This article was written by Carys Williams and Gabriel Mott.
Northern Review has been in circulation for more than a century. Over time, many parts of the content, tone, and style of Northern Review have changed dramatically, as has the university itself. In this ten-part series, we explore different aspects of Northern Review’s content over time, from the 1910s to the 2010s. First, let’s explore the first two decades of student journalism at Ohio Northern: the 1910s and 1920s.
After an extensive review of the past Northern Review issues at our availability, we have selected three narratives each from every decade (for the sake of brevity and available material, we combine the first two decades and the next two decades), which illustrate the social values, moral panics, and oddities which created the culture of Ohio Northern University at the time.
Northern Review maintains an internal (but not complete) archive of the digital layouts of our reporting since 2010. Earlier content exists solely in print, and is available to all students through the archives at Heterick Memorial Library. We, the authors, extend our deep thanks to Archivist Matt Francis, Rank of Associate Professor, for his technical assistance to the development of this series.
Social Values (Rhetoric)
On January 20, 1915, Northern Review published a plain, three paragraph article with no author and no byline simply titled “Slang.” The article likens “slovenliness in speech” with “slovenliness in dress” in an attempt to convince the reader to be more mindful in their choices of words. The article clarifies, “This is not a plea for the purists. There is a happy medium between the dullness of scholasticism and the vulgarity of common talk.”
Immediately, the lack of attribution is a glaring problem. The Society for Professional Journalists’ Code of Ethics explicitly requires journalists to “[r]eserve anonymity for sources who may face danger, retribution or other harm, and have information that cannot be obtained elsewhere.” It is needless to say that a plea to end “mental laziness” does not rise to this standard. Barring these exceptional circumstances, authorship credit is important both because plagiarism is wrong and because it makes reporters stand beside their work. Unfortunately, this is a recurring theme in the early years of Northern Review — we did not see consistent authorship credit until the 1960s.
The content of the article is even more interesting. However many members of the century-old Northern Review staff contributed to this brief report, whoever they were, they clearly deeply cared about the rhetoric students used. The same expectation isn’t quite applied today, as we believe most students would agree. The use of slang language, not to mention cursing, is omnipresent on campus. While any number of our peers may have legitimate moral objections to the common use of such language, the plurality of the student body is clearly not compelled to resist it.
The next decade, on February 2, 1927, a similarly plain article with no author and no byline was run: “Words.” This commentary concerned gossip, and its threatening detriment to society. It opens rather eloquently, “Centuries ago when gestures indicated wants which we gain through a ready flow of language, primitive man was happy in his ignorance of a better means of communication. There was no waste of energy or useless movements. Perhaps man was happier in a sense than now. At least he didn’t have to endure heartache and bitter thoughts because of the stinging words or sneering condemnation which words brought to use.”
It’s interesting to see the (non-causal) evolution of the rhetoric here shift to something more concerned with the impact on other students. The equally ambiguous author(s) are cultivating a culture of respect and consideration at ONU. Unlike almost anything else in this era, that’s one position on which the modern-day authors have not deviated.
Moral Panics (Tooth and Claw)
One of the most striking examples from this era of the moral sensibility being misaligned to ours is the “Tooth and Claw” society of 1926. It was a (so far as we can tell) non-ironically named society to oppose disobedience of school policy among first-year students and to “Punish Faithless Freshmen [sic].” What were they doing to merit such a robust response? The only infraction named in the article is their disobedience to the university policy regarding wearing caps: “For the past few years we have heard upperclassmen lament of the indifferent attitude that freshmen seemed to take toward all rules established by the university, especially that one of wearing caps.”
The organizers were not going to take the Tooth and Claw for granted, either. Its membership included 20 men, half involved in a fraternity and half not, and was advised by the Dean of Men (Ohio Northern used to have a Dean of Men and a Dean of Women before consolidating to a single Dean of Students; this will become relevant in the following eras). The (again unnamed) author of the article is sure that Tooth and Claw will “become one of the most active organizations on campus,” and suggests membership is “destined to be considered a position of honor and distinction.” Provisions were even being made to acquire “official badges” so that the members of Tooth and Claw will not have their very serious authority disrespected.
The article even paraphrases the Dean of Men (who was advising the group) as asserting the following:
Tooth and Claw must have the cooperation of every upper classman in the university.
