This exhibit explores the ways in which Oregon State students have cultivated and celebrated their campus community since 1868. 

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Amongst Oregon State’s values is community engagement to build relationships between students, faculty, staff, and more broadly, the Beaver community. One way to foster these relationships is by invoking school spirit. Some of the ways the Oregon State community enacts its school pride include wearing school colors, participating in school traditions, and representing the university through sports, clubs, and activities. 

Beavers and the colors orange and black weren’t always a part of the Oregon State community. Some reports share that in 1896, students adopted orange as the primary school color in honor of Robert Reed Gailey, a Presbyterian missionary and popular former football player for Princeton University. At the time, he was visiting the Albany Collegiate Institute (now Lewis and Clark College), whose colors were orange and black. While visiting Oregon, students from Oregon State invited him to coach the football team for several days. In his honor, they chose orange as their school color. While black wasn’t officially adopted, it was used as a background color. Now, the Oregon State community proudly wears orange and black to show school spirit.

At the time of the university’s origin, mascots served a different role in academic communities. They were more akin to class pets, and were often real animals or even people. Early Oregon State mascots included “Jimmie” the Coyote and “Doc” Bell. Bell was a member of the Board of Regents, well-known for his tradition of marching to Marys River after each of Oregon State’s rivalry game wins and throwing his hat into the water to celebrate the victory. 

The beaver was eventually adopted as Oregon State’s official mascot after the school newspaper and yearbook used the name, “The Beaver”. Reports say that in 1951, graphic illustrator Arthur Evans (who famously designed a majority of the college mascots of the twentieth century) drew the first cartoon beaver mascot for Oregon State. In 1952, student Ken Austin showed up to a school rally dressed in a hand-made Beaver costume. These first renditions of “Benny the Beaver” are the origin of Oregon State’s modern mascot. 

School spirit and tradition are closely related. Traditions are often used by students to portray a sense of pride in their institution by honoring those students who came before them. While traditions may play a role in school spirit, they are not an exclusive means of promoting school pride.

Historically, some traditions have been exclusionary, whether intentionally or not. For example, in the early-mid twentieth century, freshman students (known then as “rooks” and “rookesses”) were made to wear green on Wednesdays until the ritual “Burning of the Green” at the end of the academic year. This rule was enforced by sophomores and upperclassmen.

At sporting events during this time, there were also dress codes for student spectators. These students were also not allowed to “fuss”, meaning they could not sit or mingle with students of the opposite sex at sporting events. These days, campus has moved towards a more inclusive approach, allowing students of all levels to wear whatever they wish to classes and removing clothing and gendered restrictions for students attending sporting events. 

Other traditions are still practiced today. Among them are songs and cheers used at sporting events and academic celebrations, like convocation and commencement. The “Spirit and Sound of OSU”, Oregon State’s marching band, helps maintain these traditions and promote school spirit by performing at campus and sporting events. While playing music, they often form impressive shapes and scenes related to their performance.

Visual representations of school spirit are not the only means of building community at Oregon State, however. Many students participate in clubs and activities, pursuing hobbies or passions while at the same time representing the university at competitions and events. There, friends, family, and fans cheer them on. 

One of the most popular ways to show school spirit is to support Beaver athletics. Baseball is one of the most popular sporting events at Oregon State, with good reason. The Beaver baseball team won back-to-back NCAA championship titles in 2006 and 2007, and again in 2018. After each win, Oregon State students and community members gathered to celebrate the team after their homecoming.

Oregon State students have also competed internationally, to the excitement of the Beaver community. In 1964, Oregon State student Jean Saubert earned a silver medal in the giant slalom and a bronze medal in the slalom in the Winter Olympics. She also participated and placed in the World Championships in 1962, 1963, 1964, and 1966 as a member of the US Ski Team. Saubert graduated from Oregon State in 1966. Her accomplishments were celebrated in 1991, when she was inducted into the university’s Hall of Fame.

Other clubs and organizations in which Oregon State students have participated or competed include Greek life, music groups and clubs, cultural groups, affinity groups, and more. 

Ultimately, there’s no one way to enact school spirit. Whether you wear orange and black to show your school pride, attend a volleyball game to support the student athletes on that team, compete in philanthropy events to fundraise for a good cause, or advocate for students’ rights, school spirit is about fostering and supporting the community around you here at Oregon State. 

~ Grace Knutsen

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Grace Knutsen is the lead student archivist at Special Collections and Archives Research Center. She has HBAs in history, French, and German from OSU and is an MLIS student at Indiana University Indianapolis. 

The “Plans and Profiles of Oregon River Maps” exhibition highlights the earliest maps and figures in SCARC’s Plans and Profiles of Oregon Rivers archival collection. Surveyed and hand-drawn in the 1920s as part of the Department of Interior’s U.S. Geological Survey, the twelve (reproductions of) images on display showcase the two types of schematics in the collection: plans (aerial, topographic maps of rivers and surrounding landscape) and profiles (visualizations of stream surface level over a given area).

When: The 2024-2025 academic year (Fall 2024 – Summer 2025); Special Open House Wednesday, October 16, 2024, 10:30am-1:30pm in the SCARC Reading Room

Where: The Valley Library 5th Floor SCARC Exhibit Alcove (across from the Reading Room and open during The Valley Library’s open hours)

Historical Context: Congress established the U.S. Geological Survey in 1879 and charged it with the “classification of the public lands, and examination of the geological structure, mineral resources, and products of the national domain.” In the aftermath of World War I, the Survey shifted focus towards identifying new energy resources, including hydropower. The maps on display, therefore, show current and potential dam sites in plan and profile. The display of these maps today honors the end of the dam century in the western US.

Cartography: Functional and Beautiful

In the early 20th century, cartography was an extreme endeavor. Surveyors traveled across rugged terrain in wooden boats, on foot, and on horseback – lugging plane tables and telescopic alidades up mountainsides and down canyons. Transferring field data to paper was a similarly physical process, one which captured the personalities and particular interests of the mapmakers, even within the highly standardized genre of the topographic map. Bishop Moorhead included ranger stations, canneries, and ferry crossings in his map of the Rogue River and animated rapids with blue strokes. E. S. Rickard rendered the confluence of the Sandy and the Columbia with a sinuous, less demonstrative hand, and marked the water itself as negative space.

Consider the pieces on display as art, as objects made with aesthetic intention. While these maps are created primarily for functionality and to serve the bureaucratic purposes and politics of the Department of the Interior, they become creative forms meant to communicate and shift the perspective of the viewer.

Photos of the Exhibit

Additional Information and Collection Notes

Bonus Exhibit!

Vanport Traveling Exhibit, October – December 2024

The Vanport traveling exhibit tells the story of the City of Vanport through four pull-up banners. Vanport was the largest wartime housing development in the nation and the second largest city in Oregon before it was destroyed by floodwater. Although Vanport had a short history from 1942 to 1948, thousands of people called the city home.