Today’s Archive30 post is about colors!We have the story on how UChicago adopted Maroon:
Orange and grey were the proposed school colors when the university was founded in 1892, but grey was dropped before the plan was presented to campus. Golden yellow was the unofficial choice because of an abundance of goldenrod flowers in the area. Orange proved to be a problem since Syracuse Universit founded two years earlier in 1890, had already chosen orange as its school color.
The color committee continued their debate. Green and red (a personal favorite of athletics director Amos Alonzo Stagg) were suggested, as wasscarlet. An editorial in the student paper “The Weekly” stated “scarlet is the color of the gay and beautiful, that shows the richest on the field, best on women’s dress or in flags and ribbons or in the suits of the players, the color that is most brilliant in decoration.” Others saw scarlet as a color that would incite anger.
In the spring of 1894, after correspondence with Harvard, Illinois, Wisconsin and others to avoid conflict with their colors, recommendations were made to adopt the color maroon. Debates on campus and meetings of dissatisfied students began, some voting for scarlet and others maroon. By the summer 1894 the color maroon had officially been adopted and students had started wearing the new shade.
This ribbon was the piece of fabric used by the administrative and student committees when voting for the new university color
