Rivalry Story Time: When Oregon State Attempted to Absorb the U of O
Secret meetings, illicit affairs, and depression-era politics shaped higher education in Oregon forever, and define our sports rivalries, too.
Did you know that there was a moment in time where the University of Oregon and Oregon State were almost combined into one single school? And that the potential school was also somehow planned to be located in Corvallis, and not Eugene?
Welcome to the Week formerly known as Civil War Week.
I’ll start by saying that I’m not super interested in having a boring discussion about the name of the rivalry—as Taylor Swift once said: “Call it what you want.”
I’d rather tell a story.
One of the lesser-known origins of the rivalry between Oregon State and Oregon is all about politics, money, and two old white dudes.
Disclaimer: Our tale takes place at a time when Oregon State University was called “Oregon Agricultural College” so anything referring to “OAC” or the “College” is talking about the Beavs. The “University” is always referring to the Ducks because we’ve been grown from the start.
Once Upon a Time … In Oregon
Back in the 1930s, former OAC President, William Jasper Kerr, and former University of Oregon President, Arnold Bennett Hall, were at the epicenter of a statewide higher education battle that surely would’ve changed the way we think of the Civil War entirely.
At the height of the Great Depression—the State of Oregon’s economy was in tough shape. A History of the University of Oregon, a documentary film, stated that, “the competition for tax support between the University and the Agricultural College in Corvallis was getting nastier.”
Based on an outdated formula, the College was getting 25% more tax dollars than the University. But now the University had more students, so they wanted more money—of course.
But that didn’t sit right up North.
The Corvallis-Gazette Times was quoted with saying, “appropriations to help agriculture are now in danger because of the jealous, dog-in-the-manger attitude of the University. University demands are robbing the College.”
Oregon lawmakers were sick and tired of dealing with all the turmoil, so they created the Oregon State Board of Higher Education to settle all the bickering.
The Board was meant to, “ensure equitable funding for both institutions, prevent course duplication, and end squabbling.”
But the UO/OAC battle only heated up from there.
The Board announced that they were going to hire a new, “neutral” Chancellor to be in charge of both schools, and that neither Hall nor Kerr would be allowed to keep their respective jobs.
They also decided that all advanced science courses at UO were moved to OAC, and all commerce courses at OAC shifted over to UO.
OAC literally looted the Oregon Science Library, taking all of Geology professor Thomas Condon’s fossils and research for themselves. It took years for those rocks to make it back to Eugene.
But State legislators still didn’t think these moves did enough to consolidate things. So, in 1932, something called the Zorn-MacPherson Initiative Petition was written as a proposal to move the University of Oregon to Corvallis.
The petition got big enough to end up on the ballot that November, too.
Can you imagine voting on something like that today? Combining the two schools just because they argued a lot?
Before the vote took place, President Hall resigned from the U of O—as the Board had decided—and so he was gone.
But when the Board went to hire that fancy new Chancellor—you know, the one that was meant to be neutral—they shocked the whole State by naming none other than Corvallis’ own William Jasper Kerr to the position.
We love a good plot twist.
It turns out that before all of this escalation began, a group of “powerful Corvallis businessmen” met up with a group of “powerful Eugene businessmen” (let’s just call them the Corvallis Deep State and the Eugene Deep State, respectively).
The Corvallis Deep State threatened that if the Eugene Deep State didn’t support Kerr for Chancellor, that they’d start The Petition to combine the schools. The Eugene Deep State thought they were bluffing, so they told those stinkin' aggies to kick rocks.
But then, lo’ and behold, The Petition was out, and it was on the ballot. So the Eugene Deep State scrambled to support Kerr after all.
No joke, all of this happened between secret meetings, public denials, and all of the best intrigue the 1930s could cook up. And it gets better.
Apparently, the Corvallis Deep State had obtained indiscreet letters from former UO President Hall, and had threatened to release them to the press. Hall was later confirmed to have had an affair with his secretary, and the Eugene Deep State had said they were afraid that the voters would move the University to Corvallis for sure if those letters were released to the public as an October surprise.
Crazy shit, right?
Over 86% of Oregonians voted “No” on the initiative after all, so it wasn’t really as close as all the drama might have indicated.
The Oregon Alumni Association—a group who could reasonably be assumed to be at least part of the Eugene Deep State—put a statement in the 1933 Oregana (UO Yearbook). They basically patted themselves on the back for their campaign efforts against the ballot initiative.
Translation: “You wouldn’t believe all the shit we had to deal with.”
The measure was denied by the will of the people, but OAC still had their guy, Kerr, in the top spot. His power helped the “Little-Ag-School-that-Could” survive, and even grow up to be a real enough university in their own right.
But Kerr never did get to wield any real power over the University of Oregon.
The position of Chancellor proved to be toothless against the UO, at least in decision-making, and the Webfoots shortly ousted Kerr, and just kept plugging along, growing, succeeding, and becoming a national brand—all despite the Beavs’ failed attempt to do a coup.
A lot of other things over the years have contributed to the animosity between the schools, but I’d like to think of this struggle as one of the Original Sins.
I guess we also owe a big thanks to the Eugene Deep State for “saving” the University. I’m not sure what I would’ve done with my life if they hadn’t.
Go Ducks.