.

Women’s athletics was a second-class affair. The athletes had to carpool to away games and sleep four to a hotel room to save money. They had to buy their own uniforms. They helped set up spectator seating for their meets. And they trained only when the facilities weren’t being used by the men’s teams. Few, if any, received athletic scholarships.

Meanwhile, their male counterparts traveled … » More …