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Somewhere, in the blur that was December, you may have heard the news that Willamette University in Salem and Pacific University in Forest Grove are merging to form the largest private university in Oregon.
It will be known as the University of the Northwest.
What you might not know is that nearly a century ago, a similar idea was advanced to combine the University of Oregon and Oregon State into a single school.
Its designated location? Corvallis.
Yep. In 1932, amid a deepening Depression, it erupted as the state’s hottest issue. It, in effect, launched the political career of the youngest law school dean in the country, UO’s Wayne Morse, 33. It galvanized the journalistic career of the Eugene Register-Guard’s fiery new editor, William Tugman. And ultimately it was decided by what all good democracies trust in the end: the people.
The issue broke publicly on May 6, 1932, with a 5-inch United Press story in the Eugene Register-Guard:
MOVING OF U.O. TO
CORVALLIS PROPOSED
“That brief item … generated a wind that tore Oregon higher education apart,” wrote Warren Price in “The Eugene Register-Guard: Volume 1.” “The ensuing quarrel engendered hard feelings that remained open wounds for at least 15 to 20 years. Eugene and Corvallis took years before they could again have a way of educational life together.”
Hatched by a Corvallis contingent, the restructuring idea emerged in the throes of the Depression as a chance to increase administrative efficiency and cut educational expenses. But between egos, allegiances and tempers, the effort became the equivalent of a five-month Civil War football game.
In short, William Jasper Kerr — who was, not incidentally, the president at Oregon State — had masterminded a plan to consolidate the two schools on the Oregon State campus. (At the time, the Corvallis school was known as Oregon Agricultural College, but to avoid confusion I’m referring to it in this column as Oregon State.)
At stake was nothing less than the UO’s existence.
“It was certainly one of the most crucial periods in the history of the University of Oregon,” said UO archivist emeritus Keith Richard.
Officials in Salem had slashed higher-ed budgets, Oregon’s more than Oregon State’s.
“Oregon State had been under the strong hand of Kerr, who had spent nearly 25 years amassing influence in Salem,” wrote Mason Drukman in his book “Wayne Morse: A Political Biography.” “Only in recent times had Eugene sought to catch up with Corvallis.”
A Corvallis-based delegation went to Eugene to present the ultimatum for consolidation.
“We told them to go to hell,” said Tugman, the Eugene Register-Guard editor, according to A. Robert Smith’s book on Morse, “A Tiger in the Senate.”
And thus did the single-school backers fan out across the state to gather the necessary signatures to put what was called the Zorn-Macpherson bill on the ballot as an initiative.
Henry Zorn was a farmer near Champoeg in Marion County and president of the Marion County Taxpayers Equalization League, one of the sponsors of the initiative. Hector Macpherson was a faculty member in economics and sociology at Oregon State from 1911 until 1926, when he resigned his faculty position to offer his services to the movement for reorganization of higher education in Oregon. He was elected to the state Legislature in 1927 and 1929.
The initiative would have:
- consolidated the UO and Oregon State at the Corvallis campus to form the Oregon State University;
- moved the “normal” schools from Monmouth, Ashland and La Grande to the campus in Eugene;
- moved the law school from Eugene to Salem;
- closed the normal school at Monmouth;
- created junior colleges at Ashland and La Grande.
At the time, the Zorn-Macpherson initiative petition campaign was the largest and most expensive in Oregon educational history.
Days before the July 7 deadline to get the necessary 17,888 signatures to place the initiative on the ballot, huge boxes of petitions “mysteriously disappeared,” according to Price’s book. An investigation revealed the theft was a hoax perpetrated by a watchman hired to guard the signatures.
Each side accused the other of dishonesty, the proconsolidation proponents suggesting the “antis” had stolen boxes of signatures, the “antis” claiming the “pros” had hatched the hoax because of their inability to get enough names.
To dramatize their cause, backers of the initiative ultimately had the petitions delivered to the state Capitol in Salem in an armored car.
The Oregon Supreme Court deemed the initiative had the necessary number of signatures, and it was placed on the November 1932 ballot that included Franklin Roosevelt vs. Herbert Hoover for president.
