The 128th meeting of DePauw University and Wabash College today. First played in 1890, this is one of the older (10th?) college football rivalries in the country. Our annual Telecast Party was back in action after a 2 year hiatus, and it was a great time! We had DePauw alums representing ‘47 (that’s right 1947!), ‘64, ‘69, and ‘77, and a Wabash alum class of ‘70. The Bell came back home to Greencastle. On to the Division III football tournament! Go Tigers! 🏈🐅👏🏼
DePauw University warns of data breach as ransomware attacks on colleges surge
DePauw University warned students this week that their personal information may have been accessed by hackers who attacked the school.
The school newspaper reported that on November 27, current and prospective students were sent letters notifying them of a data leak and providing them with one year of free identity protection services.
The liberal arts school — which is in Greencastle, Indiana…
Sorry but it’s honestly so pathetic how Octavia Butler got siloed into “black female science fiction author.” Not to say she wasn’t those things, but the discourse around her is so dominated by identity and genre… You can’t find a single interview about her where there isn’t a lengthy discussion of her as a black woman, or whether or not her books are science fiction or speculative fiction. I wasn’t sure how to approach this at first but now that I’ve seen her complain about it in multiple places, I’m more confident in my assessment.
In one interview, she said she was tired of black author panels because the same discussions were had over and over again. She also got annoyed with an interviewer trying to classify her works into a genre. The most telling interview is the one from DePauw University:
I went “yeah” as soon as I read this, lol. She was very resistant to the sterile world of analytic interpretation, unfruitful allegorical readings, etc.
This is still happening, with all her works. I would never say that she wasn’t trying to write about race, often she was, but she was intelligent and understood the social context of such issues. Race is barely relevant in Xenogenesis because the world is a totally different place… How insulting to Butler for people to assume that because she’s black, she’s always writing about slavery and race issues, like she didn’t have the capacity for anything else.
Butler was someone well aware of true exploitation and domination. Bloodchild and the Xenogenesis series depict coercion, less than a perfect state of freedom, but that doesn’t equate to slavery. Even though Lilith explicitly says that the Oankali haven’t enslaved her, people insist on reading the books as an allegory for slavery… Butler’s mind was so expansive, so imaginative, so full of ideas, but people insist on keeping her trapped in 20th century America, where she did not belong.
The Forgotten Muckraker Who Inspired UC To Start A Football Team
As the University of Cincinnati Bearcats suit up for their 135th season, it is almost assured that no one will recall the name of David Graham Phillips. He never played for any UC team and – although enrolled – never attended any UC classes, yet Phillips was profoundly influential as UC organized its first football squad.
Archibald Irwin “Arch” Carson Sr. (1864-1951) ought to know. Carson was there at the very beginning, team captain for UC’s first two football seasons. Since 1910, UC’s teams have competed on Carson Field, named in recognition of his role. Carson recalled the earliest days of Cincinnati’s pigskin enthusiasm on several occasions with slight variations, but he always credited novelist and crusading journalist David Graham Phillips for providing the initial impetus. Here is the version as reported in the 1927 Cincinnatian yearbook:
“Arch I. Carson was the captain of that first Cincinnati eleven. It was he who organized the team upon the suggestion of David Graham Phillips, the year before, and it was he who sent away to a big commercial house in the east for the first football, because there were none in the city of Cincinnati at that time.”
And here is the version as recorded by the Cincinnati Enquirer [17 December 1934] in a profile of Carson:
“The first team at the University was organized largely through the interest of David Graham Phillips, famous author, who aroused interest in football in Cincinnati two years prior to the organization of the team . . . Local sporting goods stores did not handle football equipment in those days. In 1885, Phillips had to send to New York to get a football.”
Even though Carson was the source for both of these reports, they differ in significant details. The 1927 Cincinnatian story has Carson sending to New York in 1884 for a football and a first game against some Mount Auburn amateurs in 1885. The 1934 Enquirer piece has Phillips sending for the football in 1885 and the first game against Mount Auburn in 1886. Both, however, agree that the initial idea for a UC football team originated with Phillips.
