U-M Heritage
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January 24, 2022
Fraternity war
In the fall term of 1845, just four years after classes had begun at the University of Michigan, a junior named George Becker and several friends joined together to create U-M’s first fraternity, a chapter of Beta Theta Pi. As they all knew, they were breaking Rule 20 of the university’s code of student conduct.
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January 17, 2022
Just nuts
Through the years, the darting, chattering, pandering squirrels have been a happy diversion for students, staff and faculty. U-M squirrels have been romanticized, serenaded, protected and parodied. They have their own campus club, which is more than any dog or cat can claim. They are simply part of the U-M experience.
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January 10, 2022
The 1913 Lectern
For more than 100 years, Hill Auditorium has been U-M’s most prestigious venue for rhetoric and debate. Speaker after speaker has gripped, pounded, caressed and leaned upon an oak lectern given by the Class of 1913. The Albert Kahn-designed lectern cost $250, but as silent witness to the ideas and arguments that are the stuff of a university, the lectern has been priceless.
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December 6, 2021
The campus at war
In the days following the Dec. 7, 1941, attack on Pearl Harbor, U-M students — both male and female — had decisions to make regarding their response to the United States entering World War II. Their options were to serve in the armed forces or remain in school to continue their education before being called into service.
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November 22, 2021
The assassin’s widow
Marina Oswald was left a 22-year-old widow with two young children when her husband, Lee Harvey Oswald, was killed after being accused of assassinating President John F. Kennedy. Unable to speak much English but desiring to stay in the United States, Oswald was invited to study at U-M’s English Language Institute.
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November 15, 2021
The law school goes under
In the middle of the 20th century, the architectural crown of U-M’s campus was the Law Quadrangle, and the jewel in that crown was the Law Library. A new addition was needed to handle the books, and architect Gunnar Birkerts figured the only way to add space and not interfere with the building’s beauty was to go down.
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November 8, 2021
Dear Aunt Ruth
By the thousands and with clockwork precision, Ruth Buchanan wrote to U-M students, faculty, staff and alumni serving in World War II. Wherever they were stationed, servicemen and women with ties to U-M could expect news about Ann Arbor from “Aunt Ruth.”
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November 1, 2021
The Prisoner’s Dilemma
Robert Axelrod, today a professor emeritus in the Ford School of Public Policy and the Department of Political Science, encountered the Prisoner’s Dilemma as a young man in the 1960s. It is the most famous puzzle in the scientific field called game theory, the mathematical analysis of strategic interactions between rivals.
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October 25, 2021
Seeds of discontent
Already flourishing with students, professors and facilities, U-M was also determined to be the state’s agricultural school. It was a headiness that would fuel heated rhetoric and an animated rivalry that continues today between U-M and the school that prevailed as the agricultural school, Michigan State University.
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October 18, 2021
The first flu shot
With the United States on the brink of war in 1941 and visions of the devastation wrought by the influenza pandemic during the first world war, U-M virologist Tommy Francis was assigned a monumental task. He had to advise the Army on healthy housing and sanitation, treat flu outbreaks and develop, test, manufacture and administer a vaccine.
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