Answers – Part 2
1. In 1900, a vote of students, faculty, staff and alumni officially selected orange and white as the University’s colors. What colors came in second place – by only seven votes?
d. Orange and Maroon
The question of UT’s colors began in 1885, when students formed their first baseball team and played Southwestern University in Georgetown. Through a series of random events, Texas students sported orange and white ribbons on their lapels. Just over a month later at spring commencement, similar orange and white ribbons were used to tie the rolled degrees.
The colors, though, were by no means official, and other hues began to appear. As all of the early campus buildings were constructed from pale yellow pressed brick and limestone trim (still seen today in the 1904 Gebauer Building), the campus appeared gold and white from a distance, which was reflected in team uniforms. The University’s first football squad of 1893 listed its colors as “old gold and white” and wore dark yellow soft beanie hats with black-and-white striped jerseys. After a short time, yellow was deemed too feminine for UT footballers and discontinued in favor of orange.
There were complaints, however. As a practical matter, white soiled easily on the playing field made the uniforms difficult to clean, while the orange dye was unstable and tended to bleed on to white in the wash. Others took a more philosophical viewpoint, groused that white signaled “surrender,” and lobbied for a bolder hue.
In 1898, UT welcomed David Edwards as the new football coach. A graduate of Princeton, whose colors are orange and black, Edwards reviewed the problem and decided to substitute white with a darker tint, one that wouldn’t show stains as easily: maroon. The combination of orange and maroon was a instant hit with the students, and soon $1.25 maroon baseball hats with orange T’s were available in stores along Congress Avenue. Not everyone was on board. Some preferred the traditional orange and white – still seen at commencement – a few still pushed for gold and white, and the medical students in Galveston were almost unanimously behind royal blue.
To settle the matter, a vote was held in the spring of 1900, though UT President William Prather permitted the alumni to cast ballots as well, in spite of objections by students. When all of the votes were counted, orange and white won with a seven-vote majority, while orange and maroon finished second.
2. What was the name of UT’s first academic recruitment program, spearheaded by the Texas Exes in 1958?
d. Operation Brainpower
Launched in spring 1958 and sponsored by the Texas Exes, Operation Brainpower was the first organized attempt to attract top high school students to Austin. There was a growing concern that too many of the state’s best high school graduates were pursuing higher education outside of Texas, and the University was prohibited from using state funds to retain them.
Hosted by a local alumni chapter, teams of UT students and faculty visited high schools across the state to acquaint students with the opportunities available on the Forty Acres. The program led with a slide show – often accompanied by narration heard on a reel-to-reel tape player – before attendees broke into smaller discussion groups with members of the team. Academic possibilities, honors programs, and student life were the primary topics, and quite often the UT student body president was one of the presenters. Operation Brainpower continued through the 1960s.
3. In 1964, pranksters placed which full-grown animal in Littlefield Fountain?
c. Alligator
On Sunday morning, April 19, 1964, campus visitors were treated to a very rare sight: a 3 ½ foot, 75-pound alligator sitting in the waters of Littlefield Fountain. How long it had been there, no one was sure, but the new addition to campus wildlife was quickly dubbed “Charley.” As the fountain was no place for a proper, self-respecting alligator, the University Police were summoned to fix the problem. Not experienced in these matters and unsure of what to do, the UTPD called the Austin Police Department. The city constables, though, discovered they didn’t have the proper equipment to remove an alligator, and requested the person they believed could do the job: the city dog catcher.
It took a bit of wrangling, and in the end the dog catcher was thoroughly soaked, but Charley was caught and removed to UT Police Headquarters, where he was temporarily kept in a large barrel. It was later discovered that an unnamed fraternity had “borrowed” Charley from the San Antonio Zoo, where the alligator was promptly returned unharmed, but with a story to tell.
4. Approximately how many degrees does the University award annually?
c. 15,000
At its first commencement in June 1884, the University awarded 13 law degrees. At the time, the law degree was a Bachelor of Laws and Letters (LL.B.), which took only two years to complete. Some of UT’s first law students arrived with credit from other colleges or with enough professional experience for the law faculty to grant credit, and so graduated in a single year. The first Bachelor of Arts degree was awarded in 1885 to Samuel Red.
