U-M Archives Show Lavish Banquets Integrated Students Before Dorms

密歇根大学档案显示：宿舍普及前盛大宴会助力学生融入校园 档案证据表明，20世纪初的学生因私人寄宿公寓缺乏公共餐饮设施，转而依靠精心筹办的社团宴会和奢华甜点来构建同伴社群。 人类学家Lisa C. Young通过研究本特利历史图书馆（Bentley Historical Library）中保存的20世纪初学生剪贴簿，揭示了在校园宿舍尚未普及的时代，正规宴会如何建立起社群凝聚力与归属感。当时学生分散在各处独立的寄宿公寓搭伙用餐，由兄弟会、妇女联盟（Women's League）及其他学生组织举办的按性别划分的宴会，则提供了包含6月初产豌豆、牛肉以及蛋糕配冰淇淋等时令珍馐的多道菜盛宴。该报告追溯了这些历史聚会与当地农业网络及寄宿餐饮承办商的联系，并将其与现代宿舍餐饮以及密歇根大学校园农场（U-M Campus Farm）等学生食品可持续性倡议进行了对比。 在1915年密歇根大学首批学生宿舍建成前，分散的私人租住和缺乏协调的膳食安排，使学生只能将正规社团宴会作为社交融入与获取集体归属感的核心途径。 (7:28) 对1910至1920年间学生剪贴簿的档案考证表明，当时的宴会文化存在严格的性别划分，男性享有更多参与兄弟会和专业晚宴的机会，女性则主要依托基督教女青年会（YWCA）和妇女联盟（Women's League）等组织活动。 (16:27) 尽管在机械制冷出现前面临着严重的物流障碍，校园宴会上将蛋糕与冰淇淋搭配上桌的做法，仍将宴席推升至远超当时中产阶级日常标准的奢华美食水准。 (45:20) 校园饮食动员在一个世纪内发生了演变，从1917至1918年战时配给背景下的爱国节粮承诺，转向了基层可持续发展举措、“无肉星期一”以及校园农场（Campus Farm）由学生主导的农业实践。 (55:55)

Anthropological archaeologist Lisa C. Young argues that before modern residence halls existed at the University of Michigan, formal student banquets served as vital rituals of community-building within an otherwise fragmented campus food landscape. Drawing on archival scrapbooks and menus from the 1910s, Young illustrates how structured multi-course meals—distinguished by the rare luxury of cake and ice cream—allowed students to engineer a lasting sense of collegiate belonging. Fragmented Foodways in the Pre-Dormitory Era (7:28) Prior to 1915, the University of Michigan operated no student dormitories. Even after opening Helen Newberry Hall and the Martha Cook Building that year, on-campus housing accommodated only about 200 women—roughly 20 percent of the female student body. While fraternities and sororities housed an estimated 1,500 students in 1914 and a limited number lived in full-service boarding houses like Minnie Wallace's, the vast majority of undergraduates resided in private rooming houses that did not provide meals. As a result, daily dining was largely transactional and solitary, with students relying on local commercial eateries and boarding tables across Ann Arbor. Contemporary campus observers sounded alarms over logistical strains on the municipal food supply, estimating that the expanding student body required an additional 4,500 loaves of bread and 1,500 pounds of meat daily. In this dispersed living environment, sitting down together for a meal was not an everyday routine, making organized dining events critical social anchors. Banquets and Keepsakes as Communal Anchors (14:17) Examining more than 120 student scrapbooks preserved at the Bentley Historical Library, Young found that banquet programs were among the most prized keepsakes between 1910 and 1920. Banquets were strictly gender-segregated and organized by groups ranging from the speech society Alpha Nu and professional fraternities to the campus YWCA and the Michigan Women's League. Men preserved programs more frequently due to broader access to societies, while YWCA and Women's League events appeared most often in women's albums. Anthropologically, these gatherings operated as structured cultural performances featuring elaborate multi-course meals, toasts, and planned speeches. For example, Stanley Lowe's 1919 Alpha Chi Sigma program from the Delta Cafe recorded chapter members dining alongside recent doctorate Dr. Britton and School of Pharmacy Dean Kraemer. These ritualized dinners integrated first-year students and established intergenerational mentorship, cementing institutional identity long before digital networks existed. The Elevated Luxury of Paired Desserts (45:20) Campus banquet menus followed formal dining templates championed by contemporary domestic authorities like Mrs. James Angell and Sarah Tyson Rorer, but elevated them through intentional culinary luxury. A frequency scan of Sarah Tyson Rorer's 1905 Every Day Menu Book revealed that ice cream appeared on only 20 Sundays all year, and the pairing of cake and ice cream occurred on only three Sundays total. In contrast, Michigan student banquets routinely offered both, serving combinations such as caramel ice cream with cake at the 1915 Women's League luncheon or strawberry shortcake à la mode at fraternity dinners. Serving ice cream to large gatherings represented an exceptional technical challenge. Because commercial and home mechanical refrigeration had not yet been established, ice cream had to be manually churned and held in insulated tubs packed with ice and rock salt to prevent melting in crowded spaces like Barbour Gymnasium. This deliberate provision of double desserts signaled abundance and transformed standard hospitality into an unforgettable social ritual. A Century of Student Food Politics (49:04) Scrapbook ephemera also reveals how campus foodways intersected with broader civic mobilization. During World War I, students like Gertrude Benson preserved voluntary food conservation pledges that mandated meatless and porkless days, reduced domestic sugar use, and deployed college women as agricultural "farmettes" to pick fruit in Washtenaw County, where 88 percent of land was then farmland. Student organizations and living houses actively publicized their compliance in The Michigan Daily. Young traces an unbroken historical thread from these wartime conservation pledges to modern sustainability activism. While early twentieth-century students framed reduced consumption as a patriotic duty for soldiers, contemporary students organize around environmental resilience. This continuum connects late-1990s student advocacy for dining hall composting, student demands for local sourcing that spurred the creation of the Campus Farm in 2012, and early pushback against East Quad's Meatless Mondays that ultimately normalized plant-forward dining. Uncovering Hidden Labor in Campus Catering (60:06) Because the early twentieth-century university lacked modern, centralized catering facilities to feed events as large as the 350-guest Women's League luncheon, organizers depended heavily on local restaurants and domestic operators. While back-of-house culinary workers were largely omitted from official institutional records, regional artifacts offer glimpses into the labor networks supporting campus dining. A surviving recipe notebook kept by Ella Hall, an African American proprietor of Ann Arbor boarding houses during the 1930s and 1940s, contains handwritten marginalia linking baked goods directly to student societies. Hall's notes cross-reference cake formulas from the 1904 Ann Arbor Cook Book with specific Greek-letter sorority orders, suggesting that campus groups routinely contracted out complex banquet preparations to experienced local boarding-house cooks. Young emphasizes that archival scrapbooks document both intentional community-building and complex institutional exclusions, from strict gender division and financial disparities to the problematic appropriation seen in early campus societies like Michigamua. Ultimately, she demonstrates that investigating the material remnants of student dining uncovers how earlier generations actively engineered belonging, providing historical precedent for modern debates surrounding campus food systems and student welfare.

