 Well, good afternoon. I'm Bob Wilhelm. I'm the Vice Chancellor for Research and Economic Developments, and I'm pleased to welcome you today to what is the Nebraska lecture, the fifth Nebraska lecture in our series to celebrate our 150th anniversary here at the University of Nebraska. The lecture series, of course, has a long history. It's designed to be an interdisciplinary series, and we try to bring together both university, community, but also people from the Lincoln community, from Nebraska, to come together to really to be, to experience some of the very interesting ideas that are here at the university and also to hear from the community. And generally, we get really good experts, but also articulate experts, and I think that we've got a great example here. This afternoon with the, and they've come from many different disciplines across the campus. The many, many people that work to bring this together, ranging from the UNL Research Council, the Office of the Chancellor, the, of course, my office, the Office of Research and Economic Development, and also the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute, which is known as ALI, and I want to especially welcome the members from ALI that are here today. We're really pleased that you're, you're here with us. We also want to give special recognition to the humanities Nebraska. Their sponsorship for the lectures, and also the sponsorship of the National Endowment for the Humanities, has allowed us not only to have this very rich series of, of lectures, but also to capture them on video and to archive them in a very stable way that people will be able to look back at them and learn from them in the future, and perhaps also use them in scholarly pursuits. The Research Council for the University is a real driver for this. The council members choose the speakers for the Nebraska lecture, and they, they choose it on the basis of the accomplishments of the faculty, and also their capacity, their, their known capacity to really be able to articulate, you know, a good story, and to, that people can really take this in. And this selection is quite an honor for our faculty. So our speaker today, of course, is the, our latest to be honored in this way. Let's see. Where's the, the camera? I want to make sure I'm looking at the camera now, and to say, we want to say a special welcome to people that might be listening to this on live stream. If you want to be commenting via social media, the hashtag for today's lecture is hashtag N-E-B lecture, so neb lecture. And then what I'll say is about the format today will soon be starting, but after the lecture Dr. Jamie Reimer, the chair of the Research Council and associate professor of voice, will also moderate a Q&A session. So we'll have some time for more discussion along the way. And then last, we also have a prize. So that's, that's my special role, the prize, the prize master here today. So once we finish the special, all of the question and answers, we've got a unique random process to award a prize, and it will be the N-150 book that we've published for, to commemorate the history of the university. So you've got to be president of the win, you've got to stay to win. But look, I'll be, I'll look forward to talk with you more at the end of the, at the end of the event today to, to give out the prize. And with that now, I want to welcome Chancellor Ronnie Green, who will introduce our speaker. Well, thank you very much, Bob. It's great to see everyone here at the Ross Theatre for today's N-150 lecture. As Bob said, we've kind of shaken the year up a little bit, where we normally have two Nebraska lectures, one in the fall and one in the spring. This year we chose to really expand that out and add ten more lectures to the calendar year to help us really commemorate the 150th anniversary of the university. So we've had four wonderful lectures already this year, delivered by four great lecturers. And it seemed like the last one was just like ten days ago, because it was. Literally, it was just at the end of April and to catch as many people as we can before people begin really dispersing for the summer, we kind of intentionally scheduled this one early in May. So we're really pleased today to get a chance to go back to the turn of the 19th century when the university here was just 25 years old. I was, it was in its early formative days and as we have talked a little bit earlier in the year about that time period of the 1890s, the early 1900s, I think Kari's going to talk specifically to the 1890s here today, was a real heyday of the University of Nebraska, if you want to think of it that way. Willa Cather, you're going to hear about today, walked on this campus and was such an integral part of the campus. Andy gave a great lecture about Willa here not too long ago as a Nebraska lecturer. Charles Bessie, if you were at commencement on Saturday and you would have seen our speaker, Rebecca Richards-Cordem, received the Bessie Medal only the third time that we've given the Bessie Medal in our history, was on the campus at that time, the founder of the field of ecology, essentially. Louise Pound, who was close to and friends with Willa Cather as we know from the history, was here, her brother Roscoe Pound was here. So it was quite the time for the University of Nebraska in our history. So our lecture today is particularly going to be interesting to me to hear more about the life of the campus and seeing the campus through the eyes of Willa Cather. So our lecturer today, and as Bob said, it's an honor to be selected as a lecturer, so we celebrate you, Kari, for being selected as a Nebraska lecturer, is Dr. Kari Ronning. Dr. Ronning is one of our leading experts on Cather's life, especially the author's connections to her home state here in Nebraska. She's been part of the Willa Cather Scholarly Edition since 1990, a thriving partnership between the Willa Cather Project and the University of Nebraska Press, who, by the way, published that great book that somebody's going to win here in a few minutes. She also is associate editor of the Willa Cather Archive, one of the nationally renowned projects in the digital humanities. Dr. Ronning is a two-time graduate of this great university, having earned