L OO K BAC K / / T R A D I T I O N S
A Century of Service By Kristen Munson
“Instructors are advised to limit their instruction to one of the other branches of our student population, either civilian or military, and are further advised to avoid all public gathering and otherwise render themselves, as far as possible, free from danger of carrying the infection.” — President Elmer G. Peterson, Oct. 11, 1918 issue of Student Life 56 UTAHSTATE I WINTER 2019
Left: In November, a new war memorial at USU was unveiled in front of the Military Science building. It features plaques of USU veterans who served in WWI and WWII and a statue of a WWI doughboy by sculptor Avard Fairbanks.
A century ago, the front page of Utah State Agricultural College’s campus publication identified potential threats on two fronts: one for soldiers fighting overseas during World War I, and another for people fighting for their lives in infirmaries back home. The October 11, 1918 edition of Student Life outlined the university’s efforts to prevent the spread of a particularly virulent strain of influenza to its student body. The next day, under advisement from the state’s health officer, the university, shuttered for three months. “What alarmed everyone was that most of the deaths were young mothers and fathers, the most robust segment of the population. There were fewer deaths than usual among the very young and very old,” historian Leonard J. Arrington wrote in 1990 in the Utah Historical Quarterly. More recently, historians suggest the virus, named the Spanish flu for its high death toll in Spain, may have originated on a hog farm in the Great Plains before going global. Others argue the disease began in Asia and mutated as it