[3:31] Lisa C. Young: Every time I go into the cafeteria, the tables are often full. So I sit at a table with new people, so I can get to meet them. [14:17] Lisa C. Young: Because I know that thinking about the past helps us think about where we are and where we're going in the future. [41:21] Lisa C. Young: After about 10 minutes of that, I was like, there's no way I'm cutting these things into perfectly cut squares. So we're having the salad. Just my knife skills aren't that good. [49:04] Disloyalty in little things gives aid to the enemy. [55:55] Why don't we think about eating more sustainably? [67:41] Lisa C. Young: these are the memories that these students saved over 100 years ago. [67:41] Lisa C. Young: it's desserts that we need to celebrate [73:52] Lisa C. Young: some things don't change very much. [79:27] Lisa C. Young: here I am on this campus. [83:07] a very different proposition [86:29] Andrew Rutledge: sadly no ice cream

[0:13] ANDREW RUTLEDGE: Welcome to Making Michigan, the Bentley [0:15] Historical Library's series on the history [0:18] of the University of Michigan. [0:19] I'm Andrew Rutledge, the Bentley's in-house historian, [0:22] and I'm very pleased to welcome you all tonight, [0:24] either in person or virtually, to the historic Judy and Stanley [0:28] Frankel Detroit Observatory, a division of the Bentley. [0:31] I'd also like to extend a special welcome to all [0:34] of the U of M alumni who have joined us [0:36] and want to thank the Alumni Association of the University [0:39] of Michigan's Lifelong Learning Program [0:41] for co-sponsoring tonight's program. [0:45] Welcome. [0:47] This evening, despite the weather, [0:49] I think we have a really exciting and really timely talk. [0:53] For the fall semester started here at the University [0:55] of Michigan just over three weeks ago, [0:58] and students have been settling into classes, [1:00] learning how to navigate a campus that's just full [1:02] of construction, and perhaps most importantly, [1:06] starting to build friendships and communities among the more [1:09] than 50,000 fellow students here in Ann Arbor. [1:12] And doing all this, they are walking the footsteps [1:15] of hundreds of thousands of fellow Wolverines [1:18] who have come to this town since the university first [1:21] opened its doors here in 1841. [1:24] But across the years, one of the few constants [1:28] is the striking central role that food [1:31] has played in this community here in Ann Arbor. [1:34] For many conversations over dinners in dorm [1:36] cafeterias and late night snacks with friends and roommates [1:40] as they talk about classes or just life [1:42] in general, among the most treasured of college memories. [1:46] And that's true regardless of where you went to school. [1:49] Here, Michigan State, Western, anywhere in the country [1:54] or really in the world. [1:56] And that near universal importance of food and fostering [2:00] relationships, both on campus and across societies more [2:03] generally, is a really well-known phenomenon. [2:06] But the nature of those meals has changed dramatically [2:09] over time. [2:11] At Michigan, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, [2:14] long before the first dormitories were built, [2:17] the most memorable meals of the academic year were formal [2:19] banquets hosted by student organizations. [2:22] These carefully choreographed evenings [2:24] brought students together over multiple courses [2:27] in elaborate outfits, and not only did [2:29] they help create a sense of belonging [2:31] for Michigan students that lasted long after graduation, [2:35] they also left a rich archival legacy that [2:38] lets us learn about them today. [2:40] And there is no one better suited [2:42] to tell the story of these banquets than Professor Lisa [2:44] Young, the Volney H. Jones collegiate lecturer [2:47] in the Department of Anthropology [2:49] here at U of M. Long interested in the history of food [2:54] systems and human cultures, she has worked on archeological digs [2:57] in the Southwest, exploring the subject there [3:00] before becoming interested in the history of food [3:02] here at U of M as part of the university's [3:04] bicentennial celebrations. [3:07] Since then, she has researched evermore at the Bentley [3:09] and across campus, and has taught a number of classes [3:13] on the subject. [3:15] She attended the University of Michigan, [3:16] first as an undergraduate, experiencing [3:18] many of these phenomena herself and then received her PhD [3:22] at the University of Arizona. [3:24] Please join me in welcoming Professor Young. [3:26] [APPLAUSE] [3:31] LISA YOUNG: Thank you, everybody, [3:33] for coming out tonight. [3:38] I'm excited to share some of what [3:41] I've learned about food at U of M, [3:44] and it's actually through a class [3:46] that I teach, in particular, a first year [3:49] seminar that I've been teaching over the last several years. [3:52] So I want to warn you about this because it's [3:54] very much a work in progress. [3:57] And in fact, my students were at the Bentley library [3:59] today looking at some of the banquet menus. [4:02] So I'm going to show you one of them that they're researching. [4:05] So if you have any questions, I'm [4:07] going to tell you to contact them in a couple of weeks. [4:11] As Andrew mentioned, my background [4:12] is actually in archeology, not in history. [4:15] And to study food as an archeologist, [4:18] we have to put together so many bits and pieces of information. [4:24] And I realized, when I started looking at the historic record [4:28] and thinking about food, I was doing the same thing. [4:32] So one of the things I'd like you [4:34] to watch for as I'm talking tonight [4:37] is just all the different sources of information [4:40] that I'm using. [4:41] Don't worry. [4:41] I won't quiz you at the end, but I want [4:44] you to just be aware of that. [4:46] I do my archeology within the Department of Anthropology. [4:50] And in anthropology, we've realized [4:53] for a long time how important and how essential shared meals [4:58] are to what makes us human. [5:00] That's what we study as anthropologists. [5:03] And so in this class, we are thinking [5:07] about how food at U of M has changed [5:10] because we want to think about the food system [5:12] and sustainability on campus today. [5:15] But I also am always encouraging students [5:18] to think about their shared meals. [5:21] And these last few weeks with the first year students [5:24] have been really exciting because their lives [5:27] are changing so much in terms of their meals. [5:30] And it's been fun to get them to think [5:32] about the transition from their homes to the dorm [5:37] and what that meant in terms of when they were eating, [5:40] who they were eating with, all the choices that they had [5:43] in the dorms, and it wasn't their family [5:46] fixing their food for them anymore. [5:48] It was somebody behind the scenes that was doing that. [5:54] And I really was struck by the students talking [5:58] about how one of the students even said to me, [6:01] every time I go into the cafeteria, [6:02] the tables are often full. [6:04] So I sit at a table with new people, [6:06] so I can get to meet them. [6:08] And it made me think about how the dorms create [6:12] that community when you first come to Michigan [6:16] and how it's in the dining Hall that you get to meet people. [6:20] And in fact, a few weeks ago, I was [6:22] having a Zoom meeting with some of my friends [6:25] who are U of M alumni. [6:26] And I was like, what do you remember about food at U of M [6:29] when we first started? [6:30] And of course, there was a lot of complaining about the dorm [6:34] food and mystery meat. [6:36] And why did we have hamburger, so many meals, [6:39] and all those different forms? [6:41] But there was also a recognition that even though several of us [6:46] were in Couzens Dorm right out there, [6:48] that that's the space where we hung out together, [6:52] at least until we explored other places on campus. [6:57] So that really made me think about, [6:58] as I walked on campus during move-in week, [7:01] and everybody was wearing these t-shirts [7:04] that say you belong here. [7:06] And so there was the dorms in that food, [7:10] creating that sense of belonging here [7:12] at Michigan during those first few weeks [7:14] before people found their footing and their smaller groups [7:18] and things like that. [7:28] So as we begin, I'd like you to just think [7:31] about that sense of belonging and what happens now. [7:35] Because one of the things that's so [7:37] interesting about the University of Michigan, [7:40] a little over 100 years ago, is that that experience was not [7:45] common at all. [7:48] So here's a picture of one of the first dorms on campus. [8:05] This is Helen Newberry dorm, and this is actually [8:08] from one of the scrapbooks the students have researched. [8:12] And this really got me thinking about what types of shared meals [8:17] helped create that sense of community and sense of belonging [8:22] for U of M students in the early 20th century. [8:28] So as many of you might know that in 1915, [8:32] the university decided to open Helen Newberry Hall and then [8:36] Martha Cook. [8:37] And between those two together, it [8:40] housed about 200 women students on campus. [8:45] These were only for women. [8:47] And that was, by my calculation, only about 20% [8:52] of the women that were on this campus [8:54] at that time, plus or minus. [8:59] So then the question is where did the other several thousand [9:04] University of Michigan students live, and more importantly, [9:08] where did they eat? [9:28] So some of you may have seen this map coming up [9:30] in advertising this week, because there's a presentation [9:34] on it on September 24th about the history of this map, [9:38] which I just learned about. [9:41] It's from 1926, so it's a little bit later than the time period [9:45] that I'm going to be talking about. [9:47] But can you see the cursor on here a little bit? [9:50] So if you look very carefully at this map, [9:53] and I know you can't see it in detail, [9:54] all these houses have Greek letters on them. [9:59] So the university was surrounded by blocks [10:03] of particularly fraternities but also sororities. [10:08] And so this was one of the other places [10:10] that people got together and shared meals. [10:14] Often, some of the fraternities are fairly small. [10:18] I'd say average size is maybe around 50 sororities [10:22] plus or minus and that amount. [10:25] And so those created places for that small community. [10:29] And many students were actually rushing in their first semester [10:33] or their second semester at University of Michigan [10:37] in the early 20th century. [10:40] But recently, my students actually in my class, [10:43] helped me find an article from 1914 in the Michigan Daily that [10:47] was only again estimating that that was 1,500 students that [10:52] were living in there. [10:53] So again, that means of the students [11:01] from University of Michigan were living [11:03] in fraternities and sororities. [11:05] Where else were they living? [11:07] Well, Ann Arbor was full of boarding houses at this time. [11:20] This one was run by a woman named Minnie