Housed in a far corner of the East Bank campus, and
eventually claiming Peik Hall, Pattee Hall, a gymnasium, and a basement
cafeteria as a near-exclusive domain, a unique group of students pursued their
educations at the University of Minnesota from 1908-1972.
Who
were these students? Why is their place in University of Minnesota history all
but forgotten? Should anyone care?
For
would-be scholars of such things, evidence about the educational and
developmental growth of these seemingly oddball students is scanty, limited to
5.5 cubic feet of boring reports and lifeless summaries, a few specialized
studies, brief mentions in scholarly tomes, and a haphazard collection of
newspapers and yearbooks. Oral histories, memoirs, autobiographical
reflections, and other historical sources concerning these so-called “Little
Gophers” are hard to . . . um . . . ferret out. As one might say, the story
remains untold. But here’s a start.
In
1908 -- the year marking the first airline passenger flight (no, they didn’t
serve free peanuts then, either), the election of William Howard Taft, and the
now dubious admission of Oklahoma to the Union -- the Minnesota Board of
Regents established University High School, designed to enroll students from
the 7th
through 12th grades. The College of Education, awarded oversight
for the new, on-campus learning enterprise, envisioned a testing laboratory for
secondary education, emphasizing the training of student teachers (an activity
generations of these particular school kids would pursue with zest and perverse
enthusiasm). By the 1950s, the laboratory school, known as “U-High”, enrolled
girls and boys from all over the Twin Cities, including emerging, far-flung
suburbs (Can you say, “Fridley”?)
From
its beginnings in 1908 until a merger with neighboring Marshall High School
(1968), U-High featured up-to-date facilities and equipment, small classes, and
a wide-ranging, progressive curriculum. Among the few drawbacks was the name
chosen for U-High’s athletic teams. Somehow, charging out on the basketball
court or storming the gridiron as the “Little Gophers” didn’t quite hack it.
Exposed buck teeth and high-pitched rodent squeaking from hostile fans had a
debilitating, rather than comic effect on U-High athletes, not to mention a
shriveling of school spirit and machismo.
Chronicling
over seven decades of U-High’s past is a difficult task given the scarcity of
primary sources, but history these days, much to the discomfort of professional
historians, is often delivered in short order style —by the decade. So, this
narrative will follow the popular path and make a quick dash through the 1950s,
a decade within which the U-High experiment reached maturity and perhaps its
finest years.
From
what the surviving records and participant recollections indicate, U-High
students roamed widely across the campus and its adjacent neighborhoods,
attending concerts at Northrup Hall, studying at Walter Library, acting in
theater productions, and cheering on the Golden Gophers (. . . a far more
animating nickname, don’t you agree?).
These students also endured an onerous burden psychological research testing. (Note: The scholars behind the Minnesota
Multiphasic Personality Inventory and the Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking
owe much to the #2 pencils wielded by teenage U-High test subjects. Indeed,
where was the reward for those kids who, year after year, had to puzzle about
items such as, True or False I am very seldom bothered by
constipation / I would like to be a florist / I have never been
in trouble because of my sexual behavior.
With regard to the latter question, most of the U-High test-takers of the
Puritanical 1950s would have chorused, “Bring on the trouble!” One young
woman’s remembrance of the Torrance Creativity Test focused on the intentional,
incomplete drawing of a dog. Her somewhat bewildered response? Draw an appropriate
set of genitalia for the pooch. To this day, that student wonders, “why”?) But, moving on . . .
students claiming a university professor for a parent might set off from Peik
Hall, at any time, heading for assorted departmental offices to hide, chat, or
bum a ride home. It also proved easy for any student to disappear from Peik
Hall given the inclination, a talent for imaginative, compelling excuses, and
the ability to blend into large clumps of college undergraduates walking past
the building.
As
time permitted, students stepped off-campus to Dinkytown, frequenting
Bridgeman’s, the Varsity Theater, Gray’s Drugs, Al’s Breakfast, McCosh’s
Bookstore, and the venerable Bridge Café. And yes, U-High music devotees of the
late fifties hung out nights at the Ten O’Clock Scholar and other Dinkytown
haunts listening to local folk-blues musicians the likes of Dave “Snaker” Ray,
“Spider” John Koerner, and the soon-to-be famous, but very embryonic, Bob
Dylan.