It’s hard to imagine a Tooth and Claw forming today. First-year students are no longer obligated to wear caps, but there are certainly many other university policies which, correctly or not, receive the same level of general disregard from the student body but not the same level of resistance from their concerned peers. Most examples we could allege now aren’t up to Northern Review’s present standards of publication (although they’d probably fit right on the front page of the 1927 edition), and it is not worth the effort to research. Regardless, consider someone you personally know (it could even be yourself) who has, intentionally or not, acted outside the strictest compliance with the rules of Ohio Northern University, and imagine how the Tooth and Claw would feel if they were still around.
But that isn’t to say that our norms of rule enforcement are insufficient; by contrast, Tooth and Claw was definitely overkill. This brief event in Ohio Northern’s history serves to show that a balance of rigidity and understanding may be most appropriate. The article doesn’t specify how exactly Tooth and Claw planned to punish those un-capped scoundrels, and it would be unprofessional of us as reporters to speculate. On some level, it doesn’t matter. The division of the student body on insubstantial moral panics is, unlike the rather thoughtful condemnation of gossip considered in the prior section, an improper application of peer pressure.
Oddities (Sportsmanship)
Especially given how serious and profound some of the social values and moral panics which have stricken Ohio Northern over the century have been, we thought it would be nice to conclude each article with an “Oddity” — something unique and interesting which reveals the fun, deeply human side of ONU through the years.
For this entry in the “Archive Deep Dive” series, we wanted to focus on sportsmanship. Athletics at ONU are almost as old as the university itself, and our collective passion as a student body has been unwavering. One article published anonymously in the January 15, 1915 edition titled “LET’S SHOW MORE COURTESY [sic]” lamented our collective lack of sportsmanship on the grounds that ONU students cheered for the Antioch team when they arrived but “when they left that evening, very few of our students were at the train to see them off.” The article concludes with a call to action looking toward a future game against Heidelberg; the author(s) want our students to “make them feel that defeat at the hands of a great school is no less honorable than victory.”
In retrospect, this level of concern for the feelings of the other team feels a little weird; such sincere, enthusiastic cheering for the other team isn’t particularly common at our sports games, and one quick glance at Barstool Ohio Northern (which has more followers at the time of writing than Ohio Northern’s student newspaper, student government, and Student Planning Committee combined) reveals how we feel about our athletic competition.
A few years later, in the December 16, 1919 edition, an editorial was published (incidentally, the only article in this entry of the Archive Deep Dive series whose authorship is even implicitly known) titled “THE OLD PEP [sic].” The brief story concerns that year’s great success of the men’s basketball team. The call to action is the same as in “Curtesy”: “The enthusiastic support of every Northern student is needed, however, to help the team in getting to the [unreadable]. It is our team. It is up to us to help make it our chamiponship [sic] team.”
It’s difficult to tell whether this odd, perceived deficiency of virtue in the early 20th century student body is more akin to the slang and gossip of the “Social Values” section or the Tooth and Claw of the “Moral Panics” section. Admittedly, neither of the authors are student athletes, and we may not have a particularly wise sense of sportsmanship norms.
Conclusion
The culture at Ohio Northern during the 1910s and 1920s was…interesting. Truly interesting to see. Whether for better or worse, we kept coming across evidence of a student body which truly, deeply cared about how their peers acted and how they represented the university. On some level, this persists throughout the century, and will be reflected in future entries of the Archive Deep Dive series.
Admittedly, there is some selection bias at play; journalists tend not to (but could if they wanted) cover stories their audience doesn’t care about. The issues we can find coverage for are likely to have student investment just insofar as they are newsworthy. Still, the specific focus on students’ concern with the behavior of their peers isn’t likely influenced by editorialization. Modern Northern Review often covers high-level administrative changes or events which are of interest to the student body, but it’s rare that we report on other students’ personal mannerisms as being newsworthy themselves. The authors are left conflicted as to what extent this is because the student body’s opinion and behavior is more heterogeneous now than it once was or because prior Northern Review coverage was exaggerated and one-sided; the disregard for contemporary standards of practice certainly doesn’t bode well.
Next week, Archive Deep Dive will consider the 1930s and 1940s at ONU through the lens of student journalism. This is another period for which we have relatively little content from which to select outlying narratives. Based on available dates of publication, we suspect the Great Depression and possibly World War II likely impacted Northern Review’s circulation. The student body’s passion is still front and center, but begins to find friction on important issues (especially gender roles) which will get much worse before it gets better.