Wallace [11:26] in the early 20th century. [11:29] And if anybody's driven on North State Street, [11:32] you can still see it today, but it's painted purple. [11:36] It's Minnie's Co-op. [11:39] And they kept the name in honor of her. [11:42] But she was running it as a boarding house, providing meals [11:46] in this space for University of Michigan students. [11:50] And boarding houses were of various sizes, [11:53] but they don't have tons and tons of rooms [11:56] in an old house like this one. [12:01] And the estimates are that, again, maybe-- [12:06] well, I'm not sure. [12:07] I can't remember how many boarding houses there [12:09] are in town, but it still doesn't [12:12] hold all of the University of Michigan students. [12:15] So where else were they living? [12:19] So you've seen historic pictures. [12:21] Now we're going to go to the next source of information, [12:24] which is an amazing source of information, [12:26] which is the Michigan Daily. [12:28] And this is an article from October of 1914. [12:34] And this is when the university is starting [12:37] to add more and more students. [12:46] We now talk about how oh, we've got hundreds of more students. [12:50] And indeed, the same thing was happening then. [12:53] And what's happening is people are really [12:56] worried in town about the enormous number of rooming [13:01] houses that are needed. [13:02] And I want to point out, these do not provide food [13:04] for the students in most cases. [13:07] And so then they're saying, look. [13:10] Look at how many more loaves of bread, [13:13] 4,500 more loaves of bread and 1,500 pounds of meat are needed [13:18] each day, they're predicting, for the number of students [13:23] on campus. [13:24] So the picture I'm painting for you is that groups of people [13:30] that are coming together to share a meal is not part [13:34] of the Michigan experience, except for those few people who [13:37] can live in the dorm or to get into their fraternities [13:40] and sororities during the early 20th century. [13:45] So with that, what meals were really important to students. [13:51] What gave them that sense of community, [13:54] not just sharing a boarding house [13:56] or finding meals somewhere at some place that offered meals, [14:01] and there were a lot of them in Ann Arbor [14:03] because they were living in the rooming houses. [14:07] So this whole context has really led [14:12] me to appreciate what I've been seeing in the Michigan [14:16] scrapbooks. [14:17] And so that's what I want to turn to now and just tell you [14:21] a little bit about this amazing collection [14:24] that the Bentley library has. [14:35] And I didn't know about this until I [14:38] was asked to teach a class for the bicentennial [14:40] called Food at U of M. And I said, great, [14:43] but I'm an archeologist. [14:44] We got to start in the past. [14:46] Because I know that thinking about the past helps [14:49] us think about where we are and where we're going in the future. [14:53] And so this led me to start thinking about special meals, [14:58] too. [15:06] Not just everyday meals, but those meals [15:09] where you have an intentional gathering, [15:11] and maybe you have some nicer food, [15:14] and how that must have been so important for University [15:18] of Michigan students. [15:19] So let me tell you a little bit about this amazing collection. [15:23] There's over 120 U of M student scrapbooks in the Bentley [15:28] Library collection. [15:31] The earliest ones that I've seen are from 1870. [15:36] So about 30 years after the University is established. [15:39] And then they go up into the 40s. [15:42] Is there one in the 50s? [15:43] Was that the one you showed me? [15:44] There may be just a few. [15:46] But this first decade of the 20th century. [15:52] And actually by that, I mean from 1910 to 1920. [15:55] So I guess it's the second decade. [15:57] Is a time when lots of students seem to be scrapbooking [16:01] and lots of students donated their scrapbooks [16:03] to the Bentley Library. [16:05] So there's at least 50 from this decade [16:08] that I could use in this research. [16:10] And what you can see here, you can [16:12] see how somebody's written the years on the block M there. [16:16] And many of them are in these type of books. [16:18] So it looks like it was something [16:19] that the bookstores in town were selling as part [16:22] of your momentos of Michigan. [16:27] So these scrapbooks are kind of a goldmine. [16:33] And one of the things that I realized that I needed to do [16:37] is I start this started this project was [16:39] to start going through them. [16:42] And oh, my gosh, they can turn into such a rabbit hole. [16:46] But I was like, you're just looking [16:47] for the banquet programs. [16:49] Just look for the banquet programs. [16:51] And so I've been through quite a few of them [16:54] and looking for information for my students to use in the class. [16:59] And of the approximately 40 that I've looked at, [17:06] the vast majority of them actually [17:08] have banquet programs in them. [17:11] So that should tell you that these [17:15] were important to students. [17:17] They actually were saving them for their scrapbook. [17:20] And unlike now, where students are taking pictures and posting [17:23] them on their social media as their memories, the scrapbooks [17:27] or their memories of what they wanted [17:29] to keep from University of Michigan. [17:32] So banquet programs are popular. [17:37] Some scrapbooks only have one, and some [17:40] have as much as 14 banquet programs saved in them. [17:45] Lots of times, they're from the same organization. [17:50] And I have to say, it's the men who are saving more banquet [17:54] programs than the women. [17:56] Some of that, I think, is because they [17:58] had more organizations that they were [18:00] belonging to and more organizations that [18:02] were hosting banquets. [18:08] So the organizations that were hosting the banquets [18:10] are what you'd expect, fraternities and sororities. [18:14] But there's also some religious organizations around. [18:18] There's a young Baptist Guild that [18:21] regularly holds some banquets. [18:24] And then there's also just general organizations, [18:30] and I'll give you some examples, like the Women's League [18:34] at the University of Michigan. [18:36] The other thing that I want to point out [18:37] is the fraternities at this time for men. [18:41] They're both professional fraternities [18:44] and then what we'd think of as now fraternities. [18:48] And some of those professional fraternities have had houses [18:53] and some did not. [18:56] But what's important for you to also know [18:58] that I've been hinting at is that these banquets are-- [19:03] there's women's banquets, and there's men's banquets. [19:06] I have not found any examples of co-ed banquets. [19:10] There are a few co-ed clubs on campus, [19:13] but the banquets themselves are not co-ed. [19:19] All right. [19:35] So here's what some scrapbook pages look like. [19:39] And the one on your left is from Karl Brandt, [19:43] and it gives you the dates that he was here [19:45] at the University of Michigan. [19:47] And you can see Karl really loved his banquets. [19:49] And so you can actually see four of them on top. [19:53] And actually, under that purple piece of paper [19:55] is yet another banquet there. [19:58] And you can also get an idea of the different organizations [20:01] that he was part of. [20:06] Alpha Nu was what the yearbook called an oratory association. [20:16] And it actually focuses on debate and speech-making [20:20] and things like that. [20:22] And it actually has 70 members when I went in the yearbook [20:26] and counted the number of members in 1920. [20:28] So a lot. [20:29] They don't have a house. [20:30] It's just an organization. [20:32] But they have banquets twice a year, at least twice a year. [20:37] So he has several of them from this organization. [20:42] And then you can also see delta theta phi, [20:45] which is known at that time as the law fraternity. [20:48] They do have a house, and there's [20:50] about 45 members in that house in 1920, [20:54] so overlaps with Carl's time. [20:57] And then the other one on your right is from Gertrude Benson. [21:02] And Gertrude actually loved her scrapbook. [21:04] She kept names of people that she saw, that she regularly [21:09] visited with in the front. [21:15] And the other thing is she has a sort of her years of calendars, [21:20] and she marks down important things on it, [21:23] like Armistice Day from World War I is marked in there. [21:29] And you can see on there, and I'll [21:31] talk about these a little bit more. [21:32] The banquets with the flags on them [21:35] are from the Michigan women's luncheon, which is once a year, [21:40] and it's sponsored by the league, when [21:43] it was an organization that then led to building the building. [21:48] That's the league on campus today. [21:50] So it was for all women at the University of Michigan. [21:54] And then she also has the YWCA on there. [21:58] Very, very, very active on campus at this time. [22:04] And in fact, the YWCA banquet programs [22:09] are the most frequently collected by women that I've [22:14] looked at their scrapbooks. [22:15] And then the second is the Michigan League, [22:18] the women's luncheons. [22:21] All righty. [22:22] And the other thing I want to point out about Gertrude [22:25] is she's an example of someone who went to YWCA banquet [22:32] during her freshman year. [22:34] And many of the students who kept multiple banquet programs [22:39] went to a banquet during their first year here at Michigan. [22:43] So again, you can see, they were creating special places [22:47] with these banquets. [22:50] All right. [22:50] I've been talking a lot about banquets. [22:52] And anthropologists have actually [22:54] thought about how do you define a banquet. [22:57] So let's think about that. [22:59] With a student banquet. [23:06] And the Michigan banquets are not [23:07] nearly as elaborate or entertaining as the Harry Potter [23:11] banquets are, but you can think about [23:14] the general characteristics of a banquet using that picture. [23:19] And student banquets in particular, it's a gathering. [23:22] It's usually a large gathering of people coming together. [23:25] And it has a purpose. [23:27] And that purpose is to honor something [23:31] or to be together for something. [23:34] For the fraternities. [23:35] There's usually a banquet for initiation, and actually [23:38] the sororities too. [23:39] So there is a purpose of coming together. [23:43] And then it's not just like sitting down and eating [23:47] Thanksgiving dinner. [23:48] It's not just a big feast. [23:49] They're actually events that happen at these banquets. [23:53] And lots of times, what's happening is there's toasts. [23:57] Sometimes, there's speeches. [23:59] Sometimes, there's performances happening, depending [24:01] on how big the banquet is. [24:04] And then the other thing is there's sumptuous [24:07] food is one of the definitions. [24:10] And I asked my first year students [24:11] what they thought about a sumptuous. [24:13] And for them, it was plentiful. [24:15] Well, that's important. [24:16] But I was like, I also think of it as luxurious. [24:21] Luxury food