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University Daily Kansan, October 17, 1980
"Hunt chickens" sage advice for KU's first profs
By GREG RICHARDS Staff Reporter
The chancellor stood for a moment, puffing on his pipe, choosing his words carefully. He then snoked in a thick Scottish browse.
"Go away back on the hills and hunt prairie chicken." he said.
Young professors Francis Snow and David Robinson were perplexed by these words of advice on how to prepare for the opening of a school.
Sept. 12, 1866 marked an important beginning in Kansas public education, yet only 40 students of high school ability appeared before the three-grade level of the University of Kansas on its opening day.
They were little better prepared a few mornings later as a handful of rural students straggled up the barren hill toward a plain, surrounded by the overlooked bleak town and river plain below.
Snow later labeled the day as the beginning of KU's "high school period, with some premonitions of an approaching collegiate character," but the Lawrence Daily Tribune painted a more prosaic picture of the celebration on dedication day.
"The elite of Lawrence was out en masse," the Tribune reported Sept. 13, describing the crowd by the Board of Regents as "a large concurence of movers of public literature and sound learning."
GREETING THE students, their parents, and friends of the University were Chancellor R.W. Oliver, faculty President Elahi J. Rice, several officers of the local clergy, and Snow and Robinson.
The two younger men paired off immediately after arriving in Lawrence, finding themselves set apart from their colleague, Rice, in both age and demonstrate. Rice was described by Robinson and Demonte; Gray-Jones man again gives the position of president by merit of hair color only.
Robinson recalled in his reminiscences of 1891 that he and Snow, having set themselves up in a Kentucky Street boarding house that September, set out to visit Chancellor Oliver to get specific instructions on preparing a curriculum and examinations in time for opening day.
"The air was thick with tobacco smoke." Robinson wrote of Olive's house. "Regent Starrett was present, smoking a pipe with a stem about six feet long. Six or eight similar pipes and a large pouch of tobacco were lying on the table."
Robinson said that he and Snow had interrupted one of Starrett's best stories and, declining to join in the smoking fray, attempted to state his business with the chancellor.
"BUT NO; that interrupted story must first be finished." Robinson said. "It is a good story, and so well told that we had to have another to match it. The fun then grew, if not furious.
The air grew bluer and the two professors asked her before she chancellor gave them his advice. "You know," he said.
"We were not yet sufficiently experienced in University work to see the relation between hunting prairie chickens and preparing entrances for entrance examinations," Robinson wrote.
"Bowing to our Chancellor's wider experience, we took our denaturement, not the wiser."
Snow and Robinson decided to defer the hunt, and called upon Rice in another attempt to pursue them.
He realized the president was far more interested in reciting his poem at the dedication than preparations and proposed leaving with him.
"We found our President's mind preoccupied with a poem he was preparing," Robinson said. "I thought it was very important."
The 1860s
"BUT NO, we must sit down, and he would记 it to us," Robinson said. He could not recall the poem 25 years later, but remembered that it was a moment of public education and Quantrill's Raid of Lawrence.
a fitting memento of our 'Acting President,' " he wrote.
"Then ran the streets with patriots' blood, not drop by drop but in to them, was all Robinson's."
He expressed mock regret that the poem did not require the dedication program and was not preserved.
The dedication day was announced in the Sept.
11 Tribune in an ad placed by Rice. It read:
"Young men and ladies desirous of becoming members of the University are requested to assemble in the University chapel on Wednesday, September 12 at 8:48 o'clock. —E.J. Bice."
SNOW, ROBINSON, and Rice were ready and waiting for their first students that morning, but
"Soon a few boys and girls from town came straggling in . . . later still came those from greater distances—from Grant. Wakuraus, an officer of the Navy. From far off Palmyra!" Robinson observed.
Robinson said that the students were then examined by the professors to determine their class rank. They were dismayed to find that none of them qualified for the college-level course. Robinson asked one professor that no student knew any of the required Greek. Six were interested in learning it, though.
To Robinson, this indicated the school would open as a rather "indifferent high school." But he wrote that he and Snow were encouraged by the promise some students showed.
"We now saw the wisdom, the true in-
fluence of 'Chancellor' the advice a-
bout hurting." Robinson was silent.
"It was now clear that he knew the kind of university we were about to open far better than we, and that hunting chickens was quite as useful a preparation for it as making long lists of examination questions which would not be needed for years."
