The People's School

The Peoples School is a comprehensive history of Oregon State University, placing the institutions story in the context of state, regional, national, and international history. Rather than organizing the narrative around institutional presidencies, Robbins examines the broader context of events, such as wars and economic depressions, that affected life on the Corvallis campus. Agrarian revolts in the last quarter of the nineteenth century affected every Western state, including Oregon. The Spanish-American War, the First World War, the Great Depression of the 1930s, and the Second World War disrupted institutional life, influenced enrollment, curricular strategies, and the number of faculty and staff. Peacetime events, such as Oregons tax policies, also circumscribed course offerings, hiring and firing, and the allocation of funds to departments, schools, and colleges. This contextual approach is not to suggest that university presidents are unimportant. Benjamin Arnold (1872-1892), appointed president of Corvallis College by the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, served well beyond the date (1885) when the State of Oregon assumed control of the agricultural college. Robbins uses central administration records and grass-roots sourceslocal and state newspapers, student publications (The Barometer, The Beaver), and multiple and wide-ranging materials published in the universitys digitized ScholarsArchive@OSU, a source for the scholarly work of faculty, students, and materials related to the institutions mission and research activities. Other voicesextracurricular developments, local and state politics, campus reactions to national crisesprovide intriguing and striking addendums to the universitys history.