or expensive or at least looking expensive. [24:28] So that should tell you that not only do [24:30] we have lots of food and nice food, [24:33] but it can be food that's presented in a certain way [24:36] to look nicely. [24:39] All right. [24:40] With that introduction, let me now [24:42] move to showing you some of the banquet programs [24:48] and what I've learned from them. [24:50] And this is where we will get into a little bit of thinking [24:54] about the context of food here within the greater Ann Arbor. [24:59] And I'm going to ask a little call and response. [25:02] We don't need the mics for this because I'll [25:04] repeat the answers on that because they'll just [25:07] be shouting out. [25:09] All right. [25:23] So here is another student, Stanley Lowe. [25:27] And again, his years at University of Michigan. [25:29] And this banquet is the alpha chi sigma. [25:36] And then again, this is a law-focused fraternity. [25:40] They do have a house. [25:41] And in 1920, right before this banquet, [25:45] there were about 53 members. [25:48] I don't know if all of them were living at the house. [25:51] What's interesting about this one is at the bottom, [25:53] you can see that it wasn't being held at the house. [25:57] It was being held at Delta Cafe, which [26:00] is one of the institutions, sort of the eating institutions [26:04] around campus that had rooms big enough to hold a larger [26:07] party at them, and I can't remember exactly where [26:10] it is, I apologize. [26:12] This banquet is in May of 1919. [26:16] So World War I has recently ended, [26:20] and life is getting back to normal. [26:23] And let me show you first the events that [26:26] happened at the banquet, and this [26:27] is very typical for the banquet programs, [26:30] is there's a list of names of people that are there and toast [26:36] that they're giving. [26:49] And this is pretty interesting to look at these. [26:52] This is pretty bare minimum. [26:53] Sometimes, they give titles of toast, [26:54] and there's little quotes that are used underneath them. [26:59] But even from this bare minimum, you [27:02] can see that the first person up there, who's the toastmaster, [27:07] is Dr. Britton. [27:10] And then the last person down there is Professor Kraemer. [27:16] The two people in between, the two top people I think [27:20] are, I know at least one of them was [27:22] one of the members of the fraternity at the time. [27:25] And then I think the other people that are on there [27:28] are members of other chapters of the fraternity. [27:31] So I can't tell you exactly how many people [27:34] were at this banquet, but there were probably [27:39] a lot of people from the fraternity and then these people [27:43] who were giving speeches and toast. [27:47] Well, I looked up Dr. Britton because I [27:49] like to snoop on the people who are in the banquet programs. [27:53] And he had just received his PhD from the University of Michigan [27:59] in chemistry, and he came to this event. [28:03] He was a fellow, a post-doctoral fellow, [28:05] and he was teaching at the university at the time. [28:07] And it was just about before he was [28:09] about to go off and get a great job at Dow Chemical. [28:12] So here we have a fraternity that then allows-- [28:21] and actually, I think I said this was law. [28:23] I think this is the chemistry one. [28:25] I apologize. [28:26] Too many Greek letters for me to keep them all straight. [28:30] But here's a postdoc that's about to get a great job. [28:36] That's at this banquet. [28:38] And then Dr. Kraemer was the Dean of Pharmacy [28:42] during this year. [28:45] So again, think about this. [28:48] This is a fraternity where there's lots of guys there, [28:51] and they're having dinner and listening [28:54] to toasts from a postdoc and the Dean of the Pharmacy school [28:59] here. [29:01] So immediately creating this sense of belonging [29:05] and sharing a meal together. [29:08] So what was on the meal that night? [29:11] Well, this is pretty typical for banquets, especially the dinner [29:17] ones, where you start with soup and then the celery [29:20] and radishes that are out there are a cold plate that's probably [29:23] on the table. [29:25] And then you have broiled sirloin steak [29:28] with potatoes, early June peas. [29:37] And then you have some hot rolls, [29:39] and then you have the salad is the next course. [29:43] This is very standard. [29:44] So it's a fruit salad with Saratoga chips, which are [29:48] the precursor to potato chips. [29:55] And then for dessert, you have strawberry shortcake a la mode [30:02] and then coffee. [30:03] And at this time, at this time, one [30:09] of the people who has been hosting events on campus [30:12] is Mrs. James Angell. [30:14] And in the front of the Ann Arbor cookbook [30:20] that was published in 1904, I'll show you a copy of it, [30:23] this is kind of laying out what she views as a nice dinner. [30:27] The soup and the cold plates and then the [30:30] entrees with potatoes and then the salad and dessert. [30:33] And she says, and of course, you always end with coffee. [30:38] And clearly, here you end with coffee and cigarettes. [30:41] And that's very common on the fraternity banquets. [30:46] But I like to imagine what's happening. [30:48] And Mrs. Angell said, you really should [30:50] have coffee like in the sitting room, [30:52] if there's another place for people to get up from the table. [30:55] And so again, imagine the conversations [30:58] that are happening after this meal [31:00] that you've had together with toasts [31:02] and chatting with people and things like that. [31:06] All right. [31:08] One of the things I want to tell you that we've looked [31:11] at probably close to 30 banquet programs now, [31:17] and they're split about 50/50 men and women. [31:21] And beef really only occurs on the men's menu. [31:28] So it was clearly something that men [31:31] at the University of Michigan thought [31:33] should be part of a special meal, [31:34] and this even looks like it might be a nice cut of beef. [31:39] And then this is a may menu. [31:42] And one of the other things that I've noticed for spring menus [31:48] in particular is that they're highlighting [31:52] things that are in season. [31:55] What on this menu is in season in May. [31:59] And our early June peas are coming in. [32:02] And I want to point out that May 1919 is when the Ann Arbor [32:06] Farmers Market opened. [32:07] So I don't know if they were shopping at the Ann Arbor [32:10] Farmers Market, but they could have been. [32:13] So we have peas. [32:17] What else would be in season? [32:20] Potentially strawberries. [32:21] It's a little early for strawberries, [32:23] but many of the May menus have strawberries on them. [32:26] So if they weren't around in Ann Arbor, [32:28] I wonder if that was a special thing that [32:29] was being shipped in from just a little bit further south. [32:33] So fresh strawberries. [32:35] And then the other thing is probably radishes, all right? [32:39] And I want you to think about this time period [32:42] in terms of why they call them early June peas. [32:46] Because this is not the only banquet [32:49] menu that I've seen them on. [32:51] It's because the alternative to peas at this time [32:56] was canned peas. [32:58] There are no freezers to put birdseye frozen peas [33:02] in because they haven't been invented yet. [33:05] All right. [33:06] So what I want you to see is that one of the things that [33:09] can make this meal sumptuous is that you [33:14] have beef on it for the guys, and then you [33:17] have this fresh produce on it. [33:19] And then some of these things are prepared in a nice way too. [33:23] So here's where I have to get a little food geeky on you. [33:26] So I have been thinking a lot about changes in the food system [33:30] here in Ann Arbor. [34:01] And so this is yet another document that I've used. [34:04] Because the USDA has an agricultural census [34:09] that goes out every five years. [34:11] And so around the time of that banquet, [34:14] they should have done one in 1920, [34:16] but because they were just coming off World War I, [34:21] they were still recouping from it. [34:23] So they don't have a full one. [34:25] But the amazing thing is they've got a breakdown of the farms [34:30] by county. [34:31] And not only the number of farms but the size of the farms [34:34] and what they were growing on those farms. [34:37] So Washtenaw County had about 3,500 farms at this time. [34:44] The average size was about 100 acres-ish. [34:49] 88% of the county was in farmland. [34:53] Pretty impressive. [34:55] And of those 3,500 farms, 126 of them were actually producing [35:02] strawberries. [35:03] Lots of strawberries being produced in Ann Arbor. [35:07] And I don't know about the vegetables, but over 200 of them [35:11] list that they're producing sort of green vegetables, [35:13] the specific vegetables. [35:15] The other thing that constantly blows me away is 2,600 of those [35:21] farms were producing dairy. [35:25] So the milk for that ice cream on there [35:29] and the butter that I might have gone on the potatoes [35:33] may have also been local. [35:35] All right? [35:35] So I just want you to think about that farming system. [35:39] And how lucky we are, back then and still today, [35:44] to have local food that could be potentially served [35:47] on one of these banquets. [35:50] All right. [35:51] So this is pretty typical of fraternity sorority [35:54] type of banquet. [35:56] Let me now turn to some of the other banquets. [36:01] And the one I chose was the Michigan Women's Luncheon. [36:18] So this is a luncheon now. [36:20] And this one is a little bit special because it's the 25th [36:24] anniversary of the founding of the Women's League here [36:27] at Michigan. [36:29] So again, this is April of 1915. [36:34] So the Women's League, which is an organization for all women [36:40] on campus and alumni. [36:43] You had to pay some dues, but it was standard. [36:46] People were expected to join. [36:49] It's founded in 1890, 20 years after the first woman [36:55] is admitted into the University of Michigan. [36:58] Michigan women realized that they [37:00] needed to create a sense of community, [37:03] and they're pretty forthright about these guys, [37:08] they got fraternities, and they've [37:10] got other places they can hang out. [37:12] There's nothing for women. [37:14] This is the organization that fights [37:16] for a women's dorm on campus. [37:19] And that's at Barber Gym, where they could have large events [37:22] and have their sports too. [37:24] And also, they eventually fight for the creation [37:29] of the league, the beautiful building [37:30] that we have on campus now. [37:34] All right. [37:35] 25th anniversary. [37:37] And I can tell you-- [37:39] now I'm going to forget how many women are on campus at the time. [37:42] It's definitely over 2,000 women were on campus at the time. [37:46] So this doesn't give, it doesn't tell me who's at the banquet. [37:51] So once again, we have to do a little research in the Michigan [37:54] Daily. [37:55] And sure enough, two days after the banquet, [38:00] here's what shows up in the Michigan Daily. [38:16] 350 women. [38:20] University of Michigan. [38:22] Current students and alumni are