A
favorite pastime for some of the more adventurous U-High students involved
exploring underground tunnels between university buildings, hidden areas of
Northrup Auditorium and Memorial Stadium, and the Mississippi riverbanks-- more
often than not a promising site for the discarded liquor bottles and Grain Belt
beer cans of late-night, college merrymakers.
But,
notwithstanding long commutes to school, highly-demanding classes taught by
renowned university professors, the Shevlin Hall cafeteria cuisine, peevish
glances and grumbling from university undergraduates at the Cooke Hall swimming
pool, and those nasty “Little Gopher” put-downs, U-High students gained
considerably from their uncommon experiences. In an academic context, only a
few decided not to enter college study after graduation, and a daunting percentage
enrolled at Ivy League schools and other high-profile academic institutions.
Those who remained at the University of Minnesota, thus extending their
on-campus adventures to Odyssean length, rarely wandered into academic
“troubles” (Of course, the wording and metaphorical intent of this this
sentence, while suspect as good writing, is but a “classic” example of how a
U-High student might lure a teaching trainee onto the rocks of despair. What?
You didn’t take a Mythology course?).
Perhaps
what made U-High unique for its students owed to a combination of geography and
population. Its location on the University of Minnesota campus placed students
in the middle of a thriving and exciting academic setting. U-High students
could access learning opportunities well beyond those contained in their own
building. Libraries and special collections, faculty experts, art, theater,
concerts, intercollegiate athletic contests, and even bowling lanes in the
Coffman Union were part and parcel of the experience. The population of U-High
had a special flavor beyond the many, various neighborhoods the students called
home before setting off for school. Each day, classes filled up with the sons
and daughters of parents representing an imperfect, but reasonable mixture of
economic, educational, religious, professional, and societal backgrounds for
the times. Was U-High a truly diverse environment as might befit modern day
hopes and definitions? No. Was U-High free of class lines, racial bias,
regrettable behavior, and bad experiences? No. Indeed, the 1968 merger with
Marshall High School proceeded from the College of Education’s desire to create
“a more balanced laboratory school” in terms of race, class, abilities, and
disabilities. Even so, U-High students may have encountered more opportunities
than their contemporaries to meet, know, respect, and befriend others different
than themselves. An assessment of U-High graduates before and after the 1950s
might have revealed more experiences and respect for diversity than later
judged or imagined by the College of Education. But no such assessment was
undertaken.
In
1982, the Minneapolis School Board closed Marshall-University High School
ending a seventy-four year span of experimental education. Beyond the on-campus
buildings known so well to U-High students, not much of that experiment remains
on hand except in the memories of a dwindling number of U-High grads (surviving
alumni now might reword that sentence substituting “dwindling memories”). On a
positive note, a lengthy “Poem for Commencement” discovered in the 1960 U-High
yearbook illustrates the uncommon talents and interests of those bygone
students. Here’s a snippet:
. . . you are scurrying mice
Whose small feet rattle in a dusty attic.
The walls are dry and dirty, sour air
Chokes you, catching in your furry throats.
Hear how your paws scratch on the empty floor;
Hear how you squeak and whimper, as you search
In desperation for a flashing trap
Whose swift metallic snap will end your life
Is this the end
to all our going forth?
In
the best tradition of U-High students, this graduating class subjected their
poet laureate’s meaning to intense literary analysis, probing well below the
surface for hidden meaning, as they had been taught to do. Yet, after extended,
scholarly discussion, the following question remains unresolved to this day:
Was the poet’s original intent to use “scurrying mice” or, perhaps, . . . some
other species of rodent with prominent buck teeth?
All
in all, perhaps the Minneapolis School Board was on the right track.
_______________________________
Thomas B. Jones, CLA ’64, and U-High ’60, is a retired
professor and author of Bad Lies: A Novel.
