Grace's Freshman Year at OAC

Following graduation of High School in Newberg, Oregon, my grandmother Grace Colby enrolled at Oregon Agricultural College in Corvallis.




 The images to the left are of Grace on the campus of Oregon
Agricultural College.

















The General Catalog for the school year 1921-1922 in on-line from the OSU Library and includes several interesting facts.

GENERAL FEES
Registration fee payable annually on registration................ $10.00
Incidental Student fee payable each term...........................5.50
Deposit for military uniform (men) subject to refund on return..10.00
Gymnasium fee, a term........ Women, $1.50 ............Men.....2.00
Diploma fee on graduation............................................5.00
Binding fee for graduation thesis.....................................1.00
Vocational certificate fee .............................................1.00

ROOM AND BOARD
Room deposit .......................................................3.00
Room rent for each term
     Single room .....................................................30.00
     Double room ....................................................15.00
Board per week, payable monthly in advance....................5.00
Incidentals, such as laundry, electric iron fees each term......2.00

COST OF A YEAR IN COLLEGE
"In general, it may be said that the necessary cost per annum, exclusive of the three personal items of clothing, carfare, and amusements, averages about $400.  In today's dollars that would be about $5,100. Still a good value.

On page 492 of the catalog, we find:
Colby, Grace Ada.............H. Ec. ...........Fr. ........Newberg

The image above is the cover of Grace's "Rook Bible" as instruction book for freshman that outlined the rules, traditions, cheers and songs of OAC.  A stern warning for freshmen appeared on the title page "HAVE THIS BOOK WITH YOU AT ALL TIMES" and 'YOU ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR ITS RULES AND INFORMATION." You can see her name written in pencil at the top.

The book contains some quaint cheers and songs. Both of my parents attended OAC then Oregon State College but they can't tell me if the cheers survived.

TOAST TO THE TEAM

Here's to the men we know and love,

Beavers tried and true;

Here's to the men of the Orange line

Wiping the ground with you;

Up with the glass and pledge them,

lads,

Flashing its amber gleam,

While deep in our hearts the toast

shall be:

Here's to Old O. A. C.

Unfortunately, no music was included in the text so the tune may be lost to the ages.

Grace carefully recorded her schedule for the 1st Quarter (Sept. 19 - Dec. 1921) on the inside of cover of her Rook Bible. Her classes included; Clothing and Textiles, Art, English Composition 101, Chemistry 101, Social Ethics, Intro to Home Economics, Swimming, and Gymnasium. She did not note the name of her professors which might be interesting as a young Linus Pauling was teaching freshman chemistry at O.A.C. that Quarter.

Though all of Grace's report cards from Elementary and High School survive, we don't know how she did at OAC. We know she did well enough to return the next year and we know how she ended the spring term... by attending the Junior Prom. Unlike today, with expensive venues and limousines, their Prom was held in the Men's Gymnasium with music by Mr. and Mrs. Glenn Oswald's "Seven Serenaders."

I don't know what the Greek letters are for. Did she sit out those dances? She belonged to a sorority, so perhaps those were shorthand for a member of a fraternity?

Grace went home for the summer to a house now run by her father's new wife, the former Ada McNay. Having run the household after her mother died in 1917, it was difficult for Grace to adapt to her step-mother's particular or perhaps peculiar way of doing things. The situation was more difficult by the fact that Ada had been her mother's best friend and she had been named for her, though she had dropped the Ada from her name early on. By the time she returned to school in the fall of 1922, I think Grace had already decided she would not spend the next summer in Newberg. She arranged to go to her sister Madge Colby Branchflower's in Pendleton where she met my Grandfather Cecil Oscar Werst and never returned to O.A.C.

Grace was always proud of her colleges days and was active in the alumni association and proud to send her daughter Betty off to follow in her footsteps in Corvallis.