A chemistry class in 1885
With its current focus on selective admissions, OSU can boast of a student body dedicated to scholarly pursuits; when Ohio State was first opened in 1873, the University relied on demerits to keep students academically focused. It was a pretty simple system:
The penalty for an unexcused absence from class or from drill was four demerits; an unexcused failure in recitation got you two demerits; and for each unexcused tardiness, one demerit was assigned. If a student received ten demerits in a single term, twenty-five demerits in the first two terms or thirty in the first year, the parents were notified. Expulsion was the price to pay for twenty demerits received in the first term, thirty-five in the first two terms, or forty during the year.
There’s no record of how many demerits were issued; the system was abolished fifteen years later, except for preparatory classes. OSU’s third president, William H. Scott, wrote at the time: “This action by no means exempts students from accountability; but instead of having a definite penalty measured out by law for each delinquency, they must answer for any abuse of their liberty to the teacher in whose class the delinquency occurs.”
Orton, 1875
That’s according to James Pollard’s 1959 history of OSU, where he also recounts how little misbehavior there was in general. According to Pollard, OSU President Edward Orton apparently was impressed by the dearth of mayhem on campus: “We have been happily free during our short history from the relics of barbarism that still survive in so many colleges in the shape of hazing and the reckless destruction of property.”
North Dorm students, 1889
Not counting the North Dorm, of course. Several OSU Alumni Monthly articles have recounted stories of OSU’s first residence hall, where male students lived, and its collegiate atmosphere: Stolen pigs appearing in dorm rooms, firecrackers set off in the house, coal scuttles tossed down the stairs at night. Apparently, it also was common in the dorm to shoot out of the window. Aiming seems to have been optional – in one incident, a horse was hit, so then-University President Edward Orton ordered all of the boys to produce their weapons in order to match bullet to the gun. It was, to his chagrin, and the detriment of justice, that every boy in residence produced a .32 caliber revolver.
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