NDSU's century marked by change
By Mikkel Pates
The Forum
In the beginning, there was North Dakota Agricultural College. It always had a "liberal and practical" mission, but its agricultural mission often took precedence and led to the "AC" moniker.

Now known as North Dakota State University, the institution has grown to include 9,800 students and is one of the larger communities in the state.

In a new state, even the institution's location was a product of raw political will.

Ironically, locating the school initially was considered a loss for Fargo.

Many town leaders considered it a consolation prize in the fight to secure the state "insane asylum," which went to Jamestown and eventually became the State Hospital.

"The plea of some people in Fargo and Cass County and with some of the (legislative) delegates too, was that the ag college would never amount to anything," says historian Elwyn Robinson.

They thought "it would be better to abandon any attempt to secure the location and go for
something like an Indian school, a school for the deaf and dumb, a school of science or something big."

Something big

The Morrill Act of 1862 provided for "land grants" to each state to build a college. North Dakota and others in the region established their land grant schools when they achieved statehood in 1989.

North Dakota's land grant university had its faculty in the fall of 1890. It rented space from Fargo College. (Fargo College, 1887-1922, was affiliated with the Congregational Church and located where Island Park is today in downtown Fargo. Between presidential terms, Teddy Roosevelt
dedicated its library on Sept. 5, 1910.)

By 1892, all students lived in a farm house at 10th Avenue and 7th Street. They settled into "dorm" life, and daily chapel continued through 1902.

First president Horace E. Stockbridge brought in young scientists from the east: Clare B. Waldron, a horticulturist; Henry L. Bolley, a botanist from Indiana, and Edwin D. Ladd, a chemist from Maine.

"It was like, carte blanche," says Michael Robinson, an NDSU archivist. "They were highly competitive with each other."

Worst and best?

A turning point in the AC's history was the selection of John Worst, who would serve as president from 1895 to 1916, a period in which enrollment increased tenfold.

When Worst arrived the college had 83 students and three buildings - Old Main, which remains today as the president's office, and to the north, Mechanical Arts and Francis Hall, which were torn down.

An Emmons County homesteader in 1883, Worst served as county school superintendent, state senator, and finally lieutenant governor. He was loyal to Alexander McKenzie's Republican machine in Bismarck.

The Agricultural College issued its first master's degrees in 1899. Professor Orin A. Stevens (1909-1956), started developing a national and international reputation for his exhaustive studies on plants, insects and birds in the Northern Plains. Administrators called Stevens "modern
Audubon of the Plains."

In February of 1913, the colorful A.G. Arvold, a speech professor from 1907 to 1952, spearheaded a statewide promotion of the school. It involved taking a "Student Life Train" to communities across the state, to show off the academic wares. (Arvold later would develop the Little Country Theatre, which became a movement among communities for theatrical productions.)

Worst eventually fell into disfavor with Bismarck - especially the populist Nonpartisan League - which took over the Republican party in 1916. (The NPL would later align itself with the Democratic party.) He demanded an extension of his contract on Feb. 18, 1916, and the next day
the board of trustees instead appointed him president emeritus.

When Worst left there were 10 buildings, not including livestock barns, and more than 800 students. Among other things, Worst "pestered and pestered" steel magnate Andrew Carnegie for funds to build a new library, later called Putnam Hall.

Robinson said Worst's name itself was ironic and unfortunate. "You can't name a building after that," Robinson says. "Nothing at NDSU is named after him."

After student rallies protesting Worst's ouster, the board tried to reconcile by appointing Edwin Ladd as interim president. Ladd, a chemistry professor, was wildly popular across the state for his
"pure food and drug" work and in developing paint that would stick better. (Ladd's work helped lead to the current polymers and coatings department, which is internationally known.)

"Ladd didn't like the interim title and considered himself president and treated himself as permanent," Robinson says. "The only reason Ladd left the presidency was because he was elected to the U.S. Senate in 1922."

Purge of '37

The 1920s were a period of false economic development throughout the country. In the 1930s, with the Depression and Dust Bowl, politics again stepped up.

In July 1937, The Forum reported that Gov. William Langer had ousted seven top faculty, most notably Alba Bells, dean of home economics.

President John H. Shepperd had been pushed out in 1937.

Gov. William Langer, of the NPL, fired the administrators primarily because they controlled almost $1 million in federal funding that came into the college during the Depression.

"The governor's office could not control these seven administrators," Robinson says. "Therefore, they were dismissed for illegal 'accounting practices.' This, of course, blew up in the governor's face."

Within months the college lost its accreditation.

An alumni group, led by William Guy Sr., a Casselton farmer (father of NDSU grad William Guy Jr., governor from 1961 to 1972), formed what was known as the Committee of Eleven. Langer tried and failed to encumber alumni funds.

"The students and alumni went out, through all sorts of speaking and writing, and within a year had accreditation back and a new president," Robinson says.

When Frank Eversull became president in 1938, all of the seven dismissed faculty were offered their jobs back. The Legislature created the Board of Higher Education to keep it independent from gubernatorial control, and a Democratic governor was elected.

"It would seem all those events were connected to the purge of 1937," archivist Michael Robinson says. Many graduates from the 1930s carried deep resentments toward the NPL. Saying "Langer is like saying the devil" for NDSU grads of that era, Robinson says.

Students in war

World War I meant the loss of some students, but land grant colleges also were used for military training.

