The story
On December 25, 1890, the Oklahoma Territorial Legislature finally gained approval for Oklahoma Territorial Agricultural and Mechanical (A&M) College, the land-grant institution established under the Morrill Act of 1862. The legislature specified that the college was to be within Payne County. Such an ambiguous description created a rivalry among towns in the county, with Stillwater ultimately gaining the campus. Upon statehood in 1907, "Territorial" was dropped from its title.
The first students assembled for class on December 14, 1891. For two and a half years, classes were held in local churches, until the first academic building, later known as Old Central, was constructed and dedicated on June 15, 1894, on the southeast corner of campus. It was surrounded by a flat plowed prairie.
In 1896, Oklahoma A&M held its first commencement with six male graduates. The first Library was established in Old Central in one room shared with the English Department. The first campus building to have electricity, Williams Hall, was constructed in 1900. Because of its turreted architecture, it was referred to as the "Castle of the Prairies"; It survived until 1969.
One of the earliest campus buildings was also a barn, used as part of an agricultural experiment station, which was served by a large reservoir pond created in 1895. The barn burned down in 1922, but the pond, enlarged and remodeled in 1928 and 1943, is now known as Theta Pond, a popular campus scenic landmark. In 1906, Morrill Hall was completed and became the principal building on campus. A fire gutted the building in 1914, but the outside structure survived intact, and the interior was reconstructed.
On-campus housing at Oklahoma A&M College began in 1910, with the opening of the Boys' Dormitory. Later renamed Crutchfield Hall, the Historic American Buildings Survey said it was significant as "... the first permanent boy's dormitory in Oklahoma... [and] the sole surviving example of a pre-1930 utilitarian dormitory that is characteristic of modified Italian Renaissance Revival architecture". Crutchfield Hall later served the School of Music and the College of Engineering, Architecture, and Technology before it was ranked as outdated and demolished in 1995.
Also opened in 1910 was the Women's Building, a dorm for female students that also contained a dining hall, home economics classes, and a women's gymnasium. It was later named Garner Hall. Today it is known as the Bartlett Center for the Studio Arts and houses the Gardiner Art Gallery.
By 1919 the campus included Morrill Hall, the Central Building, the Engineering Building (now Gundersen Hall), the Women's Building, the Auditorium (replaced later by the Seretean Center for Performing Arts), the Armory-Gymnasium (now the Architecture Building) and the Power Plant.
At the beginning of World War II, Oklahoma A&M was one of six schools selected by the United States Navy to give the Primary School in the Electronics Training Program (ETP), also known as Naval Training School Elementary Electricity and Radio Materiel (NTS EE&RM). Starting in March 1942, each month a new group of 100 Navy students arrived for three months of 14-hour days in concentrated electrical engineering study. Cordell Hall, the newest dormitory, was used for housing and meals; lectures and lab sessions were held in the Engineering Building. Professor Emory B. Phillips was the Director of Instruction. ETP admission required passing the Eddy Test, one of the most selective qualifying exams given during the war years. At a given time, some 500 Navy students were on the campus, a significant fraction of the war-years enrollment. The training activity continued until June 1945 and served a total of about 7,000 students; among these was Robert B. Kamm, a future professor and president of Oklahoma State University.
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Much of the growth of Oklahoma A&M and the architectural integrity of the campus can be attributed to Henry G. Bennett, who served as the school's president from 1928 to 1950. Early in his tenure, Dr. Bennett developed a strategic vision for the university campus's physical expansion. The plan was adopted in 1937, and his vision was followed for more than fifty years, including the predominant Georgian architecture style that permeates the campus. He intended the focal point to be a centrally located library building: this was the Edmon Low Library, which opened in 1953. Another major addition to the campus during the Bennett years was the Student Union, which opened in 1950. Subsequent additions and renovations have made the building one of the largest student union buildings in the world at 611,000 sq ft (56,800 m2).
Oklahoma A&M's global engagement at an institutional level began in the 1950s when President Bennett was appointed in 1950 to be the first director of US President Harry Truman's "Point Four Program", a technical assistance program for developing countries. As part of the Point Four program, Oklahoma A&M College entered into an agreement in 1952 with the government of Ethiopia to establish a technical high school, an agricultural university, and an agricultural extension service there. Faculty and staff from the Stillwater campus traveled to Ethiopia and established Jimma Agricultural Technical School (now Jimma University), the Imperial Ethiopian University of Agriculture and Mechanical Arts (now Haramaya University), and an agricultural and research station at Debra Zeit. In recognition of the contributions of the OSU staff, Ethiopian Emperor Haile Selassie visited the Stillwater campus in 1954, the first foreign head of state to visit Oklahoma and the only one to visit Stillwater.
On May 15, 1957, Oklahoma A&M changed its name to Oklahoma State University of Agricultural and Applied Sciences to reflect the broadening scope of its curriculum. Oklahoma Gov. Raymond Gary signed the bill authorizing the name change passed by the 26th Oklahoma Legislature on May 15, 1957. However, the bill only authorized the Board of Regents to change the college's name, a measure they voted on at their meeting on June 6. However, the name was quickly shortened to Oklahoma State University for most purposes and the "Agricultural & Applied Sciences" name was formally dropped in 1980. Subsequently, the Oklahoma State University System was created, with the Stillwater campus as the flagship institution and several outlying branches: OSU-Institute of Technology in Okmulgee (1946), OSU-Oklahoma City (1961), OSU-Tulsa (1984), and the Center for Health Sciences also in Tulsa (1988).
In 2005, OSU announced its "Campus Master Plan", a campaign to enhance academic, athletic, and administrative facilities. Over $800 million is earmarked for campus construction and renovation over twenty years. The plan called for an "athletic village", where all of the university's athletic facilities will be located on the main campus. To accomplish this goal, the athletic department bought most of the property north of Boone Pickens Stadium up to McElroy between Knoblock and Washington streets. The city of Stillwater and property owners criticized this land gram. While the vast majority of the real estate was rental property appealing to college students, a few owners were longtime residents. A lone holdout in this parcel of land sued OSU over their right to use eminent domain to condemn and acquire their land.
In 2006, OSU received a gift of $165 million from an alumnus T. Boone Pickens to the university's athletic department. Two years later, Pickens donated $100 million for endowed academic chairs. It was the largest gift for academics ever given in the state. Ethical concerns have been raised by the media questioning the propriety of some of the Pickens' gifts, which were in media reports about the propriety of how some of the Pickens gifts have been made, were immediately returned to Pickens, and then placed in hedge funds owned by Pickens' companies. In February 2010, Pickens announced that he was pledging another $100 million to fund a scholarship endowment as part of a $1 billion fund-raising campaign titled "Branding Success". The pledge brought the total pledged or contributed to OSU by Pickens to over $500 million.
On October 24, 2015, during the annual homecoming parade, Adacia Chambers drove her vehicle into a crowd of people, killing 4 people and injuring 47. She faced 2nd-degree murder charges. Ten years later, on October 19, 2025, a shooting occurred at the Carreker East residence hall; three people were injured.
From Wikipedia’s article on Oklahoma State University, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.5