a bachelor's degree and a doctorate here at University of Nebraska. So it's now my great honor to introduce our fifth Nebraska lecturer for 2019, Dr. Kari Ronning. Welcome, Dr. Ronning. Thank you very much. Well, thank you very much, Chancellor Green, and I want to thank the chancellor and his office for the opportunity to do this and the research council. My thanks also go to Mary Ellen Ducey in the university archives and the staff of the archives. Tracy Tucker at the Willa Cather Foundation, Marlon Nissen at the registrar's office, and all the people in all the English tech support people and the Cather Letters Project people, and especially all the people who have worked usually anonymously to digitize photos and texts to make it easy for the rest of us to find the information we need. And my special thanks go to Beth Burke for her work on the images. As Willa Cather said in my Antenna, there was an atmosphere of endeavor, of expectancy, and bright hopefulness about the young college that had lifted its head from the prairie only a few years before. Cather, one of the most famous alumni of the University of Nebraska, arrived here in 1890 at a key period in the university's history, as the chancellor said. She hopes to celebrate its 25th anniversary. The number of students tripled during her time. The seminar method of instruction was introduced, as well as graduate study and intercollegiate football. We'll explore what it was like to be a student here in the 1890s, using Cather as an example through her student records, the memories of people who knew her, and in the glimpses of college life and some of her novels. It wasn't hard to get into the University of Nebraska in those days. It was open to all qualified students. Students qualified by graduating from an accredited high school. Here we have Cather's high school diploma from Red Cloud, or they passed entrance examinations. But they had to have a basic knowledge of Latin and Greek. If you didn't know Latin, you had to enter the first year of the university's prep school. Sometimes known as the Latin school. In the early years, there were more students in the prep school than there were in the university. But the prep school was able to be phased out in the late 1890s. Will Cather, as a graduate of Red Cloud's two-year high school, knew Latin, and so she began in the second prep year to learn Greek. This picture is Cather in her second prep year. She referred to herself later as a shave-headed prep. If you look under her hat, you'll see why. A classmate, Will Westerman, recalled the first day of prep school. A boy stuck his head around the door to ask if this was the Greek class. Told that it was. The supposed boy came in wearing a dress. It was Willa Cather. Although she started growing her hair out in her freshman year, the short hair was what most of her classmates remembered about her even 50 years later. After her second prep year, Cather officially matriculated at the University of Nebraska in 1891, beginning her freshman year. Like other students, she paid a one-time matriculation fee of $5. The line at the bottom is what says, This fee entitles the matriculate to four years study in collegiate groups. In other words, no tuition was charged. Chancellor Canfield, shown here, came as chancellor in 1891. He toured the state, encouraging enrollment, insisting that the university was the 13th, 14th, 15th, and 16th years of the public school system. Enrollment went from about 500 in 1890 to nearly 1500 in 1895. Of course, the buildings didn't expand. He was so beloved that the class of 1895 made him an honorary member of their class. Every student who enrolled, including Cather, had to meet the registrar, Ellen Smith, the class officer. She was the first woman hired by the university. She taught Greek and Latin, was head of the Latin school, custodian of the library, and became registrar in 1884, serving until 1902. The class of 1895 dedicated its yearbook to her, and several Smith halls on campus have been named for her. Ellen Smith started a page in the registration book for every student, where she recorded what classes each one took, and whether they passed or failed. No course grades were given. I don't know if you can read any of that, but you can see that it's handwritten, no, one page for students. The University of Nebraska offered a chance to learn, but there was no money for student financial aid. In 1895, the university catalog informed students that, quote, the average cost of a year at the university ought not to exceed $175. Many spend much less than this sum. Cather says in Laentonia, some of those boys came straight from the cornfields with only a summer's wages in their pockets, hung on through the four years, shabby and underfed, and completed the course through really heroic self-sacrifice. Students from outside Lincoln lived in rooming or boarding houses. Judging from descriptions in Cather's works, there were usually noisy and dreary with little privacy. About 1893, Cather settled in a rented second floor room with an older couple, the Hastings, at 1027 L Street, seen on this map. So she just walked straight up 11th Street to University Hall. Her room was probably similar to the ones she describes in Laentonia and the Song of the Arc. Both Jim Burden and Taya Cronberg have to bring coal up from the basement to the stove in their second floor rooms. Edith Lewis's biography of Cather notes that this was something Cather had not been used to having to do. But rented rooms like this offered freedom. As Jim Burden says in Laentonia, our personal life was as free as that of our instructors. There were no college dormitories. We lived where we could and as we could. This was as true for 16-year-old girls like Cather as for men in their 20s. When Lucy Gayhart finds a room to herself in Chicago, she thinks for the first time in her life she could come and go like a boy, no one fussing about, no one hovering over her. Cather probably boarded or ate her meals with her landlady's. Not every rooming house offered meals, however. Some male students formed eating clubs. The members contributed about $2.25 a week to buy food and hire someone to prepare it. Of course, there are always jokes about student food. One student