The gray dampness, the ubiquitous tree green and some hearty pioneer lore tap out a tattoo unique to a University that shapes all who pass through. As the days get progressively shorter and wetter, and opportunities for excitement seem more limited, you may wonder what student life was like in other eras.
Generations ago, “before the backseats of automobiles became popular, Pioneer Cemetery was a place to which couples used to steal away and make romance,” said former University archivist K. Keith Richard. “It became a kind of a lovers’ area.”
This was in sharp contrast with the students’ more formal activities, such as orations, recitations, dramatic presentations and music. These events where put on by the men’s and women’s literary societies as far back as December 1877, the second year the University was open.
By the turn of the century, teams for the major sports, including football, men’s basketball, baseball and track, and women’s basketball, gained representation on the campus. Hence, another tradition, which reached its heyday in the 1910s and 1920s, had students building towering bonfires around which fans would gather to support the sports teams at pep rallies.
One wood pile stacked up to a height of four stories and burned for three nights and two days in 1915, according to an exhibit at the Len Casanova Athletic Center.
University sports fans called themselves “Webfoots” as long ago as the 1890s. Local pioneer lore had it that the wetness of the weather here caused webs to grow between their toes.
Later, a duck named Puddles toured with the football team as its informal mascot in the 1920s and 1930s. In 1943, Donald Duck appeared in the University yearbook, and four years later Walt Disney himself agreed to allow Donald Duck to “represent Oregon at athletic events.” Donald has done so ever since.
It was not, however, until 1978 that the “Webfoots” lost its standing as the official school name.

And a Swoosh

was born
Most people know that Nike got its start here at the University in the 1960s when track and field coach Bill Bowerman collaborated with current Nike President and CEO Phil Knight, one of his former runners. Prior to his venture with Knight, Bowerman had spent years working out the design and construction of lightweight track shoes. But Bowerman had needed technical help that he got from a shoemaker on 13th Avenue, according to Richard.
“Otherwise, [Bowerman] didn’t know how to make a shoe,” he said, relating a story told by Bowerman himself. “That shoe man showed him how to put it all together and he helped him sew things together.”
Other individuals with creative flair and cutting-edge leadership have also passed through the University.
Nobel laureates William Parry Murphy, who developed a remedy for anemia in 1936, and Walter H. Brattain, who helped invent the transistor in 1956, both graduated from the University.
A number of active politicians have also graduated from the University, including U.S. Senator from Delaware William Roth in 1944, U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden in 1974 and U.S. Rep. Peter DeFazio in 1977.

Inconspicuous campus

landmark
Naturally, the dampness of the Willamette Valley benefits trees, and the University has an extensive assortment of them, nearly 4,000 individual specimens from 500 species and varieties.
According to Richard, the renown of the University’s arboreal array inspired astronaut Stuart Roosa of Apollo XIV to give to the University a seedling sprouted from one of among four Douglas Fir seeds he had with him when he walked on the moon in 1971. Today the unmarked tree, which is approximately 45 feet in height and more than two feet in diameter, stands behind the bench across from Willamette Hall on 13th Avenue.

United voices
A radical shift of campus life had already blossomed in 1969 and 1970, as students opposed the University for allowing the ROTC to remain on campus during the Vietnam War. On Earth Day, April 22, 1970, students staged a sit-in in Johnson Hall that lasted 30 hours and resulted in the arrest of 63 demonstrators.
One of the detainees, Allen Cox, now 50 and an abstract painter in Eugene, said he supports the students of today in their “rights and obligations” to speak up about that in which they believe.
“That’s part of what going to the University of Oregon is about,” Cox said. “It has been for many, many years.”
On the night that Cox and the other protesters were arrested, he said, various people on campus put together a brick barricade to block out traffic from 13th Avenue through the central part of campus, which otherwise was heavily trafficked and had been long-talked about as a danger to pedestrians.
“Obviously, the authorities came and tore [the barricades] down after a while, but they avoided a real confrontation,” he said. “They kind of negotiated a dismantling, as I recall.”
Within a year, however, the University and the city of Eugene agreed to close off 13th Avenue permanently at the site of the original barricades on Kincaid Street, Cox said.

More brain

for your buck
The University has recently received national recognition in a number of ways. U.S. News and World Report this year ranked four graduate programs in its respective top 20 in the nation — education, architecture, environmental law and special education.
For the third year in a row, the University is listed in “The Fiske Guide to Colleges” as one of the nation’s best bargains for students. The guide’s 2001 edition includes the University in its “best buys” list of 40 schools in the United States and Canada.
That acclaim apparently stretches far because the University had the highest percentage of international students and the highest percentage of students who participated in study-abroad programs among all U.S. public research universities for the year 1997-1998, based on data gathered by the Institute of International Education.