Eight weeks prior to the vote, UO President Arnold Hall and Oregon State’s Kerr resigned. But then came what many UO folks considered a revelation of a hidden agenda on Kerr’s part.
“As part of a prearranged deal, Kerr was then appointed chancellor of higher education,” Drukman wrote, “a newly created office that would have authority over both campuses.”
The drama ramped up. And much of it involved UO’s Morse, who, at age 33, was the youngest law school dean in the country.
Kerr, 70, chose Eugene to establish his new chancellor’s office — and perhaps win back some political favor.
Bad idea. Really bad.
“The faculty was openly hostile to the new chancellor, resisting and delaying Dr. Kerr’s every suggestion for change,” wrote Drukman. “Kerr, meanwhile, arbitrarily involved himself in administering the Eugene campus — much to the annoyance of senior faculty, who, unlike their counterparts in Corvallis, were used to a fair amount of self-governance.”
At stake, in the eyes of UO’s faculty, was academic freedom.
Tensions increased. Almost daily, Tugman editorialized in the Eugene Register-Guard about the evils of the initiative. Five thousand Lane County citizens rallied in the Eugene Armory.
But in November, the people of Oregon spoke: By a 6-to-1 margin, the plan was rejected.
Not that the tension abated much.
In 1933, Roscoe Nelson, the newly appointed Board of Education chairman, emerged as an ardent supporter of Kerr, the chancellor.
In a speech that fall, he read from an anonymous letter appearing in the Oregon Daily Emerald to hint that Eugene was anti-Semitic. And, later speaking in Eugene, he blamed a small UO contingent on “sabotaging the chancellor’s efforts” for unifying the education system.
He implored those in the audience to “cease to fill the role of a giant Achilles, sulking in his tent above which flies a flag on which are emblazoned ‘negotiation’ and ‘defeatism.’ Peevishness and churlishness are not consonant with sportsmanship and magnanimity.”
Morse was on hand with a few others from UO when Nelson offered a similar speech in Corvallis to a cheering, pro-Kerr/Nelson audience. Nelson lauded Oregon State’s student paper, The Barometer, and called UO’s Oregon Daily Emerald “carping, critical and censorious.” He said the chancellor was “leaning over backward to be fair” and “had left his friends and home of 25 years to give his service to the state at Eugene.”
Morse left the speech, fuming.
“(He) got so angry he could scarcely contain himself,” wrote Smith, the author of “A Tiger in the Senate.”
On his way home, he told a colleague, “I’m not going to take this!”
And he didn’t. Never mind that the UO Faculty Advisory Council warned him to keep things civil. At a UO homecoming luncheon in November 1933, attended by 1,700 students and parents — and by Kerr and Nelson — Morse unleashed a blistering attack on both men. (He called Nelson’s remarks “insulting, insinuating, unfair and vicious,” saying the board president had been “duped” by a chancellor selected in a “plot so rotten that it stinks to high heaven.”
The event turned into pandemonium. Dishes slid off tables. Some UO faculty were moved to tears. Kerr left the room in a rush.
The speech made headlines around the state. A day later, Nelson resigned.
Kerr convinced the higher-ed board to charge Morse with insubordination. But after the American Association of University Professors sent a team to interview more than 100 people — state officials and people on both campuses — it ultimately called the elevation of Kerr to chancellor a “stupendous blunder.”
On Jan. 14, 1934, the board voted to reestablish presidencies at Oregon and Oregon State. And bagged its investigation of Morse.
Kerr resigned as chancellor on April 17, 1935, then retired.
Morse went on to spend 24 years as a U.S. senator from Oregon, his fiery speeches echoing the day he fell on his sword at the homecoming luncheon.
Euphemistically speaking, the failed school merger highlighted the strong identities and differences of Oregon and Oregon State but, realistically, represented the most spirited battle between the two schools that didn’t involve a ball and officials.
I suspect the Willamette/Pacific merger will go more smoothly.
Warren Price, the author of “The Eugene Register-Guard: Volume 1,” was misidentified in an earlier version of this story.
