A timeline of OHIO milestones

Timeline of OHIO milestones

Some OHIO milestones appear in print. Here is the complete list we came up with. Which did you know? What did we leave out that you’d include?
— Maygan Beeler, BSJ ’17, and Editor Peter Szatmary

Dec. 5: 1800:The town of Athens is founded by an act of territorial legislature.

Feb. 18, 1804:The Ohio General Assembly approves Ohio University’s charter.

1808:The Athens Academy, a preparatory school, opens on University grounds with one building, three students, and one professor, Jacob Lindley, who serves as the first Bobcat president.

1825:OHIO students receive grades for the first time.

1828: John Newton Templeton becomes the University’s first and the nation’s fourth African-American graduate.

1843: The Echo and University Record launches as the school’s first student-run newspaper.

1848:After having suspended operations for a few years due to financial struggles, OHIO reopens with tuition payments set at $30 per year. (The University’s first students paid $2 per quarter in fees, early on to defray firewood.)

1865-66:Seventy of the University’s 243 students earn free tuition thanks to taking part in the Civil War.

1873:Margaret Boyd becomes OHIO’s first female graduate.

1883:Cynthia Weld accepts a job as OHIO’s first female faculty member, teaching history and rhetoric.

1891:Fred Stadler, D. H. Doan, and James Drew establish the Athens Block company, known for its bricks throughout the area.

1892:Baseball players create the University’s first official athletic team.

1892:The Athena yearbook publishes for the first time.

1894:OHIO plays its first intercollegiate football game (at home, losing to Marietta College, 8-0, in the only contest that season).

1895:Engineering student Saki Taro Murayama of Japan becomes the first international graduate.

1896:Via a vote, the student body adopts green and white as the University’s colors.

1909: An extension department is established to deliver instruction to students throughout southeastern Ohio.

1914: “Alma Mater, Ohio,” by Kenneth Clark, wins the English Club’s contest to choose an official school song.

1914:Enrollment tops 1,000 for the first time: 374 men and 639 women.

1915:The Alumni Gateway, at the intersection of Court and Union Streets, debuts, as a gift of the class of 1915 to mark the 100 ^th anniversary of the first graduating class.

1923:The “Old Beech,” a historic tree around which students congregate and in which hundreds carved their initials, is cut down.

1923:OHIO’s marching band debuts, organized by student Homer Baird. It is renamed the Marching 110 in 1967, reflecting the number of members at the time.

1925:The Bobcat becomes the official athletic mascot after former student Hal Rowland of Athens wins a contest sponsored by the athletic association. Rowland’s prize: $10.

1927-37:The football team goes undefeated in home games.

1929:What’s now called Peden Stadium is built, seating 12,000. Renovations expand permanent seating capacity to 19,000 in 1986, add a five-story tower in 1990, and lower the playing field and increase seating capacity to 24,000 in 2001.

1935:OHIO reorganizes to include a University College, where freshmen must enroll for one year, and five degree-granting colleges: Arts and Sciences, Education, Applied Science, Commerce, and Fine Arts.

1936:An Army Reserve Officers’ Training Corps assembles at OHIO.

1939: The Post , an independent, student-run newspaper, circulates. (A previous incarnation, The Green and White , began in 1912.)

1942:Nascent WOUB (We’re Ohio University Broadcasting) radio goes on the air—wired into residential halls.

1943: Enrollment drops to 1,306 (from a record high three years earlier of 3,501) as hundreds of male students and 17 percent of the faculty enlist in World War II. Women outnumber men five to one.

1945:The Ohio University Fund (now The Ohio University Foundation) originates to provide private financial support for the University.

1946:OHIO enlists as a charter member of the Mid-American Conference, the sixth oldest in NCAA Division I.

1946:Ohio University Chillicothe Campus, the oldest regional campus, is founded. (“Evening division” forerunners include Portsmouth in 1938 and Zanesville in 1939.)

1950:Frank Underwood and Charlie Wilson become the first African-Americans to attend OHIO on football scholarships.

1956: Faculty members in the chemistry department organize the University’s first doctoral program.

1960:The first Bobcat mascot appears, at the homecoming game against Miami, sporting a bright green sweater, baseball cap, and papier – mâché head.

1962:Bobcats play their first bowl game, the Sun Bowl, losing to West Texas State, 15-14.

1966:Enrollment tops 15,000 for the first time.

1967:The marching band bans all women and majorettes from the ranks.

1967:Rerouting of the Hocking River begins, following devastating floods throughout the ’60s that convinced the U.S. Corps of Army Engineers to undertake the project. Work finishes in 1971.

1967:WOUB radio introduces rock ‘n’ roll to the programming.

1968:The Convocation Center opens, seating 13,080. Sample music headliners packing the house the first academic year: folk rockers Simon and Garfunkel and Motown’s the Supremes.

Late 1960s (sources vary):The Bobkitten, a female bobcat mascot, prowls the OHIO landscape with her male counterpart (until extinction in the mid-1990s).

1969:The African American Studies Department begins; it’s one of the oldest programs of its kind in the U.S.

1969:Alicia Woodson is elected the first black woman student body president.

1970:The baseball team, featuring eventual Hall-of-Famer Mike Schmidt, competes in the College World Series for the first and only time (finishing fourth).

May 1970: Student demonstrations focus on the presence of ROTC on campus. On May 4, the Ohio National Guard fires into a crowd of unarmed student demonstrators at Kent State, killing four and wounding nine, resulting in sit-ins, protests, and an escalation of Athens Campus incidents. On May 15, the Ohio National Guard arrives to help close the University for the duration of the term. Commencement is canceled.

1972:Women’s curfew ends.

1972:The Gay and Lesbian Association forms. The subsequent Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender Center becomes a full-time operation in 2003.

1974:The first (then-unofficial) Halloween Party takes place on Court Street when costumed students trap a semitrailer attempting to make a delivery to a Baskin-Robbins ice cream parlor.

1975:Women rejoin the Marching 110.

1979:Hilda Richards serves as the University’s first female academic dean and first African-American dean of an academic college, presiding over the new College of Health and Human Services.

1979:The first local Take Back the Night March occurs to protest rape and other sexual violence.

1983:The Innovation Center, the first university-based business incubator in the state of Ohio, opens.

1996:Athletics unveils the attack cat logo. It becomes an official University icon in 2002, replacing the paw print.

2000:Computers are installed in first-year students’ residence hall rooms. One year later, all residence hall rooms are duly equipped.

2004:Roderick J. McDavis takes office as the first minority president of OHIO.

2006:Rufus, the new Bobcat mascot, growls for the first time. He’s named for Rufus Putnam, a key to OHIO’s genesis.

2009:Ohio University Libraries’ collection grows to 3 million, ranking the school as the 64 ^th largest library in North America.

2012:OHIO switches from quarters to semesters, per state requirements for all colleges and universities.