Few people today have ever heard of him, but David Graham Phillips was an A-list celebrity during his lifetime. Born and raised in Madison, Indiana, Phillips apparently enrolled simultaneously at Asbury (later DePauw) University in Greencastle, Indiana, and at the University of Cincinnati. Although he actually attended classes in Greencastle, the 1883 UC Bulletin lists Phillips among the freshman class in Cincinnati that year – along with Archibald Carson.
In 1885, when he was either buying a football for Carson or urging Carson to buy a football, Phillips dropped out of Asbury and transferred to Princeton University as a junior. Phillips returned to Cincinnati soon after graduating from Princeton, working first at the Cincinnati Times-Star where he was a general assignment reporter and later at the Cincinnati Commercial Gazette as a feature writer and gossip columnist.
While Phillips was earning his journalistic bona fides at the Cincinnati dailies, UC scheduled its first intercollegiate match against Miami University in Oxford on 8 December 1888. It is not clear whether Phillips attended that earliest game. The local papers gave it little mention.
Not long after that first UC-Miami game passed into the record books, Phillips departed Cincinnati for New York, where he wrote for the New York Sun and the New York World. In his spare time, he wrote his first novel, “The Great God Success.” The novel sold well enough that Phillips resigned from newspapers to embark on a career as a free-lance journalist. His hard-hitting 1906 investigation of political corruption, published as a series titled “The Treason of the Senate” by Cosmopolitan magazine, earned him a national reputation. President Theodore Roosevelt was not amused; it is believed that Teddy coined the term “muckraker” specifically to describe Phillips. On the other hand, that series of articles was instrumental in removing 17 Senators from office and in passing the Seventeenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution providing for the direct election of Senators, rather than their appointment by state legislatures.
Phillips published 18 novels, many delving into controversial topics at the time, including prostitution, pre-marital sex, predatory capitalism, political corruption and urban blight. The plot of his 1909 page-turner, “The Fashionable Adventures of Joshua Craig,” is representative of his interests and explorations. According to the South Bend, Indiana, Tribune [16 January 1909]:
“The title of the book gives at once a suggestion of the character of the story – a story of strong, virile personality set among the frothy superficialities of society life in Washington. Joshua Crag, a young western lawyer, is striving to make a name for himself in national politics. In spite of his utter disregard of conventionalities and his frank contempt of the narrowness of the aristocracy, he finds among them one true woman, Margaret Severence. He fights for the supremacy of his fundamental ideas, and slowly but surely the ‘lady’ in her gives way to the ‘woman,’ and she finally yields; and becomes the quiescent wife of a future governor.”
Buried in the details of that novel, a disgruntled violinist with the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra named Fitzhugh Coyle Goldsborough imagined clues that Phillips was plotting against him and his family. Goldsborough, scion of a prominent Maryland political family, stalked the famous author as he traveled around New York City and, on the afternoon of Sunday, 22 January 1911, shot him outside the Princeton Club at Grammercy Park. Phillips lingered for two days until he died. Goldsborough shot himself immediately after the attack and died at the scene. In the years after his death, at least six of Phillips’ novels were adapted for the movies, with one, “Old Wives For New,” directed by Cecil B. DeMille.
Today, David Graham Phillips is hardly remembered at all, his books gathering dust and the films they spawned unwatched and even lost. As the UC team charges out for another season on Arch Carson Field, it is fitting to spare a thought or two for the man who first got the ball rolling for the university, so to speak.
Dr. Percy Lavon Julian (April 11, 1899 – April 19, 1975) was a research chemist and a pioneer in the chemical synthesis of medicinal drugs from plants. A native of Montgomery and grandson of slaves. His parents Elizabeth Lena Adams, a school teacher, and James Sumner Julian, a railroad mail clerk who loved mathematics, raised six children, all of whom pursued a college education.
