100 YEARS AGO
Athletics funds campus construction
President Ray Lyman Wilbur organized the Board of Athletic Control (BAC), a precursor of the athletics department. Game receipts financed construction of Stanford Stadium, the basketball pavilion, the golf course and clubhouse, Sunken Diamond, an Encina Gym expansion and, in part, Roble Gym, as well as Branner and Toyon halls. Men’s and women’s physical education remained separate until the creation of today’s Department of Athletics, Physical Education, and Recreation in 1975.
50 YEARS AGO
Student body president resists draft
Student body president David Harris, ’67, a veteran civil rights worker and an outspoken critic of the Vietnam War, told a rally of 400 that he would go to jail rather than accept military service. In February, he resigned his post, saying, “I have done all I am capable of doing for the realization of education at Stanford.” Harris went on to found The Resistance, a group of young men committed to fighting the draft. He later served a term in federal prison for draft evasion.
Stanford offers coed housing
Coeducational housing began on campus in January when 31 men and 12 women moved into Grove House, the former Phi Delta Theta fraternity (vacant because the fraternity had been suspended). Coed dormitories soon became a popular option in the student housing system at Stanford and nationally. Experts predicted that coed housing would transform the traditional dating-mating game, as men and women began to regard each other more like brothers and sisters.
History Corner is produced by the Stanford Historical Society.
