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Universitv Dailv Kansan. October 17. 1980
Page 3
Rock Chalk chanted to worldwide fame
By KATHY BRUSSELL Staff Reporter
"Rock Chalk, Jayhawk, KU!" the chant that is familiar to anyone who has been within earshot of a major KU team, has been heard around the world.
It has been to the Olympic Games, at
contests between university sports teams.
President Theodore Roosevelt once called a it classical chant, appropriate for an occasion.
But the Rock Chalk chant, considered by some to be the most famous college yell in the United States, had its humble origins in 1866 on the University of Kansas campus.
Ironically, the chant originally was in no way connected with sports. In fact, University athletic teams were not fully developed our years after the creation of the chant.
THE YELL WAS first adopted by the University Science Club, which disbanded in 1890, at the club's second annual "It." "Its" were lively club meetings "at which burlesque papers were read about some queer and impossible phases of the members' chief activities," according to an unsigned statement found in the University Archives.
In 1886, the club had decided it needed an official yell to promote spirit within the group. E.H.S. Bailey, a professor of music at the University of Pennsylvania, for whom Bailey Hall was president, for whom Bailey Hall was
named, is generally credited with submitting the only yell that was seriously considered by the club. In its original form, the chant went "Rah Rah, Jahyawk, Science Club," and was spoken in a short, clipped accent acaent.
However, the actual author of the chant is not known for sure, according to E. E. Slosson, another member of the University's journal article for the University Review in 1890.
"There are several claimants for the honor and it seems probable that it was the simultaneous discovery or combined product of several minds, like the invention of printing, the steam boat and the telephone," he wrote. "But if no other work of importance is ever done by the Science Club, this yell, echoing through the corridors of time, will be ample justification for its existence."
In the fall of 1886, the "Rah Rah" of the chant was changed to "Rock Chalk" at the suggestion of A.R. Marsh, professor of English. The term supposedly was suggested to him by the outcroppings of "chalk" rock that can be found on campus and throughout the state.
Some years later, geologists discovered that the rock formations under M. Oread were not chalk at all, but a harder and coarser type of rock, which was the basis for Rock Chalk chant was well-established, and it has never been corrected.
THE CHANT WAS ASSISTED adopted by University during the 1887-88 school year.
Growing pains plagued unpopular University
Bv GENE GEORGE
Staff Reporter
The University of Kansas matured during the 1800's, adding new buildings, expanding courses and organizing athletics.
But these changes did not come about without some fierce growing pains. In the decade of the 1880s, a resentment against her began that has lasted through the years.
Most of the ill will came from the rural areas. The two main reasons for the resentment were the cost of running a university and the apparent exclusion of students who did not live in the Lawrence area.
The student handbooks from the academic years of 1888 and 1889 showed that most of the 500 or so students at KU were from Kansas, and most of the instate students were Douglas County residents.
IN 1887, the Cloud County Kansan wrote, "Here (KU) they learn a smattering of law and Latin, part their hair in the middle, wear tight pants and gain the emblems of greatness, and the yahsohs who live out in the border counties." The authors haul 40 miles and sell it for 15 cents a bushel to help foot the bill.
That resentment soon surfaced in the state Legislature, which in the late 1880s threatened to cut the University's budget.
At one debate, a legislator critical of the University suggested that America's truly great men came from college and "studied" and church-operated colleges.
In 1888, the University became suspect for what it may have been teaching.
The Legislature had sided with President Benjamin Harrison, who had implemented a tariff to discourage from competing with American goods.
Butler County Representative Daniel Poe called upon the House Committee on State Affairs to investigate the University. Poe wanted to know if the British philosophy of free trade was being taught at KU-for it was, the University could have been accused of teaching anti-tariff ideas. He proposed a bill banning such teachings, but it died in committee.
EVEN THOUGH Kansas farmers complained that the University had taken a big bite out of their pocketbooks, the cost of getting an education at KU was quite low compared to today's inflation-riddled prices.
Student handbooks of the period said a student could live comfortably in Lawrence for $185 a year, including all school fees.
Students of the day still had to pay several fees, but the most expensive was the annual tuition—$25.
While the student fees were kept low, the Board of Regents got funds from the Legislature and began spending large sums of money for expansion.
By the late 1870s, Francis Huntington Snow, professor of natural science, had collected 40,000 specimens of plants and animals. That meant the department outgrown the space originally allotted to it.
Sometime before the spring of 1889, the form of the chant was changed to a rolling, drawn-out cadence repeated twice, followed by a staccato rendition repeated three times. This is the cheer that is still heard at KU sports events.
Construction began in 1855. And the
building was dedicated in honor of
Snow was dedicated in November.
AFTER MUCH PLEADING with the
accounts received
$50,000 for a new building
Another major addition of those years was Watson Library, which opened in 1894 under the supervision of librarian Carrie Watson, for whom the building was named. When the University moved its books to the new Watson Library building south of Fraser in 1924, the original red sandstone building became the Spooner-Thayer Museum.