at this banquet. [38:27] And the article even tells me that there [38:29] are 16 tables laid out in a special birthday table, too, [38:33] and that they're decorated with pink [38:34] and purple and Easter lilies. [38:39] So what you can see is this was probably [38:42] one of, besides the football games, [38:44] were one of the bigger events on campus [38:47] and probably the biggest social event for women [38:51] on campus at this time. [38:53] And they invited a few men to come to this luncheon and speak. [38:58] And I want to say that Madeleine Stockwell was [39:03] one of the speakers-- the first woman [39:05] to be admitted to the University was one of the speakers [39:08] at this event, if I remember right. [39:10] I might be mixing that up with another one. [39:12] But people that are speaking is the president [39:14] of the university at the time and James Angell, [39:17] who had retired a few years before as president [39:20] and is well-known for encouraging [39:25] women's organizations and encouraging women on campus. [39:30] What did these ladies have at their. [39:32] Their luncheon. [39:33] And this menu is a little harder to see. [39:37] So I wrote it out. [39:38] We've got a creamed chicken and potato souffle. [39:42] I'm trying to imagine potato souffle for 350 [39:46] people in a big gymnasium. [40:01] Did they put them in the little individual cups or did they-- [40:04] how did they do that? [40:05] The logistics are, I'm thinking about it a lot. [40:09] And the rolls and jelly, and then we [40:12] have the Macedoine salad, which is a finely [40:16] chopped up salad, wafers and olives again, [40:19] probably on the table. [40:21] Caramel ice cream and cake and coffee. [40:25] All right. [40:26] So this menu has got me thinking about, [40:29] for 350 people, the preparation that was going [40:33] into it and the presentation. [40:35] And so to do this, we take a field trip [40:39] to the special collections here at the University of Michigan [40:43] to the Janice Bluestein Longone Culinary Archive. [40:48] And look at cookbooks there. [40:51] I have fallen in love with old cookbooks, [40:54] and this is actually one that I found online. [41:05] So I purchased it. [41:06] You can see it digitally. [41:08] It's on the Ann Arbor District public library website. [41:11] So if you're curious, this was published in 1904 by one of the, [41:16] I think it's the Methodist church in town. [41:18] Again, I'm not remembering my details really well. [41:21] But it has some great recipes. [41:23] And this is the one for the Macedoine salad. [41:27] And it doesn't look like much. [41:29] It's got carrots and turnips, and you wash them, [41:32] and you peel them, and you cut them up. [41:35] And then you mix a lot of vegetables [41:37] together with either French dressing or mayonnaise. [42:02] And you can do a lot of different types of vegetables. [42:05] I decided to try to make this one time, [42:08] and the name means that you have perfectly cut [42:12] squares of these vegetables. [42:14] That's how it's supposed to look. [42:16] After about 10 minutes of that, I [42:17] was like, there's no way I'm cutting these things [42:20] into perfectly cut squares. [42:22] So we're having the salad. [42:23] Just my knife skills aren't that good. [42:25] But again, it's thinking about that presentation [42:29] that would have come out as this beautifully presented salad. [42:35] So the other thing I've been thinking about [42:37] is these meals look nice, but they don't [42:41] look super, super elaborate. [42:44] And so how do they differ from everyday meals? [42:50] And so to figure that out, I turned to another book from [42:54] the early 1900s. [42:56] And this is Mrs. Rorer's Everyday Menu Book. [43:07] Mrs. Rorer was like the Martha Stewart of her time. [43:12] Cookbooks, cooking classes. [43:15] She creates the Philadelphia Cooking School. [43:18] She is in charge of meals at two world's fairs [43:22] in one of the houses. [43:24] She is like a big deal with cooking at this time. [43:29] She publishes this book in 1905. [43:31] And the beautiful thing about Mrs. Rorer's is [43:34] she has a menu for every day of the year. [43:42] Which sometimes, I think, oh, I would love this, [43:44] but oh, my gosh, there are a lot of things on those menus. [43:47] But Mrs. Rorer, her goal for her audience is East Coast folks. [43:54] She's in Philadelphia. [43:55] And she's catering towards middle class, upper middle class [44:01] women, and she's setting the standards for what [44:05] people are aspiring to. [44:08] So let's take a look at one of her menu pages. [44:13] And I picked April because you saw a menu-- because the women's [44:18] banquet was from April. [44:20] And so what you're seeing, this is just one page, [44:24] and this is the first Sunday in April [44:26] and the first Monday in April. [44:30] And you can see she has recommendations for breakfast. [44:33] I don't know what all these things are on here, [44:35] but stick with me as an example. [44:37] And then I want you to see that Sunday, [44:40] dinner is in the middle of the day. [44:42] So this is, sort of larger meal, probably after you came home [44:46] from church. [44:47] That's there. [44:48] And can see that order. [44:50] She has a soup, she has an entree, [44:53] which is duck and stuffing with some vegetables, [44:58] the stewed turnips. [44:59] Then she has celery. [45:01] Then she has peach ice cream. [45:03] That's from canned peaches. [45:04] And she actually really is advocating people using [45:07] fresh produce and fresh fruit. [45:10] So this is a big deal for her to put canned on there. [45:13] She seems to think like canned peaches are OK. [45:16] And then she has a sponge cake, and then you [45:17] have a lighter dinner. [45:20] So I like to count things. [45:24] So I went through every single of her-- well, first of all, [45:29] I did a scan on this book because it's digital, [45:32] and looked at how many places ice [45:35] cream was served on the menu. [45:39] And it was served on 20 Sundays, so a little less than half [45:44] of the year, and only eight weekdays. [45:47] And one of them was because it was left over [45:50] from the Sunday ice cream. [45:52] Because she also liked to encourage people to do [45:54] leftovers. [45:57] But then I was like, hmm, most of the banquet menus [46:03] have cake and ice cream. [46:05] The one you saw at the Women's League [46:07] had the caramel ice cream and cake. [46:10] And then the one I showed you of the men's [46:12] had strawberry shortcake a la mode with the ice cream on it. [46:18] And there are only three sundaes where [46:22] you get cake and ice cream. [46:25] OK. [46:26] So this is making me think about the meals that [46:28] were served at the banquets. [46:30] They were like a nice Sunday meal at home with a family. [46:34] But it had special desserts because you got cake and ice [46:38] cream together. [46:41] And so I also want you to think about, this is prior to 1920. [46:47] And there are a lot of ice cream stores in town, [46:50] and they've got the electric ice cream makers. [46:54] But there's no freezers. [46:57] There may have been freezers here at the university. [47:00] I don't know how much advanced technology. [47:02] But in the smaller ice cream shops [47:04] and definitely in people's homes, there's no freezers. [47:09] So when you're making that ice cream, [47:12] you've got the buckets of ice and salt, [47:15] and then you've got the mixture of the ice cream in the middle. [47:18] And you might have electricity to churn it now in the 19 teens. [47:24] But you're making ice cream, and it's not [47:28] lasting more than very long. [47:32] All right? [47:33] So now think about a gymnasium in April with 350 women in it, [47:40] and you've got ice cream going out to each of those tables. [47:44] And you don't have ice cream that has the stabilizers in it [47:48] today. [47:48] I mean, our ice cream still melts. [47:50] But that ice cream is going out fast. [47:58] Or the other thing is it's going out in little bowls. [48:02] It's nested bowls with ice in it to keep it cold. [48:08] But cold desserts are really, really special at this time. [48:13] Going out for ice cream is one of the favorite things [48:16] that University of Michigan students do. [48:18] And I can tell you because I see so many ads for ice [48:22] cream in the Michigan Daily. [48:24] So ice cream was a favorite thing. [48:26] And here, we have it on the banquet menus. [48:31] So what have I learned from the banquets? [48:33] Creating this sense of community was this group together. [48:37] Coming together because they had a purpose. [48:41] They wanted to be in that community together. [48:45] Lots of times, people were doing this during their freshman year. [48:48] They had a nice meal together, and it [48:51] was like a home cooked Sunday dinner with two desserts. [48:57] So cake and ice cream were helping [48:59] create that sense of community. [49:04] So that's all I'm going to talk about the banquets, [49:06] but I have a couple other things that I've [49:08] learned from this class that I just want to share with you. [49:10] One of the things that I like to do as an archeologist is [49:14] think about what I learned from the past [49:16] and how I can see things that help inform [49:22] where we're living now, and potentially where [49:23] we're going in the future. [49:26] And one of the absolutely unexpected things [49:29] about teaching this class was learning about the other things [49:34] that students were thinking about in terms of food. [49:38] In terms of not just what they were eating [49:41] and where they were getting their meals [49:43] and who they were eating with, but they were also [49:47] thinking about the interconnections of food [49:50] and other things that were happening [49:52] in their lives, especially the students in 1917 and 1918. [50:01] So let me show you something else I found [50:03] in Gertrude Benson's scrapbook. [50:05] Oh, sorry. [50:06] That's the cake and ice cream thing. [50:26] You again probably can't read this, [50:27] but it says disloyalty in little things gives aid to the enemy. [50:33] Keep this pledge. [50:34] Eat sufficient food to maintain health [50:37] but observe meatless Mondays and Wednesdays [50:41] and one meatless meal every day. [50:47] Meatless Tuesdays and one meatless meal every day. [50:51] And also Saturday, be porkless. [50:54] Don't waste the sugar we ordinarily use [50:58] twice as much as is necessary. [51:02] This was a pledge that was going out during World War I. [51:05] Because the US was sending troops [51:08] over to Europe that had been involved [51:11] in a war for several years before, [51:13] and there wasn't much food. [51:16] And so they were asking people in the United States [51:19] to conserve food so that it could be sent to the troops. [51:23] And one of the things that's amazing [51:26] is that it's the students driving this change here [51:31] in Ann Arbor. [51:32] There are article after article in the daily [51:35] about, oh, this many fraternities [51:37] have now signed the pledges. [51:40] Signed a pledge to not be eating meat one day a week [51:45] at least and maybe some other meals. [51:48] And the sororities join, and then [51:52] also the women's dorms join. [51:55] And