By: Alisha Wenger, Freelancer
Western Oregon University has changed in a variety of ways, including what the school used to be titled, since its foundation in 1856.
When it was originally founded as Christian College, Abraham Lincoln was not yet president, and the Civil War had yet to take place.
Campus life and the student body, at what was then Christian College, looked much different back in the late 1800s than it does today.
Men wore suspenders and nice pant suits, and women wore dresses that covered the neck and reached all the way down to their shoes. Fashion was modest and practical at that time.
Three societies were held on campus and “neither sex was allowed to participate in the exercises of the other,” the Centennial Story of Monmouth said.
Despite the segregation, however, Christian College prided itself on being a mixed school, having both male and female genders in the same classroom.
“Young gentlemen and ladies exercise a refining, restraining, yet stimulating influence over each other, which nothing else can supply,” the Christian College Catalogue of 1871-72 said.
According to the same catalogue, students were to stay in their rooms at night unless given permission to leave. They were not allowed to leave class without faculty permission and they were not to go “beyond the immediate precincts of the village, without permission of the president or faculty.”
Classes offered in the beginnings of Christian College were much different than today. Students in their first term would take: “Latin Grammar and Caesar, Greek Grammar and Reader, Algebra (University), Geometry, Plane and Solid and English Grammar,” the catalogue said.
A regular morning consisted of reading “the Holy Scripture, singing and prayer, followed by a lecture on some theme connected with sacred literature.” Morals were enforced by biblical examples.
An anonymous student’s late 1800s scrapbook showed the importance of poems, music, traveling and death in this early college campus society.
According to the Jerrie Lee Parpart, Western archives and exhibits coordinator, people used to memorize poems and enter into poem recitation contests on a regular basis.
“The pride of Monmouth in the 1870s was the Silver Cornet Band,” The Centennial Story of Monmouth Oregon said. The band, which consisted of solely men, had concerts in the college chapel and in other neighboring towns.
Traveling was a luxury to be had. An early 1900s School of Norm said that it took an hour and a half by train to get from Monmouth to Salem, and according to the 1911 edition when traveling in Portland, it was important to “chew gum freely on the train to prevent sickness.”
In the anonymous scrapbook, the places that the student visited were shown only by black and white postcards, since people were unable to easily snap pictures on the go.
This scrapbook also contained obituaries of students, explaining cause of death and their age.
