MSU's 150th anniversary celebration officially began Tuesday, and it's rewarding to see how a fledgling land-grant university founded by a mix of government scientists, bored University of Michigan kids and cows created one of the Big Ten's most formidable research institutions.
You would not be here if it weren't for Wolverines who did not want to speak Greek, as history tells us that U-M students got fed up with classical education and being prohibited from joining secret societies. Proof that history is doomed to repeat itself, Ann Arbor secret societies were still comprised of nerds, even if it was the 1850s. In a strange twist of irony, I-96 and US-23 were paved, passable roads at that time, despite the fact that automobiles were yet to be invented. A swamp was drained in Ingham County and MSU was born.
Known then as the Agriculture College of the State of Michigan, MSU was the very first land-grant university in the nation. Should you know someone from Penn State University willing to dispel that fact, tell them they are a liar. Seven years after its creation, the federal government used our fair campus as a model for 72 other land-grant schools that were proposed to be built across the nation. Since it was 1862 at the time, favorite hobbies on campus were reading, farming and not catching typhus. It was a grand time to be an Aggie.
Five name changes later, we write today in celebration of MSU's sesquicentennial anniversary. We know our past and we embrace it much like our school's founders did scores of years ago. Every celebration of the past, though, creates a vision for the future that incites hope that we will look back upon our time with fond memories. We're lucky to say today that 150 years from now, MSU will be doing just that. If we don't go bankrupt.
People can joke and mock MSU all they want, but what we've accomplished in these 150 years cannot be denied. The academic programs have grown far beyond agriculture and you can now go to this university for just about anything. If we're Moo U., that's fine with us. Moo U. developed better ways to grow crops that feed the hungry. We've homogenized milk, developed cancer treatments and expanded the world's ideas of the universe.
Think of the personal histories MSU has touched in 150 years. Spouses have met here, maybe even shared a first kiss near Beaumont Tower. How many of them have started a family and sent their own children to MSU to have the cycle begin anew? As a social force and center of higher education, MSU has changed the face of Michigan by its very presence.
Warm memories of the past require us to look optimistically to the future. Academic standards are being raised with each freshman class admitted. We stand to hopefully accept a $1 billion grant to continue our leading research of the atomic world. Our dormitories are overflowing with enthusiasm, if not students. Kirk Gibson went here. So did Magnum P.I. and the guy from "Vega$."
It's true MSU may have started as an experiment. But 150 years later, we've ended up a success that no one can ignore.