the articles are about like everybody should be doing this. [52:00] We need to support our troops. [52:03] And one of the things that's also interesting for me [52:06] is how the federal government was rolling out [52:09] these recommendations. [52:11] And this is one of their flyers that's [52:14] talking about if you look at 1, 2, 4, and 6, [52:19] those are all about don't waste food. [52:22] And then 3 is about eating less meat and meat. [52:26] And then 4 is buy local. [52:43] Students, again, were driving this change [52:45] and doing these things voluntarily. [52:48] In fact, many students in terms of the local food system, [52:52] there are pictures again and articles in the Michigan Daily [52:57] talking about how women's groups called farmettes are going out [53:01] to help pick with the cherries and the apples and things [53:04] like that because a lot of the men have gone off to war. [53:06] And so they aren't there to help with the agricultural labor. [53:12] When I saw this flyer, I felt like I had deja vu. [53:18] Because if you know anything about what's [53:20] been happening on this campus in the last 20 years, [53:25] you will know that there's a lot of conversations about food. [53:30] And they actually parallel what's [53:33] happening during World War I. [53:36] For example, there's a big effort on campus [53:41] now to do a lot of composting and a lot of recycling. [53:56] It's in Ann Arbor in general because that's the kind of town [53:58] we're living in. [53:59] But this is a graphic from the Office of Sustainability. [54:03] And the dining halls start thinking about composting [54:08] in the late 1990s because of a student sustainability [54:13] organization. [54:15] So here we have students driving the don't waste food. [54:20] Or if there's going to be waste, let's [54:21] turn it into beautiful soil that we can then grow things in. [54:28] And then in the early 2000, their students [54:32] living in East Quad, and they start [54:34] talking to one of the chefs, and they're [54:36] like, where are you getting your produce from? [54:38] And he's like, well, I'm just ordering it like from Cisco [54:41] and places like Gordon Foods. [54:43] And they're like, wait, we live in this place with all [54:46] these farms around? [54:48] Why can't we have some-- well, sorry, I'm jumping ahead. [54:53] I'll go right there. [54:54] Why can't we have some local food? [54:57] And this starts the conversations [54:59] about the campus farm and that we should have a campus [55:02] farm, which started in 2012. [55:05] And then the goal of the campus farm [55:07] is for students to grow food for students. [55:25] Students growing food for students. [55:27] And then they came up with this idea of having a farm stand, [55:31] which is on campus every Thursday afternoon from noon [55:36] to 3:00, providing fresh produce from the campus farm, [55:41] and students get a 30% discount. [55:49] So you can get fresh produce. [55:51] And then the other thing, and this [55:52] was the East Quad story that I was starting to tell [55:55] and got things intertwined, is that it was at East Quad [55:58] where they were also saying, you know what? [56:00] Why don't we think about eating more sustainably. [56:04] And so they actually had Meatless Mondays for a while. [56:07] Unfortunately, a lot of students on campus [56:09] decided they weren't going to go to Meatless Mondays [56:12] at East Quad. [56:13] But that started a conversation about how can we [56:16] encourage students to think about the carbon [56:18] footprint of their diet? [56:20] And so now, there's plant forward [56:26] days, sustainable days, sustainable [56:29] meals in the dining halls. [56:33] So here we have an example of 100 years of student activism [56:40] on this campus, really driving a conversation about food [56:45] and what food should happen on campus that we can still [56:49] see in these initiatives today. [56:52] And the emphasis in World War I, the students [56:56] were doing it for the troops. [56:57] It was their patriotic duty. [56:59] But today, the students are now thinking about it [57:02] in terms of sustainability and the future of this planet. [57:06] So that's been a really inspiring thing for me [57:10] to just learn about the power of student activism on this campus. [57:16] So with that, I want to thank you for coming, [57:18] and I want to acknowledge a few people, a few organizations. [57:35] I am so grateful to be teaching at the University of Michigan [57:40] that preserves a lot of its resources. [57:43] This beautiful building, the scrapbook collection [57:45] at the Bentley Library, and then the Janice Bluestein Longone [57:50] Culinary Archive. [57:52] The archivists at the Bentley Library [57:55] have been working with me to help me develop this project [57:58] for almost 10 years now. [57:59] And this afternoon, Caitlin Moriarty and Sarah McCluskey, [58:05] they're helping me with the class [58:07] and are always so welcoming to me when [58:09] I go to look at the scrapbooks. [58:13] A few years ago, it was only a temporary program, [58:15] but the Bentley Library also had a teaching with the Archives [58:18] Fellowship, and I got to be part of that for one semester [58:23] and with a cluster of faculty members, [58:26] where we got together and talked once a month, [58:28] and then the archivists were there to help me. [58:30] And it really transformed this class [58:33] by being able to be part of that. [58:35] And then if you have never been to the Janice Bloustein Longone [58:38] Culinary Archive, I highly encourage you to go. [58:42] In fact, there is an event next Monday that's going to be [58:48] about-- they're starting an exhibit that's about cooking [58:52] in the 1920s and all the changes in technology that was going on. [58:57] And they're going to have special chocolate cake. [59:00] And I'm definitely going because I've been wanting [59:03] to try this cake for a while. [59:05] And it's the Wesleyan College fudge chocolate cake. [59:09] So it's in the graduate library, the Hatcher Library. [59:23] It's afternoon, and I didn't write down the times. [59:26] I think it starts at 4:00 in the afternoon, [59:28] 4 o'clock in the afternoon. [59:30] Yeah. [59:31] And it's on the library website. [59:34] So you can look it up. [59:36] And then finally, I want to thank the students [59:38] from the class because I couldn't [59:40] have gone through all these banquet programs [59:42] without them and their questions. [59:45] And me thinking about how to engage them with the archive [59:48] has really been pushing me in ways that I never [59:52] thought I'd be pushed before. [59:53] So thank you very much, and I'm happy to answer any questions. [59:57] [APPLAUSE] [60:02] We want to start with you. [60:03] Andrew's going to start. [60:05] So save that question. [60:06] ANDREW RUTLEDGE: So as the host, I'm going to be rude [60:09] and use my power to ask a couple questions that I think are I'm [60:12] really curious about. [60:13] Because this is absolutely fascinating, [60:15] and it's so great to see the material, like reality of these [60:21] through these menus. [60:23] But I'm curious about-- [60:25] well, many things. [60:26] But the first thing I'm curious about [60:27] is you have a sense who is actually preparing these meals. [60:30] I mean, you mentioned the Delta Cafe as a restaurant. [60:33] It was a restaurant staff? [60:34] Was it something else? [60:36] LISA YOUNG: Yeah, it's a fascinating question, [60:38] and I haven't been able to crack that nut yet because that sort [60:45] of information is not recorded, except the library just [60:50] published Ella Hall's recipe book that's from the 1930s [60:56] and '40s. [60:57] Ella Hall was an African American woman who lived in town [61:00] and had several boarding houses. [61:03] One of which is right by the Ann Arbor Farmer's Market. [61:06] Every time I walk past it, I'm like, oh, [61:08] somebody needs to buy this house and just love it [61:10] because it needs some work. [61:16] And you can see that this was a lovely house [61:19] and that she was probably proud of. [61:21] This recipe book was a notebook, and it has clipped out recipes. [61:26] It has some handwritten recipes. [61:28] But the beautiful thing is it has Ella's notes in it. [61:32] And so her devil's food cake says [61:36] that it comes from a recipe from the Ann Arbor cookbook. [61:40] There are only two devil's food cake recipes [61:42] in the Ann Arbor cookbook. [61:43] So I can even tell you that the recipe's on page 313 [61:47] because I looked it up. [61:49] But it also says kappa gamma on it. [61:53] I'm pretty sure it's Kappa Gamma or Gamma Kappa. [61:56] Kappa Gamma, I'm pretty sure. [61:58] And there's another recipe that's specifically [62:00] lists a sorority. [62:03] That's again, a pastry. [62:04] And so I think Ella Hall may have been [62:07] making some of the pastries. [62:09] So they may have been bringing in people [62:11] from these boarding houses to help with the meal [62:14] preparations stands for the banquets [62:17] or possibly for every day. [62:19] I'm kind of thinking that devil's food cake was [62:21] something special on a menu. [62:23] So I really don't know. [62:26] The University doesn't have a dining catering staff [62:28] like they do now. [62:30] So who's cooking for those women, those 350 women? [62:34] And I just, actually, I wish I knew. [62:36] But there are a lot of restaurants in town, [62:39] so I wonder if people were brought in that way. [62:41] But I'm thinking about the food system, [62:44] and we're thinking about where the food comes from [62:46] and how it gets to people's plates, [62:49] that middle is really, really missing. [62:52] So yeah. [62:53] If anybody's got any ideas of how to look into that, [62:56] I would love to know. [62:58] Because in archeology, we always have things [63:01] that we can't figure out. [63:02] So I'm OK with that. [63:03] But I leave it as a question that's [63:06] open and hoping that something shows up, somebody's diary, [63:09] or I don't know what that would show up. [63:12] So yeah, thanks. [63:14] ANDREW RUTLEDGE: Sort of thinking [63:15] about the other end of the meal, particularly [63:17] in the context of all these sort of pledges not to waste food, [63:21] do you have a sense of did they take leftovers home? [63:25] Did whoever was preparing them take them home? [63:27] Again, that might not be something [63:28] available in the scrapbooks. [63:30] LISA YOUNG: It's not available. [63:31] What I do see, there is one menu that I [63:35] saw that doesn't have cake and ice cream. [63:39] It only has one of the things on it, and it's during World War I. [63:43] So I think there was some restrictions at that time. [63:48] If they're following Mrs. Rorer, they're [63:52] using all the leftovers in other meals. [63:55] So that was one of her things that she was promoting. [63:59] The other thing that actually, that the students that [64:03] are in my class now just found, I [64:06] asked them to do a search on the Michigan Daily for this decade. [64:10] And one of them found an article about one of the places [64:15] in town that was offering a Thanksgiving [64:18] menu that had eight courses. [64:21] And they were railing them for that was wasteful. [64:24] They shouldn't be