Today, the University of Texas grants about 15,000 degrees in an academic year.
5. In 1961, as part of the Civil Rights Movement, what form of protest did UT students invent to integrate the movie theaters on the Drag?
b. The Stand In
By 1956, the University of Texas had racially integrated both its graduate and undergraduate programs, but African American students were still denied many of the same opportunities of their fellow students, among them: housing, participation in theater productions, and on UT athletics teams. Along Guadalupe Street, many shops remained segregated, including the Texas and Varsity movie theaters.
With progress toward full integration stalled, the Students for Direct Action was founded in November 1960. The group wanted to integrate the stores along the Drag, and chose to start with the movie theaters, but what form of protest? Member Houston Wade suggested a variation of the sit-in, first seen in North Carolina earlier the same year. He called it the stand-in.
On Saturday, December 2, 1960, a biracial group of about 100 students – including 20 African Americans – lined up at the box office in front of the Texas Theater, where a CVS pharmacy store is today. As each person approached the ticket window, they would ask the employee, “Is this theater open to all Americans?” When told admission was segregated, they thanked the ticket-seller and returned to the back of the line.
The stand-in was immediately popular and was expanded to the Varsity Theater. It also garnered national press and was featured in former First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt’s “My Day” syndicated newspaper column.
After a short break for the Christmas holidays, the protesters returned the following spring. Three times a week, 200 volunteers – mostly UT students, but a few professors as well – clogged up the lines at the two theaters. Voices of support began to appear in The Daily Texan: individuals at first, then letters signed by the faculty and staff of entire academic departments. In May, 260 faculty and staff members published a four–column advertisement in the Austin American, each person having contributed the price of a movie ticket. The ad specifically requested the presidents of the two companies that owned the Texas and Varsity Theaters to revise their policies and open the seats to everyone.
By the 1961 fall semester, the two theaters had integrated, and the stand-in, which had its start on the Drag, became a national form of peaceful protest during the Civil Rights Movement.
6. In 1971, a group of students mounted an unsuccessful campaign to replace the “Texas Longhorns” with what animal?
a. Armadillos
On November 2, 1971, the Student Senate unanimously passed a resolution to poll students on changing the UT mascot from the Longhorn to the Armadillo. One of the advocates was Student Body President Bob Binder. “The armadillo is a peaceful and ecologically-minded animal,” explained Binder, “and cheaper to maintain than a longhorn.” A great many students and alumni disagreed, and despite widespread media coverage and a few posters and bumper stickers in favor of the change, the idea was forgotten within a few months.
7. In 1908, law student Tom Ball registered the freshman class with bogus papers by impersonating which University official?
d. President
In September 1908, 28-year old Tom Ball, an older-than-average senior law student, returned to campus and moved back into his old room in Brackenridge Hall – known informally as “B. Hall” – the University’s first men’s dorm. At the same time, UT had a new president. Sidney Mezes had joined the faculty in 1894 as a philosophy professor, was promoted to Dean of the University (today’s Provost), and then appointed chief executive by the Board of Regents. A rather serious-minded character, Dr. Mezes was known for his full Van Dyke beard and spectacles.
By coincidence, Ball had grown a Van Dyke beard over summer, and if he donned a pair of glasses looked so much like the new President even Dr. Mezes took notice. So did some B. Hall residents, who convinced Ball to help them “welcome” the 1908 freshman class.
When the day arrived to register for fall classes, Ball put on his spectacles, procured a table and two chairs, and sat down near the south entrance to the old Main Building. Here, “president” Ball kindly registered unsuspecting freshmen with bogus papers, assigning quite a few students to the same classrooms and just a few to others.
The first day of class was a disaster. Almost every freshman believed they were scheduled to take Dr. Battle’s 9 a.m. first-year course in Greek, where the classroom was on the fourth floor of Old Main and entirely too small. To repair the mess, registration was repeated, but without the assistance of “President” Ball.