From its beginnings as the Storrs Agricultural School in 1881, Connecticut Agricultural College operated on a trimester system, with fall, winter, and spring terms.  That came to an end in 1914, when a meeting of the faculty (this was well before creation of the University Senate), voted to change to a two semester academic calendar.  The three semester system had terms of uneven duration – a 15 week fall term, 11 week winter term, and 13 week spring term.  After the change to two semesters, the calendar was virtually unchanged for decades. Until 1972, the fall semester began in late September and ended by mid-January. Students went home for the Christmas/New Year break, came back for final exams, then went home again for semester break.

–Mark J. Roy, University Communications (retired)

It was the height of the war in Vietnam, and when the lead singer of the vocal group “The Happenings” was drafted, their appearance at UConn’s Jorgensen Auditorium was canceled. In their place was a concert on February 25 by soul singer Wilson Picket, whose hits included “Mustang Sally” and “In the Midnight Hour”, among others.  As the concert progressed, Picket encouraged UConn students to get up and dance – but an auditorium manager concerned about safety had the house lights turned up and asked that Picket tell students to get back in their seats. Picket refused, the manager cut power to the stage, and Picket walked off and never returned.

–Mark J. Roy, University Communications (retired)

We take it for granted now, but in 1968 the networking of computers was cutting edge, and UConn had it first network was in development in 1968. Actually, there was only one computer, an IBM 360 mainframe, and the network was comprised of 30 remote terminals.  The Connecticut Daily Campus noted in February that the network was “being developed here allow students and staff to plug into the huge new IBM 360 computer.” Funding of $366,000 came from the National Science Foundation for the then-University Computer Center. Started in 1962, the UCC was headed by John L. C. Lof in the late 1960s. At the time it must have seemed amazing – the network would allow use of the mainframe by 30 people at the same time.

Professor Koons studying honeybees with teachers, undated

“Immediate cause of death was exhaustion due to cancer of the throat.” Those words in the December 19, 1903 edition of The Hartford Courant related the cause of death for a beloved member of the campus community in Storrs.  The day before, at his home in Storrs, Benjamin F. Koons, first president of Connecticut Agricultural College, died. He was 59. Koons had begun his Connecticut career as an instructor of natural history at Storrs Agricultural College when it started its first semester in September of 1881. By the end of 1882 he was acting principal of the school for boys, and in 1883 held the position in full. He became president in 1893 when legislation changed the school into the Storrs Agricultural College, and officially admitted women.  Koons had allowed local women to attend starting in 1891, noting that in creating a boys school, the legislature did not forbid the enrollment of women.  Koons was replaced in 1898 by George Flint. In retirement, as the first president emeritus, he continued to teach natural history, maintained a botanical garden, and started the college’s first museum of natural history.

It was the New Frontier. Full of “vigah”, offering service programs like the Peace Corps, and stressing physical fitness and 50 mile hikes. Later it would be romanticized as Camelot and dampened by revelations of personal failings, but in 1963, many young Americans were still enthralled by the youthful President of the United States, John F. Kennedy.  It came to an end on a November morning in Dallas, and within minutes, television and radio news brought the word that the president was dead.  After receiving the Associated Press bulletin, WHUS, the student radio station, turned a monitor out a window so that those passing the Student Union Building could hear the latest news.  In a special Saturday edition November 23, the Connecticut Daily Campus reported on the scene in the Student Union Lobby: “The shock grew and so did the crowd. They were more hopeful and at the same time more fearful. Rumor said he was dying. Everyone took another glimpse at the AP or UPI wire services and waited and prayed … Then the television announcer said, ‘President Kennedy is dead.’ It took a while until the meaning of the words were felt. Then they wept.”

Memorial to John F. Kennedy, 1964 Nutmeg

–Mark J. Roy, University Communications (retired)

…the Hurricane of 1938 slammed into southern New England. 

No Tweets, no IM, no text messages. To reach fellow students with news about a devastating hurricane, the Connecticut Campus (it wouldn’t add Daily to its name until 1954) put out a special edition on September 22.

Printing presses were not operating, so the editors used a hand-cranked mimeograph machine to publish the news.  The 1938 hurricane was a surprise. There wasn’t a week of watching and waiting as the storm neared by Connecticut shoreline as we had with Hurricane/Tropical Storm Irene in 2011.

A survey of the damage conducted in the days following the hurricane by two forestry students would find 1,762 trees were either snapped off or uprooted on the campus grounds. Sherman P. Hollister, superintendent of grounds, told the Campus it might take one hundred years for the campus to regain its former beauty.

On page 65 of the 1939 Nutmeg Yearbook, a sixteen-photograph montage shows some of the damage on campus. The only caption reads: Windy Wednesday.

 Decades later, Provost Albert Waugh, a faculty member in 1938, wrote in his diary:

 “How the wind blew! How the rains fell! And how the hug oaks were torn out by their roots or their great trunks broken in half! Thirty-five years later we have in our back yard a great swamp maple with a long spiraling scar once and a half around its truck where the tree was twisted like a corkscrew!”

–Mark J. Roy, University Communications (retired)