offering eight-course Thanksgiving dinner [64:28] during the war. [64:29] And you can see that the sacrifices were-- [64:34] what they were asking them to give up [64:36] was just like one day a week or one meal during the day. [64:40] So there was still plentiful food to be eaten. [64:44] It was just thinking about eat beans [64:47] instead of always having meat for dinner [64:49] and that sort of thing. [64:50] So yeah. [64:52] Yeah. [64:52] ANDREW RUTLEDGE: Interesting. [64:53] I have one more question, then I'll open it up to the audience. [64:56] I'm just particularly struck. [64:57] You said there was the big 25th anniversary dinner [65:00] at the Women's League. [65:02] And 350 students and alums attend. [65:06] But you said at the time, there were about 2,000 women [65:08] on campus. [65:11] I'm kind of curious. [65:12] Do you have a sense of, was there [65:14] a class element of who ended up at these banquets? [65:17] LISA YOUNG: I think everybody's invited, [65:19] and they can choose to come. [65:23] I don't think they have to pay for this one [65:25] because they are paying like $1 in dues. [65:28] So I think it's just a choice whether you want to come or not. [65:32] But my sense is that they are open. [65:35] But I don't actually have the documents to back that up, [65:39] except that in some of the women's scrapbooks, [65:43] they'll have the information saying that they're going. [65:48] And that's an interesting question. [65:50] I don't know if in any of the scrapbooks, [65:52] I've seen a ticket to say that you're going to the luncheon. [65:57] ANDREW RUTLEDGE: Invitation even? [65:58] LISA YOUNG: Yeah. [65:59] The invitations that I've seen are just in the Daily. [66:02] It's like we're having this luncheon. [66:06] But that is something if I go back, Gertrude has a lot, [66:11] and we're looking at her scrapbook, [66:14] so we could take a closer look at hers. [66:17] Lots of programs from the Michigan women's luncheon. [66:23] So yeah. [66:24] ANDREW RUTLEDGE: I actually lied. [66:25] I have one more question. [66:34] So the scrapbooks are such a focus of your talk. [66:36] It's such a wonderful resource for learning about banquets. [66:40] But have you seen anything else that really [66:42] has piqued your interest? [66:43] Like I'd love to look into this if I had more time. [66:46] LISA YOUNG: I mean, what's really piqued my interest is [66:48] just thinking about the Michigan League [66:51] and how important it was to creating the connections [66:56] with the women that were here at a time when less than 25% [67:02] of the student body was women and maybe [67:05] even far less than that. [67:08] I mean, there's football programs in there. [67:10] If I was into thinking about the history of theater, [67:13] there are so many theater programs in there too. [67:18] The other thing that's interesting about the banquets [67:21] and I decided to avoid is that there [67:24] are pictures of Michigamua with the hazing that [67:30] goes on with those programs. [67:33] And this is only a small part of the class, [67:36] so we didn't have enough time to unpack that problematic history [67:41] of the University of Michigan, but there's [67:44] an interesting record of that. [67:47] The other thing related to the banquets [67:49] that I've seen that I don't have the students [67:52] research because they're hard is there [67:55] was a lot of playing around with words on the menus. [67:59] So one of the Michigamua menus, somebody [68:02] got a hold of an Ojibwe dictionary. [68:05] And all the things are listed in Ojibwe [68:08] on that program based on that dictionary. [68:13] And there were published dictionaries at the time. [68:15] So this is an Indigenous language. [68:17] There's one from an organization that's [68:20] affiliated with one of the musical societies, [68:24] organizations, and all the courses, [68:28] the things on the courses do this funny play [68:31] of words with musical instruments [68:34] or movements or things like that. [68:36] And there's one that's related to law, to mostly [68:40] of the men's organizations. [68:42] But that thinking about how you play with the words of food [68:47] on a menu I've been very intrigued with. [68:50] But I need a linguist to help me with some of that. [68:54] So yeah. [68:56] I just love to touch them and think, [68:58] these are the memories that these students saved over [69:01] 100 years ago. [69:03] So for me, it's also, I really, really-- the chefs from dining, [69:09] I used to give them recipes. [69:12] This was before COVID. [69:13] And they would make some of the dishes. [69:15] And I really loved doing that. [69:18] But we never ate very much, and I just [69:20] felt like there was a lot of wasted food [69:22] after that, although a couple of years, [69:24] we offered it to anybody in the dining halls. [69:27] And then COVID hit, and they were so short staffed, [69:30] and this project evolved into different things. [69:33] But I do have to say, I always bring a historic cake [69:36] in for the students to eat because after they've [69:39] given their presentations, because it's desserts [69:44] that we need to celebrate. [69:46] So I often make them Lazy Daisy cake, which is a lovely cake. [69:50] All right. [69:51] ANDREW RUTLEDGE: OK, we'll now open it up to our audience. [69:53] Please raise your hand if you have a question, [69:55] and we'll call on you. [69:56] But please just wait for one of our wonderful docents [69:58] to bring you a microphone if you're here. [70:00] So that way, our online audience can hear you. [70:07] Please wait for the microphone, sir. [70:13] AUDIENCE: If I remember correctly [70:14] from Mrs. Rorer's everyday menu, you [70:17] said that on a couple of Tuesdays, [70:19] they served ice cream that was left over from Sunday. [70:21] LISA YOUNG: Yeah. [70:22] One Monday. [70:23] AUDIENCE: Therefore, Mrs. Rorer from Philadelphia [70:25] must have had freezers. [70:27] LISA YOUNG: No. [70:28] You can store the ice cream if you keep it on ice, you can. [70:40] And I was checking this out before I came. [70:42] There's a couple places. [70:43] There's suggestions for shops that are making ice cream, [70:49] that you can make it the day before, [70:52] but you need to keep it packed in ice and with salt. [70:58] So you're right. [70:59] It's that type of freezer. [71:01] I should have said a mechanical freezer. [71:04] AUDIENCE: In Ann Arbor also. [71:05] LISA YOUNG: Absolutely. [71:06] As long as the ice supplies-- [71:08] I think they were doing it here in Ann Arbor. [71:11] It's all that putting the pieces together. [71:14] And what I also didn't have a chance to check [71:17] is that there's a company that is also [71:25] able to make mechanical ice here in town. [71:28] I remember seeing the ads in the Michigan Daily. [71:30] And there's some history about it. [71:32] What I can't remember is if it's from the 19 teens or if it [71:36] starts in the '20s. [71:37] So there's a lot of things that start changing. [71:41] And that's part of the other reason [71:42] I chose this decade, one, because there's [71:45] lots of scrapbooks. [71:46] There are lots of banquets. [71:48] There's so many interesting things happening [71:50] in the world with World War I. And then [71:53] I was teaching this class right after the COVID pandemic. [71:57] There was a 1918 flu pandemic too. [72:00] So yeah, very meaningful for the students [72:05] to see that information. [72:08] I forgot to check one of the students, [72:10] they had the scrapbook today that have the instructions [72:13] of how to put on a mask, And. [72:14] I don't know if they saw that. [72:18] So that's interesting, but it's also [72:20] really interesting in terms of what's [72:22] happening with our food system. [72:24] Because we've got things being imported on trains. [72:27] We're just starting to see a little more, like electricity [72:33] and gas are coming in. [72:34] So they're right at the beginning of doing more [72:39] appliances in the kitchens. [72:43] The students this year found some advertisements [72:47] in the Michigan Daily for electric plates [72:49] to heat things up on, which was like this new invention [72:53] at the time. [72:54] But still, I think a lot of the things that are on the menu [73:00] are probably still coming from what we could consider today, [73:03] fairly local areas and not being shipped in, [73:07] especially anything that has to be kept cold [73:09] because the only way you can keep it cold is with ice. [73:12] So they haven't gotten to the mechanical refrigeration [73:17] and the mechanical freezers yet. [73:19] So electric refrigerators are coming [73:23] in the '20s, but they're hugely expensive. [73:26] So go to the opening of the exhibit next Monday, [73:31] and you can learn with me on that. [73:34] So thank you for asking that question. [73:35] So the ice cream, when they made it, [73:37] probably could last for a day or two, [73:39] but it wasn't something that could [73:43] sit in your freezer for a long period of time, [73:46] your freezer at home. [73:52] AUDIENCE: I know that a lot of the period of time that you [73:55] kind of covered or that the students were at Michigan, when [73:58] you were looking at the scrapbooks, a lot of them [74:01] included the beginning of prohibition and the time right [74:04] before it. [74:05] I was wondering if you saw kind of a change [74:08] in menus, if menus before prohibition [74:11] served alcohol and then stopped doing it [74:13] and if there was some kind of student reaction [74:14] or that was like uncouth, and students never did. [74:18] LISA YOUNG: I've never seen any alcohol on the menus, just [74:22] the cigars and cigarettes. [74:23] And actually, Andrew, you probably [74:25] know better than I do because I think James Tobin talked [74:28] about this at his talk, that the university was basically [74:31] saying there couldn't be any alcohol on campus. [74:34] So I think being part of these student organizations, [74:39] they couldn't be serving alcohol at their official banquets. [74:43] And I know it's also a discussion. [74:44] The other thing that's happening at this time [74:46] is the unions being built. And there's [74:49] a lot of discussion about how this is not [74:51] going to be a place where we serve alcohol on campus. [74:55] So people had to go head towards Main Street [74:58] to get their alcohol. [75:00] And there's lots of conversation in the Daily about [75:03] what's happening with fraternities and things [75:05] like that. [75:05] I was like, some things don't change very much. [75:10] But anyways, there doesn't seem to be any alcohol on the student [75:17] organization menu. [75:18] Thank you for asking that. [75:21] AUDIENCE: Division Street [INAUDIBLE] [75:24] LISA YOUNG: Named, yeah, Division Street. [75:26] So you can have alcohol west of division [75:29] but not east of division. [75:31] AUDIENCE: And also the VFW in the South Division. [75:36] LISA YOUNG: It did serve alcohol. [75:38] AUDIENCE: That was after World War II. [75:39] LISA YOUNG: Yeah. [75:40] And things start to change a lot after World War II. [75:44] Yeah. [75:45] It's another one up front here. [75:46] Thanks. [75:51] AUDIENCE: You mentioned a gymnasium with a B initial. [75:54] LISA YOUNG: Barber. [75:56] AUDIENCE: Where was that? [75:57] LISA