wrote, I don't mind eating hash six days a week, but I do object putting raisins in it on Sunday and calling it mince pie. Early in her junior year, Cather had the chance to earn her own way through school when she became the Nebraska State Journalist drama critic and then a Sunday columnist at a dollar a column. Cather's friend, Mariel Gear, daughter of Charles Gear, the journal's owner, took this picture of Cather at work in the newspaper office. When Cather was a student, the university campus was on four square blocks, bounded by 10th and 12th streets and R and T streets. Townspeople had grazed their cows on the university grass, so one of the first things that Chancellor Canfield did was enclose the campus with a fence, seen here. The main gate was on R Street, but all four gates were locked at 10 o'clock every night. The fence was taken down in 1922 and now lines the O Street side of Yucca Cemetery. Two of the original gates are near the northeast corner of the stadium among the columns. The most important building on campus was the first, University Hall. Most students had most of their classes in that building, so it had the first place in their affections, despite the fact that it had begun to crumble as soon as it was built. Kagan Peters, in her talk last February, described the building, its history, and its many, many problems. During the relatively prosperous 1880s, three other buildings were added to the campus. Grant Memorial Hall, seen here, housed the Armory for the Cadets and the Office of the Military Instructor. It had a large open hall on the second floor, probably the largest open space in the campus buildings, where receptions were occasionally held. It was usually used as a gymnasium, where cadets drilled in bad weather and where physical training classes were held for women and men. Notice the women's exercise clothes. When the women's classes held their annual exhibition, men students would scramble up to peer in the windows, presumably hoping for a glimpse of ankles. Physical training classes were required as a health measure, and this fostered a new career for women as teachers of women's physical education. The chemistry lab at the upper right in this photo housed the sciences. Nebraska Hall, on the lower right, housed the industrial college, where the State Museum was. The electrical laboratory was built in the early 1890s. The electrical engineering students were on the cutting edge of technology then, like IT and computer students now. On special occasions, they would rig electric science in the roof of University Hall for the whole town to see. The one surviving building from Cather's time is the library, now known as Architecture Hall, shown here in the drawing from 1892. Construction on it, which Canfield personally supervised to ensure its quality, began in 1891. But then the 1893 legislature didn't appropriate enough money to finish it. So it stood unfinished until after Cather graduated in 1895. Students referred to it as the campus of ruin. In Cather's novel, The Professor's House, there's a similar struggle to fund and build a handsome and structurally sound building at the professor's university. A new student landmark was added to the campus when the class of 1892 gave the university the Hardington Rock. Hand-held box cameras introduced in 1889 made it easy for amateurs to take outdoor photographs, so the rock became a favorite place to have your campus picture taken, as Cather did here. University Hall in the background is gone, but the pine tree behind the rock is still standing south of the Nellie Cochrane Woods Art Building. Nellie Cochrane was a fellow student then. The rock itself now sits north of Morrill Hall, one of the few remnants of the 1890s campus. Like any student on the first day of classes, Cather needed to learn her way around. Going up the front steps of University Hall to the first floor, Cather would have found herself facing two large rooms of the library. You can see that on the top left side. Mary L. Jones, an 1885 university graduate, had studied library science at Melville Dewey's School in New York. Chancellor Canfield hired her as the first professional librarian for the university. She started the first card catalog, organized by the Dewey Decimal System, purchased new books by popular writers such as Kipling, and began evening hours to accommodate students. Students were not allowed to check out books. Library science was opening a new career for educated women, and Jones trained many students. Some remained at the university library for many years. Others went on to head libraries around the country. Unfortunately, after Canfield left in 1895, the new chancellor disliked having women in positions of authority. After Jones and her trained staff had moved all the books from University Hall to the new library building, Chancellor McQueen forced Jones out and replaced her with a man. Recitation rooms, classrooms, including one dedicated to the Latin school, were on the south side of the central corridor. The office in the southeast corner of the first floor probably housed the entire administration. The chancellor, the registrar, the accountant, and the secretary. Those were the simple days. Here's the Greek recitation room, which, as you can see, immersed the students in its subject. More recitation rooms occupied the second story, which was dominated by the entrance to the chapel. Students and faculty met in the chapel, a two-story balcony room at 9 o'clock every morning for prayer and announcements, and sometimes there was music and guest speakers. Of course, there were always complaints that the students were noisy and didn't pay attention. The students enjoyed watching some faculty members up on the platform fall asleep or watched to see which professors were the last to get any jokes that were made by the speakers. On the third floor were more classrooms, including the rather sinisterly named Pathobiological Laboratory, and the meeting rooms for the two main literary societies. The oldest and longest lasting was the Polynes Society. This is their hall, furnished and decorated by the members with an elevated platform at the front for the programs. In this image of the Union Society's hall, a piano is just