In 1918, Dakota Hall was built in nine weeks to accommodate rising enrollment in the domestic science department.

In World War II, the vast majority of the student body became female.

The men on campus often were enlisted in the services, enrolled in Officer Candidate School.
In 1944-1945, NDSU had 932 students.

With soldiers coming home from the war and the GI bill paying for their education, the student population swelled to 1,613 in 1945-46, and to 2,897 in 1946-47.

In 1946, "temporary" housing -40 prefabricated, steel duplex-style homes on 12th Street and 12th Avenue - was built. The area was sometimes called "Silver City." Eleven barracks were constructed to house single veterans. In 1949, some students are temporarily required to live in the
field house.

"Stadium Court," a collection of 78 privately-owned trailer houses, housed Korean war veterans in 1952.

By 1959, half of married students lived on campus, with Stadium Court, Northwest Court and West Court in mobile homes. Bison Court and North Court are apartments.

Post-war boom

With this influx of students and federal dollars, NDSU began a building phase. President Fred Hultz, who served from 1948 to 1961, was known as the "building" president.

David Danbom, an NDSU history professor, says Hultz decided to build many of the buildings along what is now University Drive. "He sort of wanted the place to look bigger than it was," Danbom says.

Hultz was the center of a second academic controversy at NDSU. In 1954, a group of faculty challenged him, among other things, for appointing a dean without their consultation.

Hultz, with the Board of Higher Education's backing, fired four tenured faculty. Among them was W.B. "Bill" Treumann, a chemistry professor who eventually became dean of mathematics and natural sciences at Moorhead State University.

The incident drew an unprecedented second censure by the American Association of University Professors. The first was for Langer's efforts.

College to University

In 1958, the first statewide referendum to change the name to "North Dakota State University" failed.

By early 1959, NDSU would authorize its first doctorate level programs - first in plant science, animal science, pharmacy and entomology and then in chemistry.

A second referendum to change the name succeeded in 1960 after a more energetic campaign by students, faculty, administrators and alumni.

"The definition of 'university' is more inclusive," Robinson says. While retaining the original agriculture missions, it followed a national trend among land grants.

Student life was changing.

In 1962, the university required students to sign a contract for room and board. Students that year petitioned to opt out of the food program.

In 1964, women had to be 21 to live off-campus without relatives. Those who did were not allowed to entertain men in their homes or possess or serve alcohol there.

In 1965, construction was temporarily halted on the first two high-rise residence halls, later called Thompson and Severinson halls. A suit was filed over illegal bidding procedures. The two High Rises were opened for students in 1967.

A third high-rise was constructed in 1971.

In 1968, female students at least 21 years of age could stay out after halls were locked. The policy was expanded to include sophomores in 1969, and freshmen in 1971.

Women of NDSU

One of the most significant women was and is Katherine Kilbourne Burgum.

Known as "K.", Burgum, was named dean of the College of Home Economics in 1971 and served until she retired in 1980. She accepted an acting appointment from President Laurel Loftsgard, but it later became a permanent post, despite the lack of a doctorate.

Under Burgum's guidance, the Legislature authorized construction of the Family Life Center, which later was named after her. The center was tied to the union and the home economics building as a "walk-through" campus.

"She went right over the president and steamrolled that one," Robinson says. "Since she was a Republican committee chairperson, she could get to the legislators like nobody else."

Coincidentally, Burgum's mother-in-law Jessamine (Slaughter) Burgum, of Bismarck, was the first female student. There were four students in the first registered class. (Burgum Hall, was named for her.)

The later years

NDSU is a conservative campus and was in the 1960s, says Danbom.

Engineering became the largest college in enrollment.

"There was a small antiwar movement here. The civil rights movement had no impact at all," Danbom says.

Of course there was the much-written about Zip to Zap, a massive, spontaneous student party that ended up in Zap, N.D., in 1969.

Enrollment zoomed to 8,000 in the early 1970s and has increased more slowly since then. High prices for agriculture commodities and oil meant relatively flush times for state appropriations.

Enrollments continued to challenge dormitory space.

In 1976, the university purchased the Graver Inn in downtown Fargo to house male upperclass students. In 1981, students were temporarily housed in Fargo's Motel 75 and the Econ-O-Inn. In 1982, the overflow went to the Select Inn, near West Acres Shopping Mall.

In 1987, the last high rise, later named after F. Leslie Pavek, was completed. Today, more than 1,000 of the 2,600 students on campus are in high rises.

Danbom says the university continues to be a place for many first-generation college students with families. It is a place where students come in with above-average college entrance testing scores,
averaging 2.8 on a 4-point scale.

"This is a very demanding place," Danbom says. "This is a hard university. They come to us with good values - they work hard, they are dependable - and we don't screw them up."

STATE COLLEGE

As early as the 1920s, students started calling the Agricultural College "North Dakota State College," even though the formal title change wouldn't occur until 1960.

It was that decade that, in a straw poll by the Spectrum newspaper, students overhwelmingly voted to call it "State College."

"Although the ag college was primary, they always had home economics, always engineering, arts and science," Robinson says. "They felt agriculture was a misnomer."

Pull out a yearbook - any yearbook - and the title page will say North Dakota State College. Cheerleader emblems say it, as well as the Spectrum itself - the "newspaper of North Dakota State" college.

Officially, the letterhead read North Dakota State University of Agriculture and Applied Sciences.