OU Mom’s Weekend has broken out of its shell over time
By Alexandra Hazlett
Athens NEWS Campus Reporter
May 1, 2008
As Athens and Ohio University prepare for the annual onslaught of mothers for Moms Weekend, we take a look back at the evolution of the celebration through the years.
While now known mostly for the barrage of drunken mothers stumbling down Court Street in heels a student would know not to risk on the bricks, Moms Weekend was formerly a more tame affair.
The weekend was established in 1926 by then Dean of Women Irma E. Voight and was sponsored by the Women’s League. That year, 500 mothers attended. By 1966, 4,500 were expected.
Like the historic Fathers Weekend, an honorary mother was chosen from student nominations, and the program of events featured her biography. Honorary Mothers were referred to completely by their husband’s names until the late 1960s. Unlike Fathers Weekend, the program did not include a list of bars; however, a Mothers Worship Service was conducted on Sunday.
Since classes were held on Saturdays, the planning board encouraged professors to invite mothers to their lectures on that day. The School of Home Economics had a classroom display for mothers well into the 1960s. The 1957 weekend program featured the “Home Ec Clothing lab,” along with the first open house of the campus radio station, WOUI (which is now WOUB).
Additionally, professors in 1958 and 1959 (among other years) were asked to volunteer to rent rooms to visiting mothers whose children did not have enough space in their dorm rooms to house them.
In his written address in 1959, former President John Calhoun Baker told mothers “you’re visiting us for a change, and there are no dishes to wash, no extra beds to make or laundry to do.”
Not surprisingly, protests marred Moms Weekend 1968 or ’69 (the flier was undated). Student groups urged mothers to take a look at the seedy underside of campus life they didn’t get to see on the tour. In a news release, they objected to small, crowded dorm rooms, especially as compared to other state schools, and “overcrowded classes” often taught by graduate students. And when the small graduate-student sections weren’t being foisted upon the student body, the release said, students dealt with “huge classrooms [which] lend an impersonality to the instruction that is almost impossible to overcome.”
Criticisms of a narrow education were also included, and the dissident student groups charged that “real social problems” were “conscientiously ignored.” They urged concerned student mothers to write to their congressmen to protest the Vietnam War and the state of their child’s education.
The full schedule of this year’s events, mostly devoid of political dissent, can be found on Ohio University’s Web site and in today’s Athens NEWS. Highlights include several sporting events and art exhibits, the eighth annual Moms Walk for a Cure on Saturday and the 15th annual Moms Weekend Cabaret at the OU Inn.
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