visible on the platform. Music of any kind was a big draw for meetings because live music was the only way you could hear it in the 1890s. Phonographs were not yet widely available. The amount of space allotted to the societies shows how important they were considered to be in the education of students. Down in the basement, there were store rooms, the furnace rooms, and three physical laboratory rooms. There were only 16 recitation rooms in the whole building for general classes, but five other rooms were reserved for physics. Here's a picture of a laboratory classroom, probably from the chemistry building rather than University Hall, but you can see how well they were set up. The basement's corner room, the printing office, was the headquarters of the student paper, the Hesperian. According to at least one of her contemporaries, Cather learned to set type to help print it when she was on the staff. One of her classmates worked as a typesetter for the Nebraska State Journal, so it wasn't unknown for women to work as printers. The basement also housed the ladies and gentlemen's cloak rooms, looking rather small to accommodate half the 500 to 1500 students who were studying there. Can you see them? There are these narrow little rooms next to the corner. Women students did have a small dressing room on the first story where they could leave their outer coats, hats, gloves, lunches, and apparently even their pocketbooks and purses while in class. There were frequent complaints in the student newspapers about pilfering of both men's and women's things. Cather wrote a little comic sketch for the Hesperian called Daily Dialogues, or Cloak Room Conversation as overheard by a tired listener. Back to her classes, prep school students took the same required courses, Latin and Greek, of course, some math, some physical training. Classes met for 40 minutes, five days a week. In the university coursework, there were no majors as such. Students registered for the academic or the industrial college. Within the academic college, they could choose the literary, the classical, or the scientific groups. Cather opted at first for the scientific curriculum. But the most influential course for Cather was probably the required rhetoric and theme writing class. This was taught by an eccentric professor, Ebenezer Hunt, who had been a journalist, a lawyer, and a clergyman before coming to Nebraska. Not surprisingly, he loved a good debate. Once when Cather had not finished the required weekly essay, Grace Morgan, the classmate, recalled that Cather said, Watch me tangle up the old docs till he forgets to ask for our papers. Hunt and Cather argued. Hunt forgot to ask for the papers, and Cather escaped. One week, Hunt said an essay topic, the personal characteristics of Thomas Carlisle. Cather's essay showed, quote, the pleasure and delightful bitterness that Carlisle can arouse in a very young person. It makes one feel so grown up to be bitter. That's what Cather said. A few days later, Cather found her essay printed in both the Hesperian and the Nebraska State Journal. As she recalled, I had planned to study medicine, but what useful vanity can be unaffected by the sight of itself in print. Cather changed from the scientific group to the classics group. Some of the work she published in the Hesperian may have been inspired or required by her classwork. She took a Shakespeare class in her freshman year and published a poem, Shakespeare, a freshman theme. In her sophomore year, when she was taking a class on Horace, she published a translation of one of his odes. In her junior year, her translation of a Greek poem appeared in the yearbook. That doesn't mean that she was entirely serious about the classics. The Cather Foundation in Red Cloud has her Horace textbook with a Royal King poem called The Truth About Horace, pasted in the back. It begins, it is very aggravating to hear the solemn prading of the fossils who are stating that Old Horace was approved. When we know that with the ladies he was always raising Hades, and with many an escapade his best productions were imbued. It goes on like that. Cather took Greek and Latin, as well as French and German, because she wanted to read the literature of those languages. Students got a basic grounding in the grammar, and then they were turned loose on a classic text, preparing translations for class, and then later, translating passages at sight. Lazy or time-strapped students made the use of translations by others, commonly referred to as ponies. A frequent subject of jokes in student publications, a sentence such as, with his pony to a pass, would suggest a student who passed a course by relying on a cheater translation. When Cather was still thinking about studying medicine, she took the freshman chemistry course. This was taught by Professor Rachel Lloyd, shown here, probably the first American woman to earn her doctorate in chemistry. This was in 1886 at the University of Zurich, the only place in Europe and probably America, which would allow women to pursue that degree in chemistry. Lloyd's work on the chemistry of sugar beets helped establish that industry in Nebraska. Botany was the most popular science class at the university. Professor Bessie encouraged both men and women to study it and offered popular co-ed field trips. Roscoe Pound and his fellow members of the botanical seminar, usually known as the Sembot, shown at left, were doing important work in surveying the native plants of Nebraska. However, women were not allowed in the Sembot, as you can see, so three of Cather's good friends and some other interested women students formed the Feminine Botanical Seminar, the Fem-Sem-Bot. As you can see in this yearbook drawing, they were not taken very seriously except by Bessie. We'll pass quickly over the required freshman mathematics course, trigonometry, which Cather struggled with. She had had problems with math back in high school. She wrote one of her favorite teachers. She even tried very hard to teach me algebra at night, but not even Miss King, who could do almost anything, could do that. In the 1890s, the University of Nebraska was changing the way history was taught. Professors like Frederick Fling, shown here, and Howard Caldwell, who had both