Time and Change: 150 Years of the Ohio State University - Hardcover

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Two days after the Ohio Agricultural and Mechanical College opened its doors on September 17, 1873, the Columbus Dispatch noted, “They say a small beginning makes a good ending.”1 The 24 students who arrived the first day were greeted by President Edward Orton and six other faculty members who decided later that afternoon when classes would be taught and “that there be one daily session; from 8 to 1, or 9 to 2 o’clock.”2 The faculty and students began on a campus with one main building, a house for the president, and several barns. The college’s main building (which later became known as University Hall) was not finished, the doors were not hung, and Thomas Mendenhall, professor of physics, recalled using his dinner pail attached to the ceiling in order to explain a lesson. Yet the students and faculty stayed.

In May 1878, the college’s name changed to The Ohio State University. President Edward Orton wrote in his annual report later that year:

"This institution has not yet attained to university proportions, and calling it a university does not make it one, in all the senses of the word. If the Legislature, however, in this change of title, foreshadows its purpose to expand the college into a university worthy of the name, any present incongruities can well enough be borne."

And expand it would. The student body of 198 in the fall of 1878 grew to nearly 1,150 students in 1900 and to more than 10,000 students by 1925.

As the university and campus grew, Ohio State experienced the pains of many other institutions of higher education. Although always officially open to minorities and women, the college/university has not always been the most welcoming place. Ohio State has struggled with discrimination, representation, and social upheaval: the university has tried to balance demands from its internal and external constituents, faculty have had to justify their teaching methodology and their research, and our second president was dismissed in part for his economic and religious views. These controversies are also part of the university’s history.

The campus’s history has been cyclical in some ways—from semesters to quarters to semesters again and from a College of Arts and Sciences to a system of colleges and back to one college—and linear in others. Many buildings and departments have come and gone, while others have survived. While Ohio State should hold onto pieces of its past, it cannot be a stagnant university. It would be inconceivable to go back to Ohio Field, to a Dean of Women, or to a one-story library even while we remember them.

At 150, The Ohio State University boasts more than 66,000 students, 34,000 faculty and staff, and 550,000 alumni. Buckeye Nation spans the globe with educational opportunities, research, and outreach and engagement. But what truly makes someone a Buckeye? What ties each generation to the next?