After attending public school in Montgomery, he enrolled at DePauw University. He was named a member of the Sigma Xi honorary society and Phi Beta Kappa. He was selected as the class valedictorian upon his graduation in 1920.
He taught chemistry at Fisk University while earning an MA from Harvard University. He taught chemistry at West Virginia State College, and he became the chair of the chemistry department at Howard University. He was awarded a fellowship from the Rockefeller Foundation that allowed him to finally pursue his doctorate. He went to study at the University of Vienna, where he earned his Ph.D.
He returned to the chemistry department at Howard University, he was a research fellow at DePauw University, where he published several peer-reviewed articles in the Journal of the American Chemical Society. He became the Director of Research of the Soya Products Division at Glidden, where he was the first African American scientist. He developed an inexpensive process to prepare cortisone, which is used in the treatment of arthritis. He developed a flame retardant used by the Navy in WWII.
He established the Julian Laboratories, which produced steroid-containing compounds. He hired many African American scientists who shared his interest in a career in the scientific field. He sold Julian Laboratories for two million dollars.
He had over 100 peer-reviewed publications and 115 research patents. In 1973, he was elected to the National Academy of Sciences. #africanhistory365 #africanexcellence #omegapsiphi #sigmapiphi
DePauw University Assistant Professorship in Latin American History
Deadline:
November 17
LEngth/Track:
Tenure track
Description:
“Regardless of specialization, the successful candidate will be expected to collaborate with Latin American and Caribbean Studies, including teaching an interdisciplinary introductory course for that program.” “The department seeks applications from candidates with a broad range of interests including, but not limited to, gender…
FBS:
Ball State Cardinals - Muncie, Indiana - They first played in 1924. They are in the MAC.
Indiana Hoosiers - Bloomington, Indiana - They first played in 1887. They are in the Big Ten.
Notre Dame Fighting Irish - South Bend, Indiana - They first played in 1887. They are an FBS Independent.
Purdue Boilermakers - West Lafayette, Indiana - They first played in 1887. They are in the Big Ten.
FCS:
Butler Bulldogs - Indianapolis, Indiana - Their program was established in 1887. They are in the Pioneer League.
Indiana State Sycamores - Terre Haute, Indiana - Their program was established in 1895. They are in the Missouri Valley.
Valparaiso Beacons - Valparaiso, Indiana - Their program was established in 1906. They are in the Pioneer League.
D2:
University Of Indianapolis Greyhounds - Indianapolis, Indiana - They are in the Great Lakes Valley Conference (GLVC).
D3:
Anderson Ravens - Anderson, Indiana - They first played in 1947. They are in the Heartland Collegiate Athletic Conference (HCAC).
DePauw Tigers - Greencastle, Indiana - They first played in 1884. They are in the North Coast Athletic Conference (NCAC).
Franklin Grizzlies - Franklin, Indiana - They are in the HCAC.
Hanover Panthers - Hanover, Indiana - They first played in 1898. They are in the HCAC.
Manchester Spartans - North Manchester, Indiana - They are in the HCAC.
Rose-Hulan Engineers - Terre Haute, Indiana - They first played in 1892. They are in the HCAC.
Trine Thunder - Angola, Indiana - They first played in 1995. They are in the Michigan Intercollegiate Athletic Association (MIAA).
Wabash Little Giants - Crawfordsville, Indiana. - They first played in 1884. They are in the NCAC.
NAIA:
Indiana Wesleyan University Wildcats - Marion, Indiana.
Marian University Knights - Indianapolis, Indiana.
University Of Saint Francis (Ind.) Cougars - Fort Wayne, Indiana.
Taylor University Trojans - Upland, Indiana.
Awards:
My Favorite Mascot - The Wabash Little Giants. The Trine Thunder and the Purdue Biolermakers are also cool.
"Trees!" Award - The Indiana State Sycamores.
The "Menagerie" Award - Indiana D2 schools. Tigers, and Grizzlies, and Panthers. Oh My.
The "Poe" Award - The Ravens of Anderson.