studied in Germany, introduced the first seminar-style classes west of the Mississippi. Instead of lectures and textbook readings to be regurgitated, students were encouraged to do research in primary sources and debate historical issues in class. Cather took both European and American history. Some of her experience may be reflected in one of ours, where the protagonist, Claude, takes a history class at the University from a professor like Fling. He does a research project on the trial of Joan of Arc. It's the most interesting and meaningful work he does in college. Of course, Cather took many, many English classes, too. One of her favorite instructors was Herbert Bates, who came to Nebraska fresh out of Harvard. The character of Gaston Leclerc in myentonia has much in common with Bates. However, at the University, he was most famous for the quantities of red ink, which he used in correcting student themes and essays. Cather was passionate about art for art's sake, about music, about literature and drama. Professor Sherman wanted to make the study of literature scientific. He developed a system he called the analytics of literature. We know analytics now in the field of computer data crunching. Sherman had his students do data crunching the hard way by actually counting, say, the number of adjectives or the number of words in the sentences in a play or story or poem. By comparing these figures with the counts from other works by the same or different authors, he thought you could get at the essence of an author's style. An anonymous poem called He Took Analytics in the Hesperian when Cather was editor probably reflected her feelings and that of many other students, even if she didn't write it. It ends, ah, I counted queen and counted in rows of figures masked till in my days are numbered and I'm counted out at last. In a 1900 essay, Cather characterized Sherman's method as, quote, finding the least common multiple of Hamlet and the greatest common divisor of Macbeth. As this yearbook page shows, each class had class colors and a class yell to make their presence known in public. Cather was active in her class. She was elected treasurer of her prep class and nominated the colors, cream and old gold, of the class ribbon and served on the committee to buy the ribbons. She ran for president of the freshman class. As a sophomore, she was elected associate editor of the class annual for the next year. As a junior, she was on the prom committee. The numbers of students in each yearly class at the university were small enough that students fell to solidarity with their year and rivalry with other years. But one of the last bizarre rituals of interclass rivalry was the cane rush. This cane was donated to the university archives by one of Cather's classmates, Louis Oberleys. She used this surname in her novel, One of Ours. The men of the freshman and sophomore classes secretly acquired canes. One story has it that the class of 95 smuggled their canes in the hall in a box marked rhetoric supplies. So then on a certain day in late September, 1892, the freshmen marched into chapel with their canes. They were not supposed to have canes, only upper classmen were supposed to. According to the historian, the sophomores hissed and can't feel the germs to chapel. The freshmen and the sophomores fought outside to capture or destroy each other's canes. And they really fought. Torn clothes were a frequent result and broken bones were known to happen. The aspirin noted that three sophomore girls were involved in the action. Some students later remembered that Cather was one of them. The classes cooperated better in the literary societies, which offered the most important experiences in the social life of students. Fraternities and sororities existed, but they were relatively few and small. The societies were open to all students. They taught new students how to run meetings, gave an outlet for students to read their work, to deliver orations, and to sing or play instruments. One student was famous for his whistling performances. They also socialized, and one important tool was the slate. Since meetings were held in the evening, it was necessary for the women members to have an escort from their homes to university hall and back. Instead of leaving escorts to chance, an officer would assign men to escort the women, rotating names on the slate, so everyone had a chance to get to know each other. In 1892, a leap year, the women took over making the slate assignments. And of course, there were always rumors of attempted bribery of the slate keepers in order to get a favored escort. However, not all women felt that they needed an escort, and so some of them joined the GOI club. Stansford, go out independently. Cather probably went about independently without joining the club, but at the newspaper submitting her drama reviews, the editors sent a young page boy or printer's devil to escort her home. Cather joined the Union Literary Society in her prep year at the university and quickly became active. This program shows what the future class of 95 could do to amuse and enlighten their fellow members. Also, note the boy riding a pony down at the bottom. There's a paper marked exams underneath. Notice the orations by Louis Oberleys again, and Willa Cather, guitar, voice, and piano music, a speech, a recitation, probably of a poem, a review all capped by a debate. Three of Cather's good friends are on the program with her. Grace Morgan, Maisie Ames, and Olivia Pound, younger sister of Cather's best friend, the brilliant Louise Pound, who I hear that we'll have the chance to hear about later next fall. Cather and Louise Pound had similar interests as of humor and made a great team. They collaborated on writing and acting in several plays performed for the Union Society. Cather played Peter Paragon in a farce, the fatal pin, and Lady Macbeth in Pound's satiric play, Shakespeare Up to Date, wherein Shakespeare's most famous heroines get together to complain about Shakespeare's portrayal of them. She was also in the five-act satire on literary society life, the perjured padulian. I don't think it's coincidence that sounds kind of like Palladian, but she played the villainous Diamond Witherspoon, cruelly about to seduce a