Given the fact that George Edmonston Jr., former editor of E-clips and the Oregon Stater, has retired and assumed the title of History and Traditions Editor of the Oregon Stater, he is closing out his involvement with E-clips by sharing a list of the 20 historical events he considers to be the most important in school history. He'll cover one event each week.

#5 Cauthorn's politics

Although Corvallis College became the recipient of the land grant in 1868, the matter was never a "done deal" until Thomas E. Cauthorn entered the mix in the mid-1880s.

From 1868 until 1885, criticism and questioning of the school’s motives poured from the state capital, as well as from Oregon’s most influential newspapers in Salem, Eugene and Portland. What’s really going on down in Corvallis at the agricultural college, they asked? Some even suggested students might be better served if the school were moved to a new location.

Two periods were particularly low.

First: A strong Benton County delegation in the state legislature, all members of the Democratic Party, had skillfully brought the land-grant charter to the college in 1868 and then had used their influence to keep it there. Even so, a crack appeared in the armor in 1875. Benton County representative Benjamin Simpson announced he was willing to relocate the college to Eugene in exchange for the support of the Lane County delegation of a proposed Corvallis-Yaquina railway bill, which he, Simpson, was backing.

The bill never came to a vote. What it did do was ruffle a lot of feathers in Lane County, which at that time was trying to convert the Skinner’s Butte Academy into a university. What’s interesting is that when the first faculty of the UO was announced in 1876, the name Benjamin Lee Arnold, then president of Corvallis College, was among six educators offered contracts to open the new school. Arnold declined.

Second: In 1882, ag students at Corvallis college were interviewed by a visiting committee from the Oregon State Grange. When asked, at least some of the students told committee members they did not expect to use the information they had gained (at the college) in practical farming. When it came time to report back to the governor, the committee was blunt: "There has yet been no successful attempt made on this coast to prepare the young for the occupation of agriculture, as the lawyer is instructed in law school, or the physician in medical school."

In 1885, Cauthorn, wanting to bring closure to the controversy, sponsored the legislation necessary to permanently keep the state agricultural college in Corvallis. Filed as Senate Bill No. 132, passage was approved on February 11, 1885. It reads "An act to confirm the location of the State Agricultural College at Corvallis in Benton County, Oregon, and to provide for the maintenance and government thereof."

The legislature, in its wisdom, attached one stipulation to the bill...that the citizens of Benton County erect a building on the college farm (today, lower campus) within 24 months of the passing of the act, costing no less than $20,000 (in private donations) and to be, at the time of its opening, free from all debt. So it was written and so it was done. Fund-raising took place from 1885-1888, construction began in 1888, and the building was ready by the fall of 1889. Today, this is Benton Hall, the first building erected on the present-day campus.

Soon after, President Arnold oversaw the construction of the college’s first dorm for men. It was named after the hero of the day, the local star of that generation... Cauthorn Hall. Known today as Fairbanks Hall, the giant Douglas Fir that sits to the left of the front entrance still carries the Cauthorn name.