The chant, which caught on quickly
at KU, also grew popular abroad and has been heard all over the world.
During the 1898 Spanish American War, Company H of the 20th Kansas Infantry, composed largely of former KU students, introduced the Rock Chalk yell to the U.S. volunteers stationed in San Francisco.
The 1880s
The yell was used at football games between teams from the 20th Kansas Infantry and the University of California and Leland Sandon. Later it became the battle cry of the soldiers in fighting in the trenches in the Philippines.
IN WORLD WAR I, the Jayhawk cheer was on the battle fields of France as well as at various athletic meetings of American soldiers in Europe.
The chant also represented KU at the 1920 Olympic Games in Antwerp, Belgium. The King of Belgium requested a typical American college yell, and the U.S. athletes responded with the Rock Chalk chant, which they considered to be the most spirited cheer.
The chant also was used in China during the Boxer rebellation at the turn of the 20th century.
"We have been accused so often of copying from others in our songs and yells that it is something of a relief to
find that the Army, which already has an unusually good repertoire of songs and yells, should have adopted our own warlike slogan so promptly," the alumnus wrote in KU's Graduate Magazine.
DESPITE THE ROCK Chalk chant's illustrious history, it has not always commanded the respect, or even the appreciation, of the student body.
In the fall of 1928, there was some talk of abandoning the yell. The University Daily Kansan ran an editorial branding campaign to combat the rumors and predicting its impending demise.
William Allen White, a former KU student and the editor of the Emporia Gazette, also considered the chant obsolete.
"New students are unfamiliar with it," the Kansan said, "and the old students suppress yawns when it is suggested."
"We who invented the old thing had our fun, and passed our thrill on even to the second and the third generation." White wrote. "There is no virtue in that yell. It is no conjurer, no witch word. It is not a generation of students invent its own blah-blah! The hands gripping life narelize it."
The anti-chant writings seemed to trigger a new patriotism among KU students and alumni, however, and support for the Rock Chalk yell was renewed. Since that time, no one has launched a major movement to have the chant changed or dropped as the KU cheer.
"Rock Chalk put the University of Kansas on the national map before it had much else to recommend it . . . Let Rock Chalk die? Not until Mt. Oread has crumbled and been washed into the Kaw—not until Uncle Jimmy Green has climbed down off his pedestal in front of the law building and trudged off into oblivion, with his head bowed in shame."
The Kansas City Star summed up public feeling toward the chant in a 1928 issue of *Harper's Magazine*.
Early football bloody, lethal
By PAM HOWARD Staff Reporter
Staff Reporter
Women in long dresses and men in dark suits with canes and bowler hats ringed a grassy field in Baldwin. On the field, long-haired, burly men in canvas outfits engaged in a rough, bloody, anything-goes battle. This was KU's first intercollegiate football game. The year was 1890.
The November 12 game was a 9-22 defeat for KU, but their December 8 home game against Baker resulted in a dubious victory.
Near the end of that second game, Baker was ahead 10-12. KU got the ball near their goal line and William J. Coleman ran the length of the field for a touchdown. But the referee, William Jarvis, narrowly missed the call he called a timeout before it got the ball. So he officially gave the ball to Baker.
The students, however, considered it a victory. That night a huge victory bonfire was kindled in Central Park on Massachusetts Street and the chant "Rock Chalk Jayhawk! KU!" could be heard everywhere.
FOOTBALL, WHICH was very new in the 1890s, was a rough and dangerous game. Players were very little aware of their own weaknesses, their lethargy to protect their heads.
On November 16, 1896, Burt Serf of Doane College, Nebraska, died on KU's McCook Field. Serf tackled a KU player, hit his head and died. This was not an uncommon occurrence in football during the '90s.
KU's first football coach, Edwin M. Hopkins, a professor of English who was not paid for coaching, told his students, "I'll do it, but to be sure to return a dirty action."
KU continued to do well with a 7-01
season in 1801. Hopkins resigned after a replacement wasn't found until 1804.
The Rev. Hector W. Cowan, who had played football at Princeton, was hired to teach men's physical education, to teach campus religion and coach football.
COWAN'S RECORD over three years was 14-7,1 but the university faculty thought that this wasn't good enough and they fired Hector as coach.
Then came Dr. Wylie G. Woodruff, who had participated in athletics at the
The 1890s
University of Pennsylvania. In 1897 he had a 2-season and in 1898, 7-1.
Woodruff was fired because some athletes received monetary contributions, which were strict for the major players didn't seem to be regular students.
When KU players began to play football, KU did not have its own field. McCook Field was built from a contribution from John James McCook, a former college player in 1890 Commencement. The field was ready for the 1892 season.
In 1891, officials picked crimson as reason for the letters on the football uniforms.
FOR ORATORICAL contests, the colors sky blue and yellow had been used, but it was decided that these colors dirty too easily on athletic uniforms.
In 1896 blue was added to the crimson because KU was accused of imitating Harvard University, whose color was also crimson.
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