village maiden. Another important part of the literary society's role in campus life was in their sponsorship of the main student paper, The Suspirion. More like a magazine than a newspaper, it operated on subscriptions and advertisements, no student fees or other university support. At the beginning of her sophomore year, Cather was elected to be the literary editor of The Suspirion. And that's Louis Oberleys again and the left in the back row. I don't know why he keeps cropping up in Cather's history, but, you know, women had been on the newspapers, on the paper's staff before, but most often as the local editor, the student news or gossip column. The literary columns published student work with the literary editor helping fill out the pages. Cather herself provided two poems and five stories to The Suspirion that year. One of the stories, possibly illustrated by Cather herself, was The Tale of the White Pyramid. An anonymous poem in the rival Nebraska reacted, a student sat in his attic story, conned The Suspirion from lid to lid, in his eye was the light of seraphic glory, as he read or the story of The White Pyramid. Hours less he sat in sweet contemplation, never a word like one inspired, then down dashed the book in wrathy denation and murmured, these cuts make me tired. The choice of the managing editor of The Suspirion rotated among the literary societies. The Union Society had the choice for the next year, 1893 to 94, and they chose Willa Cather, who'd be a junior that year. In the first issue under Cather's editorship, she stated her policy is, we mean to attack whatever appears to us to injure college spirits and activity, to defend whatever appears to promote and strengthen it, and to most scrupulously let alone what appears harmless and inoffensive. We intend to voice student sentiment, not student prejudice. If a man says the earth is flat, if he slanders a great book or writes an absurd one, we claim the right to pummel him as much as we please. It is within the province of liberal education and legitimate journalism. However, the next year's editor asked students not to hold the previous year against him. Under Cather, The Suspirion covered campus issues of many kinds. Most significantly, she organized a special quarter-century Charter Day publication of The Suspirion, complete with an ode seen here by her favorite English teacher, Herbert Bates. There were historical essays by students, by alumni from the early days, on student life, the faculty, the frat barb horrors of the 1880s, and the origins of intramural football. There were even photographs. Normally, The Suspirion had only a few line drawings, like the one you saw for the story. The Suspirion also covered the beginnings of Nebraska intercollegiate football with Roscoe Pound reporting on the games. I have to admit that The Suspirion provided much more detailed coverage of the games. One account of the game says, Done starts with the famous Dulland double-flying wedge or checkerboard play. I'm sure someone will be covering Nebraska football in this series, so I'll leave it to him or her to explain what that means. Like other student activities, the football team was supported by students, 50-cent membership in the All Student Athletic Association, as well as ticket sales and the proceeds of benefit entertainments given by students. The coach, of course, was the biggest expense, at $100 to $500 for the season. This was followed by travel expenses. Any money left over went for equipment and uniforms. If there was a deficit, the Athletic Association board had to pay out of their own pockets. That year, Cather did find time to write a story which won the yearbook story contest. The idea was suggested by Dorothy Canfield, 13-year-old daughter of the Chancellor, who became a writer more popular in her times than Cather. The fear that walks by noonday was a mash-up of a football and a ghost story. Years later, Cather used that football knowledge gained at the University in one of ours. Claude, on a small college team that plays Nebraska, a practice game for them, meets one of the University players who gives Claude a life-changing experience. He introduces Claude to his cosmopolitan family, the Airwigs, based on the Westerns, a family Cather met at the University. One of the sons, Max Westerman, was the University's chief cork and accountant, the chief financial officer in modern terms. Several other sons, like Will Westerman, were also students at the University. Cather was also a co-editor of the University's third yearbook, the Sombrero. The name wasn't changed to the Cornhusker until 1907. The yearbook was put out by the junior class, so the yearbook of the class of 1895 actually appeared in 1894. In these pictures of the editors, Cather is at the bottom left. At the lower center right is the editor and chief, Charles R. Weldon. Again, readers of one of ours might recall that name as the character of Brother Weldon with an O, the soft, lazy, sponging minister who tells Enid she should marry Claude in order to convert him. Some people who had known Weldon, who became a Baptist minister, were upset with the portrayal, and a Baptist minister in Lincoln scolded Cather from the pulpit The military was one important aspect of student life that Cather couldn't participate in, although Jim Burden in my Antenna was a cadet when he attended the university. As a land grant university, Nebraska was required to offer military training. It was compulsory and unpopular for male students. But when Lieutenant John J. Pershing was appointed commandant of cadets in 1891, he inspired a remarkable change. Droll began to be taken seriously. By the way, we're looking at the back of Nebraska Hall there. The L extension is the chapel. Membership in the cadet battalion became a thing to be proud of. Will Westerman had his graduation picture taken in his cadet uniform, and cadets vied to become officers in the battalion. That's Pershing in the center with the 1894 officers. In 1892, Pershing formed an elite unit within the regular cadet battalion, drawing them reglentlessly, and a competition of military schools. Nebraska's unit took first place in the first-timers competition to the joy and pride of the university. The newspapers said that