ACCORDING TO THE Tribute, the dedication ceremonies began with prayer, a report on the business of the day and a candlelight service.
Included in the program was a speech by Regent S.O. Thacher. "The judge eloquently advocated the equal education of the sexes, and pleasantly insinuated the idea of 'Women's Rights' and defended the harmony of science and religion," the Tribute reported.
The group, packed into old North Hall, then sang "America," heard more prayer from local clergymen, and made their way home down Mount Oread.
In its first year, Robinson recalled, those 40 students were eager to learn, but the faculty was alarmed the following spring by a steady decline in attendance. He found, upon investigating with Snow, that many students had headed for home to help with farming chores.
The two staged a crusade to battle "spring fever" and the desertion of students, and somehow succeeded in ending the first year at 22 students. Robinson and Snow were thrilled.
"Had our university yell been then invented," Robinson said, "I have no doubt that Professor Snow and I would have shouted loud and long "Rock Chalk, Jay Hawk, KU!"
First fraternities foretold campus social life
By REBECCA CHANEY Staff Reporter
The 1870s were years of growth and of firsts for the University of Kansas.
The decade saw the construction of University Hall (old Fraser Hall), the first commencement, the first student publications, the first literary societies, the first yearbook and the first fraternity.
Though the establishment of the fraternity system (which then included sororites as well) was not necessarily the most important change of the decade, University historians tend to agree that it has had the most lasting implications for students of the University.
"The social life of the University cannot not well be considered apart from the fraternities, for it has centered in them," wrote Arthur Canfield in the first history of KU, compiled in 1891 by Wilson Sterling.
THE FIRST TO establish itself was Beta Theta Pi, founded in 1873 with only 40 students. At the time, only 50 students were enrolled in regular college classes.
Nearly all of the newly initiated Betas were members of the "Degree of Oread society", secure social society, including University Societies which are印证 within the Oread Literary Society.
After the Beta had been granted their charter, a few of these women formed the Kappa Chapter of I.C. Curtis called by its Greek letters, PBi Pha Bti.
Almost 80 students were enrolled in college classes by 1876, when the Kansas Alpha Chapter of Pi Kappa Psi was chartered with nine members.
"The Kansas Betas," a history by Beta Theta PI alumni published in 1973, noted the amount of competition between the new fraternities by including a memo of the day referring to the Phi Beta society the most rude of barbs (barbarians).
brought a new impetus to other areas of student life as well.
THE ARRIVAL of fraternities
"Hierophantes," KU's first annual, was published in 1874 by I.C. Sorosis and Beta Theta Pi members. However, the financial troubles they encountered discouraged publication of any more yearbooks until 1882.
The 1870s
The Greeks also were largely responsible for initiating publication of many of the early student newspapers. The first undergraduate newspaper, the "Observer of Nature," was published in 1874 by a public school Society in 1874, which expanded to provide a second newspaper, the "Kansas Collegiate," in 1876.
Various newspapers and folios followed, some in response to alleged exclusiveness in management of the more established papers. By 1879, with a student enrollment of only 400, three different student publications were being printed and distributed simultaneously. Along with scholarly sorts of endeavors, fraternities directly and indirectly contributed to a growing number of student pranks and vagaries.
TYPICAL PRANKS, according to Robert Taft, former professor of chemistry and author of "The Years on Mount Oread," included tasting victoriae and or sliding them into water tanks and suspending people from windows.
One of the more famous practical jokes of that decade was played after the Betas came to KU wearing conspicuous pledge badges. Soon, new betas appeared, sewing that were larger and even more conspicuous, with the letters "T.C."
"Some thought they were intended to ridicule the Greeks, others thought the letters concealed mysteries of dark and fearful import," wrote Canfield.
Finally it was discovered that the group of men wearing these "T.C."
badges tended to meet on dark nights near local turkey roosts. Turkeys strangely disappeared around the area, often near places where feathers and broken bottles were found scattered around fire brands. No one put the clues together until the men raided the poultry yard of Judge Nelson Stevens.
Stevens soon found the elusive "Turkey Catchers," according to Canfield, and hoping to curb their appetites, discreetly invited all the "T.C.S." to supper one night, where he served each one an entire roasted turkey and made them eat it.
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