'TUESDAY. FEBRUARY 22. 1956 University Troubles Include Four Wars During its 100 years of existence, the University has survived four wars. In 1861 the University President had as his main problem that of keeping his students from picking us muskets and running off to fight for the preservation of the Union. Twenty years later during the Spanish-American War it wasn't a problem of losing students but knowing what to do with the influx of thousands sent to the campus for the specialized training that scien• The impact of World Wars I and It turned the University in its rural setting almost Overnight into an important part of the vast military machine. Hundreds of young men eager to offer their services to their country dropped their books and deserted the campus to swarm in to recruiting offices. Women Trained. Too On the campus, classroom facili ties were adapted to training not only soldiers but men—and wo men, too—for jobs in the war of production to feed and equip ar mies. Despite the fact the University in its 100-year history has reeled under the impact of four wars, it was in each instance able to main tain its program of education. The Civil War could have wrecked the University. As the Farmers' High School, it had opened its doors to students only three years before the outbreak of hostitlties, and it was tottering financially. During the four years of strife classes were never wholly sus pended, though there was a gen eral exodus in the . summer of 1863 when many students and professors left to join the army during Lee's invasion of Pennsyl vania: Unnecessary Enlistment As every president of the Uni versity has done at the start of a war, President Evan Pugh urged students against unnecessary. abandonment of studies -to enlist, especially in view of the fact that many were under military age. Despite his warnings, many stu dents did leave to join the army. Hearings reports of students run ning off to enlist, President Pugh would get in his buggy, pursue them, collar them, and return them to school. , In June, 1863 a large group of students joined a company at Boalsburg captained by John Boal. The company served with the ar my but saw little action. The next year, 24 students en listed in Bellefonte, answering a call from the governor for volun teers to repel invasion. They were joined with an Indiana County group and met the U.S. army at Harrisburg. 196 in Civil War Records showed that- 196 stu dents and faculty members bore arms during the Civil War. The blowing up of the battleship Maine in Havana harbor in Feb ruary of 1898 had its reverbations on the University campus, but on the whole the University was rel atively unaffected by the Spanish- American War. Again, the University president, George W. Atherton, cautioned his students not to desert their books to join the army. He also insisted, however, "that no man should ne glect what to his best judgment ,seemed a clear call of duty." Within less than a month-after the declaration of war by the United States in April, 1917, 300 men from the University volun teered for military service and were sent to Madison Barracks near Watertown, N.Y.', 'Activities Forgotten Scientists in the laboratories abandoned researches dealing with peacetime investigations for those which could help speed vic tory. Sports, campus politics, club meetings—all extra-curricular ac tivities also quickly lost their con suming interest and were forgot ten in the grim and immediate task of training for wartime ser vice. In June and July of 1918, the University sent two big ROTC de tachments to Plattsburg Barracks in N.Y. By fall of 1918, the War Depart ment had completed arrangements for the Students' Army Training Corps, and when the new term opened the University, in common with °that institutions through- ific methods of slaughter demanded. out the country, was under mili tary control. The University also held farm training camps for boys in the spring of 1918. It conducted four 10-day instructional camps for 1088 boys. The Agriculture Extension Ser vice devoted its efforts to increas ing farm production in the state to go along with the World War I slogan, "rood will win the war." The College of Engineering con ducted three specialized training programs•for the War Department. It trained 200 enlisted men in ma chine shop and electrical work, 150 in automobile mechanics, and 500 in trench telephone operators. The University's contributions to the nation during World War II followed the pattern set in World War I only on a much larger scale due to the greater magnitude of the global conflict. On the day following the Japa Graham and Sons Grahams' is the little store with the big ideas that is as much of a tradition in State College as the University itself. Since we established in August 1896, its been our policy to help a student whenever and wherever we could. And we cer tainly have had many opportunities to do this! We find that this has never been forgotten. This policy was begun by the original proprietor, George T. Graham, and has been continued by his sons, Bub and Bob. This picture, taken in 1916, shows Grahams' first store, located on the east corner of College Avenue and Allen Street. Mr. Graham is in the TPE ' DAILY COLLEGIAN, STATE COLLEGE. PENNSYCYANtA nese sneak attack on Pearl Har bor, the Council of Administration took steps to enable the Univer sity to make its contributions to winning the war. An accelerated program was adopted and the Uni versity was put on a 365-day-a -year schedule. This speedup was designed to allow students called by Selective Service to complete all or a major portion of their courses and to make other students available more quickly for war industries. In May of 1942 the first of 775 trainees in the Army Specialized Training Program began arriving on the campus and started the first 12-week term of the program in June. Six hundred trainees of the Ar my Air Corps arrived in March of 1943 for the first of a series of five-month preflight programs: They were followed in July by 600 Pink and Black Blazers 1, Fade to Blue and White ') If the striped blazers worn by sporty students at Penn State in 1888 had been made of color-fast material, the students of today would not be singing a song with the following words in the chorus: "Fight, fight, fight. For the Blue and White." Instead they might be chanting a yell listed as official in the 1888 Free Lance, a forerunner of the Daily Collegian, as follows: Yah! Yah! Yah! Yah! Yah! Yah! Wish-whack! Pink! Black! P 1 St Cl" The year befOre college classes had met and unanimously adopted a combination of dark pink and black as the institution's colors. This combination did not last long, however. Navy and Marine corps reservists in the Navy's V-12 program. Once again, as in World War I, the University's scientists devoted their genius to all types of re search and experimentation, often of a top-secret classification. Night and day a staff of 38 chemists and bacteriologists worked to find ways of increasing the yield of the miracle drug penicillin. Thus in a multitude of ways the University in World War II lived up to the pledge of the trustees shortly after the attack on Pearl Harbor "to place the full resources of the University in support of the war policies and programs of the state and nation." foreground; his son Bub is behind the counter Fire destroyed this store on New Year's Eve, 1925 We trust that the good fellowship that has existed during all of these fifty-eight years will continue through future years. "The Bench" There were two reasons for the change; the first being given in the reminiscences of George R. Meek of the class of 1890 and one of the promoters of• pink-black. He reported that the blazers striped in pink and black that were ordered in the rush of en thusiasm following the selection of the colors were not of color fast material. As a result, the sun soon turned the pink to white and took the jetness out of the black. The other version is given in the reminiscences of F. J. Pond of the class of 1892. According to Pond, the change in the colors was prompted by a parody of the Penn State pink-black yell by Dickinson College students when their baseball team played on campus in 1888. Their razzing ver sion of the yell went: "Yah! Yah! Yah! Yah! Yah! Bees wax! Bees wax! A! B! C!" "This so disgusted the boys," Pond wrote, "that soon after they not only changed the college yell but also the colors from pink and black to blue and white." Which account of the change in colors is true? The story is not told in Dr. W. R. Dunaway's of ficial history of the University. According to reports, however, Dr. Dunaway accepts Meek's ac count of the fading colors as the more reliable. PAGE NI
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