they were second only to West Point's drill team in the whole competition. The unit, the Varsity Rifles, became the Pershing Rifles after Pershing left in 1895, an organization which is spread to include elite ROTC units at many other colleges. As graduation approached, Cather began to hunt her down and work off requirements, somehow finishing off her freshman math class in May 1895, a month before graduation. Seniors had to see Ellen Smith to verify they had completed the requirements, and they paid a $5 graduation fee, thus doubling the cost of their university education. Graduating involved many other rituals. Senior girls would all, on a specified day in the spring semester, begin wearing caps and gowns, like Cather here, to classes. When Cather took an unofficial spring break trip to Chicago in March 1895, she had herself photographed there in her cap and gown. Back in Lincoln, she had herself photographed in the evening dress with long white gloves, quite a contrast with her second prep picture. The senior promenade was held in late May, and Cather may have worn this dress for the dance as well. Commencement activities in early June lasted six days, a time for the students to show friends and families what they could do. On Friday evening, the music conservatory gave their graduating concert. On Saturday afternoon, to Canfield, Chancellor Canfield could give a reception to the seniors and their friends. Saturday evening, the literary societies gave a joint program of music and talks in the University Chapel. Cather read an essay on Edgar Allen Poe. On Sunday, was the baccalaureate service in the Lansing Theatre, the biggest auditorium in town. Monday evening, was the commencement concert, a performance of Haydn's The Creation, also at the Lansing. Tuesday morning, the class day exercises were held. These usually involved music, a humorous class history, orations and essays concluded by the class prophecy and the class yell. The alumni banquet, welcoming the seniors to the ranks of the alumni, was late Tuesday afternoon. That evening, the Cadet Band and the Glee Club gave an open-air performance on the campus. Then finally, on Wednesday, was commencement. The seniors lined up on campus, then marched in procession to the Lansing Theatre. The speaker had been chosen by the students and probably funded by them, the Reverend Dr. Frank Gonzalez, a social activist from Chicago. So, graduation came and went and Cather, like many other students, returned home. Back in Red Cloud that winter, she wrote to Mariel Gear and signed the letter, Siberia. She looked back on her college career with mixed feelings. She said to a classmate years later that few people, quote, knew the real me under the various poses which I, like most people in college, assumed for one reason or another. There were just a few rare, charming young people who were simple and natural in college undistorted by any affectations. I wasn't one of them. Like some of her fellow students, she wondered what she was going to do next. Unlike many of her classmates, she didn't become a teacher right away. However, she tried. In 1896, when Herbert Bates resigned to go back east, Cather applied for his position. She wrote to Regent Charles Gear, I have been in all of Bates's classes and he writes that he will recommend me to any extent I desire. Of course, the two principal things against me are my age and sex, but I think I could overcome both of those. And on the other hand, the university was very impressed for funds. And I would go in as an instructor and they would pay me $500 less than the man they intended getting. Cather did not get the job. We might wonder what might have happened to her career and to the university if she had been hired. The person who did get hired, though, was one of Cather's classmates, a woman who usually came in second to Cather in writing contests. Her age and gender apparently didn't matter, but the money argument might have prevailed with the regions after all. But nonetheless, her college career enabled Cather to start new careers. Editing the Hesperian and writing for the Nebraska State Journal helped her get jobs editing a magazine in Pittsburgh, writing for Pittsburgh newspapers and teaching in Pittsburgh high schools. She later edited McCour's, the famous Muckraging magazine. Teaching gave her time to write and begin to make her reputation. Her classmates and associates became governors, scientists, university professors and presidents, social workers, teachers, librarians, and many other things. All helped to make the world a better place, just as we hope that the university's graduates will continue to do now 125 years later. So. And now, would you all join me in the university yell? So, I was never a cheerleader, but let's go. U-U-U-N-I Ver Ver Versa T-N-E Braske Oh my! Thank you. Thank you, Kari. That was one of the most interactive lectures I think we've had yet, which is great. I am Jamie Reimer. It is my pleasure to serve as chair of the University Research Council and to open the floor to any questions that we might have for our speaker today. If you have a question, please do wait until you are presented with a microphone so our friends on our live stream can hear you. So with that, the floor is open. Or we will pick random persons to do the cheer again. Melissa? There's a threat. There's a threat. So the woman who was hired instead of her, what was her name and did she have a career in university teaching, or do you know what her name was? Her name was Catherine Mellick, M-E-L-I-C-K. She only lasted a few years at the university, and I'm afraid I don't know what became of her afterwards. She probably... Oh! Okay. Her name was Catherine Mellick. She lasted a few years in this position and then went on somewhere else and I don't know where really. Probably teaching. Wait for the microphone, please. Thank you. Were there any women professors at the university at this time? Just a few. Rachel Lloyd was one, the chemistry professor. Gosh. There were instructors. So they were teaching. There were some teaching. Right. And I cut out mentioning a chemistry student named Rosa Bhutan. She was one of Rachel Lloyd's best students and she became an instructor at the university. But then around 