If you’ve ever put on pants, you can thank 1890, the year the modern zipper was invented. It was also the year we got the paper clip, Dwight Eisenhower was born, and when the first issue of this paper was printed.
This campus newspaper has been around longer than Old Main, the first building in Tempe to have electricity — in fact, we were here before Arizona became a state.
For more than a century, students, professors and visitors have been reading about campus and state news from a paper that is not too different from the one you can pick up today. The State Press has undergone a few name changes (aliases include The Tempe Normal Student, The Tempe Collegian and The Collegian) and a redesign (or several), but at its core, it’s the same paper that was started 120 years ago.
So today, we’re giving you a small window into history as seen by this paper with a retrospective look at where we’ve been, and a forward glance to where we’re going.
In these 120 years, not that much has changed at what is now Arizona State University.
Back in the day, students were still concerned with rising tuition (don’t worry, the largest increase in history was this year) and the administration was working on constructing the buildings we now consider landmarks.
ASU President Michael Crow isn’t the only one to push increased enrollment. An issue from the 1920s touted a huge headline about the shattered enrollment record — the number of students in the record-breaking class just hit 156. That’s quite a far cry from Crow’s vision of having 90,000 students studying here.
Our rivalry with the Wildcats has rarely wavered, and there have always been stories about our football team generally falling just short. We even covered the Sun Imps, the name of the freshman teams between 1954 and1973.
Traditions like the Lantern Walk have stood the test of time, although we hardly ever have formal dances anymore.
But the newspaper has also reached beyond ASU.
The State Press has covered some of the most meaningful moments in American and world history. We were here when President John F. Kennedy was assassinated, when we landed on the moon and when planes hit the World Trade Center.
This semester we have covered one of the most controversial bills to hit the Arizona Legislature, including the arrests of nine student protesters.
The paper has seen the growth of the Valley from a small rural area into a wide-reaching metropolis and the growth of ASU from Tempe Normal School to the ever-growing University we attend today.
And we will continue to be here to cover the news that comes our way.
If you want to be a part of that team, go to http://statepress.com/work-for-the-state-press and fill out an application to join the staff of The State Press, State Press Magazine or State Press Television.