YOUNG: I think it's right next to Waterman, [75:59] which is where the now, the chemistry buildings are. [76:03] They were right where the chemistry building is now. [76:05] It was in that space right on the corner. [76:08] And Waterman was the men's gym and-- [76:10] AUDIENCE: Northview and church? [76:12] LISA YOUNG: Yeah. [76:13] Or where Geddes comes onto campus [76:16] or across from the Ruthven Building, where the Natural [76:18] History Museum used to be. [76:20] AUDIENCE: Also, I've been interested in the development [76:23] of how the Michigan League was built by the women's league. [76:32] And what I've heard. [76:35] I don't know if any of this is accurate. [76:37] What I've heard is that women were [76:40] in such a strongly oppressed minority [76:43] that their professors would not call on them generally. [76:47] They were treated as they didn't exist here. [76:52] In order to go to the Michigan union, [76:55] they had to be escorted by a man. [76:58] So they went to that gym. [77:03] What was it called? [77:04] LISA YOUNG: Barber. [77:04] AUDIENCE: Barber. [77:05] They went to the Barber Gym. [77:07] And the hours of the gym coincided [77:10] with their best classes, so there was some conflict there. [77:17] But the fact that they got the gym [77:20] and they could form the Women's League [77:23] led to them having community and coming up [77:27] with the idea of bake sales and buying cloth and hemming [77:33] it to make handkerchiefs and sewing things, [77:37] and ultimately raising the money to build the Women's [77:40] League, which ultimately was ready to open in '29 when [77:47] the depression hit, and they couldn't afford to keep it up. [77:50] So they gave it to the University. [77:52] LISA YOUNG: Yeah. [77:55] So I think there's a bunch of things going on there. [77:57] That not calling on women, I can definitely [77:59] see that happening early on, when women are admitted. [78:04] My sense is by the teens, that women have a pretty strong voice [78:10] on campus. [78:13] And the other thing you need to realize [78:15] is that there's a lot of organizing for suffrage, [78:19] and suffrage is past here in Michigan [78:22] before it's passed nationally in 1920. [78:25] And including some of the women leadership on campus, [78:33] Like is it Eliza Mosher was involved in the suffrage [78:38] movement. [78:38] That's who Mosher Jordan Dorm is named after [78:42] and was dean of students. [78:44] This is, I'm pulling out my-- [78:46] dean of women, female students. [78:48] Yeah. [78:52] And that the league is formed in 1890, [78:56] and they actually fight to have Barber Gymnasium created [79:01] as a space for women. [79:03] And that becomes a space where also has place for the league [79:08] events to meet. [79:10] And then they start really going to fundraise for building [79:17] the Michigan League. [79:20] And this map that I showed with all the fraternities [79:24] and sororities on it. [79:25] Go, go, go, go, go. [79:27] My understanding, and you can go to the talk [79:29] to learn more about it, is that this map was created and then [79:33] sold to do some fundraising to raise the funds for the Michigan [79:37] League. [79:38] So there are lots of women doing very creative things [79:41] to get money to create their own space on campus. [79:55] ANDREW RUTLEDGE: Let's turn to our online audience, [79:57] see if there are any questions there. [79:59] STAFF: There is an online question actually. [80:09] What are some observations that have impressed or surprised [80:12] your students? [80:18] LISA YOUNG: What are some observations? [80:20] So one of the things the scrapbooks often include, [80:24] like they were selling pictures of buildings on campus. [80:29] And some of the scrapbooks have so many of them. [80:34] And I said to the students, why do you [80:38] think they would have picked-- [80:41] to kept those in their scrapbooks? [80:43] And they were like, well, they wanted [80:44] to remember what the campus looked like. [80:45] I was like, yeah, they could have done that, [80:47] and they may not have had their own camera. [80:49] But why some of the buildings? [80:52] And many of the students, almost all [80:56] the students whose scrapbooks we've looked at [80:58] are actually Michigan students. [81:00] And some of them are coming from pretty rural areas. [81:04] Ludington, Tecumseh, other places. [81:08] And so when they come onto this campus, [81:11] those are the biggest buildings they've ever seen in their life. [81:14] And so saying, here I am on this campus, that that I think [81:21] is an important thing. [81:22] The other social things, like there's [81:25] dance cards and calling cards in these scrapbooks. [81:28] And so it's a really fun way to help [81:32] students think about how do you create your social network when [81:36] you don't have a cell phone, and there aren't even [81:38] any telephones. [81:40] So how do you do those sorts of things? [81:45] Yeah. [81:46] Just the things they were saving. [81:47] And then football is important at Michigan [81:51] for a very long period of time. [81:53] So it's nice because the big house hasn't [81:56] been built during this time period, [81:57] but you can still see the excitement about the Michigan [82:01] football. [82:02] And that, again, is one of those things that [82:05] creates those connections between then and now. [82:10] And I always, when we're walking around places, [82:14] I'd be like, there's the president's house. [82:16] Remember, this has been there since the 1840s. [82:21] So be thinking about that. [82:22] And so the other thing I think they're just surprised at [82:26] is that Michigan has spent a lot of time [82:30] collecting its history too. [82:33] And then like I said, I was surprised [82:37] by thinking about the student activism around food [82:41] that you can see with World War I [82:44] and then how it relates to students actually driving [82:50] the University of Michigan to be its better [82:52] self in many ways, especially around issues related [82:56] to food now and sustainability, and the University [82:59] is doing great things. [83:00] But that nudge to get going was really [83:03] driven a lot by the students. [83:05] So thank you for that question. [83:07] ANDREW RUTLEDGE: I think we have time for one more question. [83:18] AUDIENCE: This is maybe a bit off the wall, [83:21] but do you have any sense in these early boarding houses, [83:27] when baking of things like cakes switched from coal [83:33] to some other power source? [83:35] LISA YOUNG: I don't have any idea, [83:38] but gas is rapidly replacing coal, especially [83:42] in cities at this time. [83:44] And one of the things when I originally started the project I [83:47] was wondering about electricity here in Ann Arbor. [83:51] And the old pictures that I find of State Street. [83:57] There's the wires for the trolley that [83:59] used to run down State Street. [84:02] But gas is replacing coal, especially in cities. [84:07] Not in the rural areas but especially [84:09] in cities at this time. [84:12] But you've still got ice boxes and everything else. [84:16] This is my husband. [84:16] So I can look it up when we get home for you. [84:20] AUDIENCE: I mean, you know where that question is coming from. [84:23] One, I was a kid living in Pennsylvania, [84:26] and I'll date myself, this would have been in the early 50s. [84:31] My mother ran a hotel during the summer, [84:34] and all her oven was entirely fired by coal. [84:38] And baking was a very different proposition. [84:42] LISA YOUNG: Because you don't have that steady temperature. [84:45] And it's interesting because Mrs. Rorer published [84:48] in 1905, and actually, even in her earlier publications, [84:52] she's really recommending that women switch to gas stoves [84:57] because it's going to save them time [84:59] and they're going to get a better product out to. [85:02] And she's really about you need to do all these amazing things [85:06] at home, do those amazing menus, and you can do it [85:10] if you're very efficient about the way you work [85:14] and planning and things like that. [85:16] So she's a big proponent of gas. [85:19] So in places like Philadelphia and even cities in Ann Arbor, [85:27] that transition to gas is happening. [85:29] But I think like places out in the rural towns, [85:35] it wasn't happening as fast. [85:36] And I think I was reading, somebody can correct me, [85:39] that sort of reliable electricity really didn't get [85:42] out into the Dexter town until the 1920s and '30s. [85:47] So again, why this time period is so fascinating [85:51] because there's such an interesting change. [85:53] So I got one trivia question for you all since we [85:56] were talking about amenities. [85:58] Does anybody know where the first indoor plumbing [86:02] was in Ann Arbor? [86:04] Where was it? [86:09] The president's house. [86:10] Because Sarah Angell said I'm not moving to Ann Arbor [86:16] unless we have indoor plumbing because I got it in Vermont. [86:20] So 1871. [86:22] The first indoor plumbing in this town [86:26] was in the president's house. [86:29] ANDREW RUTLEDGE: On that note, that's [86:31] a good way to end the banquet. [86:32] Thank you all. [86:33] LISA YOUNG: Thank you. [86:34] Thank you for coming. [86:41] And there's cake outside. [86:49] ANDREW RUTLEDGE: Thank you all for joining us this evening. [86:52] Thanks as well to Greg Parker, the director of the Detroit [86:54] Observatory, for monitoring our live stream. [87:00] Thanks as well to the Michigan visuals team [87:03] for recording our session this evening. [87:05] Tonight's session will be available online in about a week [87:08] and will be shared with everybody who registered, [87:10] both in person and virtually. [87:12] Keep an eye out for an email. [87:14] And then it will be there permanently. [87:16] Our next Making Michigan will be on October 15th, [87:19] when historian Jack Dempsey will be joining us for a conversation [87:22] about Michigan's pivotal role in the American Civil War and its [87:26] various lasting legacies in the state. [87:28] And that session will actually coincide with [87:30] the observatory's new exhibit that's opening next week, [87:35] "Fill the ranks, the Civil War and the University of Michigan," [87:38] which will focus on how the campus and community of Ann [87:41] Arbor debated the issues that tore the country apart [87:43] in the 1850s and 1860s, how students and alums served [87:47] in the conflict, and how U of M emerged from the Civil War [87:50] as the largest university in the country. [87:53] Now, for those of you in the observatory [87:54] tonight, we do indeed have cake but sadly no ice cream [87:57] despite modern technology. [88:00] And the original observatory will be open upstairs [88:02] for about half an hour if anybody's interested in a tour. [88:05] Our amazing docent team could show you around and tell you [88:08] all sorts of fascinating things about these telescopes [88:10] and other things. [88:11] If you can't stick around tonight, [88:14] I highly encourage you to come back. [88:17] We are open Thursday afternoons, Friday afternoons, [88:19] and select Saturdays. [88:22] Other than that, have a wonderful night. [88:23] Please get home safe. [88:24] Thank you so much. [88:25] [APPLAUSE]