Haverty is an interesting building…old, sometimes stiflingly hot, filled with musty smells and covered with history hiding in plain sight along its walls.
A while back while waiting around on the second floor, I noticed a few newspaper clippings framed on a wall.
The publication: The Rambler.
My curiosity: piqued.
What was this Rambler? Did it have any connection to the Circuit?
Anna Schultz, archivist at Benedictine College, reported that the Rambler was the publication of St. Benedict’s College from 1920 until 1968, roughly when St. Benedict’s College and Mount St. Scholastica merged to form Benedictine College.
With the merger, a new publication – the Circuit – was created, uniting the voices of the Mount Mirror from the women’s college and the Rambler from the men’s college.
The 1969 yearbook highlights the transition to the Circuit.
“It was rather unsettling to most students when in January they were confronted with a school paper that ran a picture of a convent on page one and a picture of Chic Downing hitting two against Emporia on page four,” the announcement reads.
The writer goes on to highlight how this was not a “premature April Fool’s joke.” Rather, the January 1969 school newspaper was the first in now 57 years of the new school newspaper, the Circuit.
“The Rambler, after 48 years of publication printed its last issue in December 1968, and merged with the Mount Mirror,” the announcement reads.
The writer highlighted the goal of the newspaper saying, “The merger was born of the hope that with a little luck the combined staffs could produce a bigger, better paper than either college had been able to do on its own. It was like most of the new ideas on the two campuses in that it put an emphasis on the expanding cooperation program. It was unlike most of these ideas that the investigators began the project by taking a vacation.”
The editors took the first semester slowly, the writer notes. “The editors of the new paper decided to use their first combined semester to work out organizational difficulties.”
The Circuit started out slow with a four page edition produced twice a month as had been the norm for the Rambler and the Mount Mirror.
“The aim of the Circuit staff is to produce either a more frequent paper or a bigger paper next year, so if you dislike the Circuit now, stick around – you’ll have a lot more of it to dislike next year.” The announcement was signed L.U., the initials of Larry Uri, co-editor of the Circuit at the time.
Now 57 years later, the Circuit continues to operate as the official newspaper of Benedictine College, giving a voice to the student body. While every generation of students face challenges within the newspaper, especially as technology and reading habits adapt, the Circuit has remained a consistent voice of the college for years.
And I think I can confidently say that this year’s newspaper staff rivals the collaborative efforts of the early Circuit years, the ones that built the award winning paper in the first place. It has been a great privilege working alongside the many talented people that flood the basement of Cray Seaberg hall twice a week…stick around for next year, and, as Uri said, “you’ll have a lot more to dislike next year”!
