Spring Break 2020: A New Watershed?

A drawing of the main pedestrian entrance to Dunn's Woods campus, built in 1987 through a gift by Edson Sample in honor of his parents.

Sample Gates

A watershed is a marvelous thing to consider: This process of rain falling, streams flowing, and oceans evaporating causes every molecule of water to make the complete trip once every two million years. The surface is carved into watersheds—kind of familial branching, a chart of relationship, and a definition of place. The watershed is the first and last nation, whose boundaries, though subtly shifting, are unarguable. Races of birds, subspecies of trees, and types of hats or rain gear go by the watershed. The watershed gives us a home, and a place to go upstream, downstream, or across in…. Watershed consciousness…is not just environmentalism…but a move toward a profound citizenship in both the natural and the social worlds. If the ground can be our common ground, we can begin to talk to each other (human and non-human) once again.
—Gary Snyder, Coming in to the Watershed

Indiana University entered new institutional terrain in March 2020 around spring break with the arrival of a global pandemic. Tentative plans to extend spring break another week were soon revised as the magnitude of the public health crisis became apparent. As the Indiana government issued directives for all state residents to shelter in place, IU campuses around the state were closed and classes moved to online learning delivered via the internet. Commencement ceremonies were canceled, and the year-long commemoration of the IU bicentennial ceased three months from its scheduled conclusion on June 30. At this writing, four years later, the university has weathered this public health crisis. A vaccination for COVID-19 was developed in record time, in-person classes resumed, and social life returned, albeit to a new normal.

What this means for American higher education more generally is still too early to tell, but some think it represents a transition to a new watershed in our history. Literally, a watershed is a land area where precipitation eventually flows into a body of water, usually a river, lake, or ocean. So, the boundaries of a watershed are high points on the land, like hilltops, ridges, or mountain crests. The Continental Divide provided by the Rocky Mountains is an example of a large-scale watershed boundary. Rainfall on the eastern side of the country flows into the Atlantic Ocean; on the western side, the Pacific Ocean. On a much smaller scale, the IU campus is bisected by a ridge, running near Tenth Street, separating the land into two larger watersheds. On the north side of campus, Griffy Creek and Cascades Creek drain into the West Fork of the White River. On the south side, Clear Creek and Jackson Creek drain into the East Fork of the White River. Both are the main tributaries of the Wabash River. More than a third of the campus is served by the Jordan River (renamed Campus River), which becomes part of Clear Creek once it leaves campus.

Metaphorically, watersheds have rich connotations. Used to denote a significant point of division or transition between two phases or conditions, it can be applied to historical cases and used as a basis for historical periodization. Dramatic change characterizes the movement into a new watershed, as before and after acquire a new relevance.

I suggest that Indiana University has operated in four historic watersheds in the last two hundred years and is on the verge of a fifth. The establishment of the institution in 1820 can be seen as the watershed instauration, with a landscape of unique opportunities, resources, and challenges. Located on Seminary Square, part of the original congressional land grant that endowed the school, classes started in 1825, and the college produced its first four graduates in 1830. The movement from seminary to college to university, the curriculum based on classical languages, and the financial and political challenges for the survival of a tiny institution were all part of the institutional landscape of the early days. That first watershed ended abruptly after a third of a century when the College Building burned down in 1854.

That almost killed the university. But the town of Bloomington and the small body of alumni rallied to provide financial and moral support, and the institution rebuilt. Amid rebuilding, the institution’s sole fiscal allocation—the small University Fund endowment—was threatened by legal maneuvering in 1855, but Governor Joseph A. Wright pressed the legislature to restore the endowment, narrowly avoiding disaster for the university. Wright happened to be among the students who attended when the seminary first opened, although he never graduated.

Stronger due to overcoming critical challenges to its very existence, IU went on for the next three decades, growing slowly in a time when higher education had little relevance to the civic life of the state’s residents. The institutional landscape of this period saw the Civil War, admission of women and African Americans as students, and the protracted campaign to receive designation as a federal land-grant university under the 1862 Morrill Act, which was unsuccessful. Instead, IU gained a sibling state university—Purdue University in West Lafayette—as well as a permanent rival.

This second watershed was upended by another campus fire, in 1883. The newer of the two main buildings—Science Hall—was destroyed. Unlike in 1854, it did not threaten the university’s continued existence, although it was a hard blow. By that time, the university had acquired enough institutional momentum to carry it through. It prompted the board of trustees to make a fateful decision to move the campus across town, to a patch of farm woodlot known as Dunn’s Woods. In 1885, the campus acquired a new leader, President David Starr Jordan, a research scientist with a national reputation. Focused on investigation as the basis for teaching as well as research, his administration modernized the curriculum, instituted the elective system, and reorganized the faculty into departments. The university’s aspirations were elevated as it became involved in national dialogues about higher education, research, and the role of universities in America.

For over a half century, IU operated in this environment. It grew steadily, through the turn of the twentieth century, the First World War, and the Great Depression of the 1930s, much of it under the leadership of William Lowe Bryan, another research scientist and the protégé of Jordan. It was not until the advent of the Second World War and its aftermath that IU entered another watershed.

Starting in 1945, the postwar landscape for American higher education was changed significantly as the federal government subsidized college education for military veterans through the GI Bill and invested heavily in research and development as an important basis for national security. This golden age of rising enrollments and ample funding lasted until the early 1970s when the political and social environment changed. In the next two decades, American higher education reached the status of a mature industry, as one observer noted, as competition for students, funding, and reputation became even more pronounced.1

In the early years of the twenty-first century, the major features of the post–World War II watershed were still in place, although buffeted by ceaseless political winds as American society and culture underwent change. While still serving the education and knowledge needs of the state of Indiana, this long-lasting institutional watershed was becoming increasingly globalized, and student tuition and private philanthropy assumed greater importance in the university’s budget as state legislative support slowly dwindled.

Looking back over the two-hundred-plus-year history of Indiana University from the present, one can generalize some broad themes. IU has grown into a multifaceted educational enterprise with a myriad of connections to local communities, the Hoosier state, the nation, and the world. Its education, research, and service missions grew out of the flagship campus in Bloomington during its first century. In the second century, the university extended its programs statewide and developed physical campuses in several Hoosier communities. As a human institution, IU remains in constant flux, responding internally to cultural imperatives of teaching and learning as well as reacting to the myriad external demands placed on it.

In keeping with the focus of this book on how the university was shaped by its history and physical environment, watershed periods provide a way to examine large-scale changes. There is no question that 2020 will go down in IU’s history as a significant year, perhaps marking a new watershed. But the meaning of that year to the history of Indiana University is still being written.

  1. Arthur Levine, “How the Academic Profession Is Changing,” Daedalus 126, no. 4 (1997): 1–20; “Higher Education Becomes a Mature Industry,” About Campus: Enriching the Student Learning Experience 2, no. 3 (1997): 31–32, https://doi.org/10.1177/108648229700200.↩︎