1900 there was this shift exemplified by McLean and women chemists were shunted from general chemical work into domestic science. And Rosa Bhutan actually became the founder of the Home Ec. It wasn't a college then, it was the Home Ec. School. And the first Home Ec. building was named for her. But it was torn down. So not much memory of her. But there were, the art teacher was a woman. Some of the music teachers Louise Pound became a professor, obviously a little later. Thank you, Kari. I have a question. Do you know of Cather's role as being both a student and a critic for the Nebraska State Journal? Was a fairly unique situation or did other students also contribute to the local newspapers, either in Cather's time or around that era? I think it was pretty unusual for Cather to do this and I didn't dwell on that because that wasn't part of typical student life. After she left for Pittsburgh, a student by the name of Keen Abbott became the drama critic and he issued some skating reviews and was called in by the editor, Willow and Jones and told, you know, you know, tamp it down. And he said, but Miss Cather did that said worse things and he was told, well, that was Miss Cather. But other than that I don't know of other critics. I'm curious if you happen to know you said that the student population kind of exploded during this time period. Were they primarily from Nebraska or were they from other states? And is there a way to, does the university still have, like they have Willow's records that you found? Would it be possible for us to find out who else were her classmates? Yes, the university catalogs, you know, listed the students, like and that's how I found out there were 12 graduate students in 1890. And also gave their home towns. Most were from Nebraska but Nebraska was open to people from other states. Somebody Cather knew by the name of George Gearwick was from Pennsylvania. Why he came to Nebraska? I have no idea. He went back to Pennsylvania after he graduated. But you can find out that through the university catalogs. I asked because I started graduate school here at the university in 1992. I didn't know at the time when I picked it to come to school here that my great grandfather had gone here from 1891 to 1894. Oh really? That's the family legend. And I would like to verify it at some point. What was his name? Joseph Fremont Lyon and he was from South Dakota. He went to Chicago to visit his brother on vacation and never returned. He married the woman who ran the boarding house. I know I've seen the name Lyon on the student lists. I think they all attended. I'd love to go and look. Yeah. The students were there were relatively few students from Omaha. I will say that. The law papers tended to be jealous of the university. And they at least in the early years. Oh. Anyhow they referred to the University of Nebraska as Lincoln's finishing school. Okay. So deep inside baseball question but still an interesting question though. So after Cather died her sister Elsie was very adamant that Willa Cather had no need to support herself by writing for the Lincoln paper. And that she never ever had any financial hardship. And there's I've well it seems to me actually pretty likely that in 1893 even if your family was relatively well off that it might become difficult to support you know room and board. She didn't have to pay tuition. I mean so is it your sense that working for the newspaper really was part of like in 1893 the drought the panic that she really did need to chip in so that she could finish her degree. What's your sense of that? My sense is that's right. That she did need to contribute. She wasn't maybe you know starving like some of the students that she talks to. But certainly in order to afford things like the trip to Chicago evening gowns and you know just clothes and stuff in general she had a variety in her wardrobe. So in order to make that happen I'm sure she had to make money. Her father had to leave Red Cloud and come to Lincoln to work because he could not support his family in Red Cloud. So I think there was real hardship. Are there any other questions? We'll take the last one right here. You said that she drew a comic for the Hasperian. Is that still around? The Hasperian merged with the Nebraskan which became the daily Nebraskan later on. The Nebraskan started as a monthly paper in 1891. It became two times a month and then after the turn of the century became a daily paper and absorbed the Hasperian. It was originally considered the Pratt paper whereas the Hasperian was the literary society's paper but it was also much more athletically inclined. So it hasn't been archived? Oh yes, the Hasperian is archived and it's online. Again those wonderful people who digitize things have put it all online. You can search both in Nebraska and the Hasperian plus many other documents. Thank you so much for your questions. If you think of something else you are welcome to speak out in our reception and I am happy to turn the mic back over to Chancellor Green. Before I give you a memento to remember the lecture but I did have one last question I wanted to ask. You mentioned Dorothy Canfield which there's quite a lot written about Dorothy Canfield. She was the young daughter of Chancellor Canfield when he was here. Do you know if there was any interaction between Willa Cather and Willa was a student here? Oh yes. Yes, they were friends. Some people considered Dorothy as a protege of Cather's and so that fear that walks by Noonday, Cather credited as by Willa Cather and Dorothy Canfield. Canfield or Dorothy became a second prep student. She was around the university when you read about her she was referred as the precocious daughter of Chancellor Canfield. That's what she's written about. Yes, she was. She graduated from well she graduated from Ohio State which is where Canfield went and she got her doctorate at the Sorbonne in Paris in 1902 something like that. So very, very bright. Please join me in giving Kari a big round of applause and a great lecture. Thank you all. We have a tradition of giving Nebraska lectures something to remember your lecture by so it's a frame print of the lecture poster. Thank you very much. Wonderful lecture. Another round of applause for Kari.