Today, we “raise The Green And White above the rest” — quite literally.
Welcome home, Bobcats, from all of us still growing in knowledge, wisdom and love. I’m sure you’re due for a fun, relaxing weekend.
For those of you who have yet to see, this is throwback week at The Post. Each day, we’ve run a historic front page and today, that’s all culminated into our recreation of The Green and White from 1934.
Those were prime, transitive years for Ohio University, and the front-page design we’ve reconstructed was the one that reported the death of the university’s eleventh president, Elmer Burritt Bryan. After Bryan’s death, Edwin Watts Chubb would serve his second stint as acting president before handing the reigns over to Herman Gerlach James.
One notable headline that ran after Bryan’s death read: “Buildings, faculty, national standing improved in last 14 years.”
The Green and White isn’t our only past name, and if you visit our offices on Baker University Center’s third floor, you’ll get a chance to see many of them:
• 1874 — The College Mirror
• 1890 — The Daily Yell
• 1892 — Ohio University Panorama
• 1911 — The Ohioan
Hang with me for a few more bullet points; these are my top three headlines from those papers:
• “Brief mention of the antics which students have been cutting”
• “The ruins of humanity”
• “Who is the most popular O.U. girl?”
The first is my favorite, as I wait patiently to hear John Cleese say, “And now for something completely different,” every time I read it.
One of my favorite things to do this week, other than flipping through old pages of The Post and laughing at the fluctuating costs of compact discs with Managing Editor Rebecca McKinsey and Associate Editor Joe Fox, was hearing from former editors about some of the riotous stories they had to tell from the Old Baker newsroom.
“There were lots of cigarettes (I didn’t smoke) and beer (well, the drinking age was 18) in the newsroom, but not in the Production Room,” said Charlie Pinyan (1984–85). “We had our own ‘graffiti wall,’ and we loved to roast one another with published ‘Post profiles’ at graduation time.”
“One word describes The Post offices in the old Baker Center: Filthy,” said Andy Alexander (1969–70). “We reveled in putting a match to long lines of rubber cement that had been poured into mesmerizing designs on the concrete floors. Half-eaten pizzas were stuffed into desk drawers.
“On one occasion, I discovered dog poop that had, inexplicably, been placed in a file cabinet. Debris was everywhere … The staff was, shall we say, eclectic.”
Anyhow, have a great weekend, alumni. We’ve relived a lot of memories during the past week and I hope you’ve enjoyed it as much as we have. Special thanks to the editors who wrote in and to our designers, who are exhausted after a week of late-night time travel.
For the last time this week, go Bobcats! Let’s snag our seventh win and give ourselves a chance to crack the AP Top 25 before Halloween.
Pat Holmes is the Editor-in-Chief of The Post. Email him at ph835608@ohiou.edu.
