By: Zoe Strickland Managing Editor
Depending on where you are, the first day of May may be known as either International Workers’ Day or the pagan holiday devoted to celebrating the start of summer. From 1902 until the 1940s, Oregon State Normal School, now Western, celebrated the latter form of May Day.
According to the University Archives, May Day was thought of as “the most anticipated social event on campus.” During the festivities, students celebrated in multiple ways: participating in vaudeville acts, music, pageants, dances and the crowning of a May Day Queen.
One of the most notable events was the annual performance of the Maypole dance, which was recreated in 2014 as a part of the 100-year anniversary of Maple Hall. During the dance, students dressed in white dresses and flower crowns danced around a large wooden pole while holding multi-colored ribbons that were attached to the top.
Though May Day was celebrated on campus for around 40 years, there were years where the administration had to cancel the celebration because of World War I, influenza and smallpox. Nevertheless, the events restarted after the hardships were over.
May Day primarily involved students and faculty from campus, but also served as a community affair. Event invitations were dispatched in local newspapers and people from surrounding Polk County towns attended.
“More than 1,000 persons gathered in the Oregon Normal School campus … considering that there were only approximately 300 students enrolled at ONS, it was quite a crowd,” read the May 3, 1915 issue of The Morning Oregonian, a newspaper that went out of print in 1937.
Every event had a strong sense of pageantry; something that Miss Laura Taylor, a physical education and health instructor at OSNS, began to promote in 1914.
“Every event showed painstaking preparation and the facility with which they were performed spoke of many hours of tedious practice,” reported the May 5, 1924 issue of The Lamron, the student-run newspaper at the time.
In the 1930s, campus renamed the May Day celebration to “May Fete.” However, the event ended up losing the pageantry gusto that it held before.
Though the May Day activities were well-attended, the event was inevitably restructured into what is now known as homecoming.
“[The] transition was from May Day when alumni would come back to visit campus for the celebration with a series of weeklong events,” said Jerrie Lee Parpart, Exhibits and Archives Coordinator.
Though May Day is no longer celebrated on campus, students can still feel its echoes every fall.
Contact the author at journalmanaging@wou.edu
