Feature Article

Oberlin College was founded in 1833 in the Western Reserve area of northeastern Ohio as part of a new settlement about 20 kilometers south of Lake Erie. The founding fathers of the community, Philo P. Stewart and John J. Shipherd, envisioned 

a colony of elect Christian families, bound together by a solemn covenant which pledged them to plainest living and highest thinking. . . . A school also was to be founded, combining various grades or departments, for the careful education of their own children and those of their neighbors; moreover, to train teachers and other Christian toilers for the boundless and most desolate fields in the [frontier] West. In this seminary-to-be a hearty welcome should be accorded to women, and manual labor should play a most important part.³

Explicit in the description is the evangelical focus of the early community, the austerity of its life style, and its social liberality (the education of women). This liberal bent in matters of social conscience was quickly and profoundly evident in the hiring of the college's first faculty, as well; a number of them, including the famous evangelist, Charles Grandison Finney, radically refused to accept positions unless the school was open to people "of color" as well.⁴ Thus Oberlin became the first four-year, degree granting American college to accept both men and women and to teach African-Americans. This liberal social conscience has characterized the college throughout its history. The modern college has moved far away from the evangelical Christianity of its founders, although their idealism persists in high academic achievement and activism.⁵

The evolution of the college ethos has a number of visual manifestations. For example, the chronological parade of presidential portraits in the main college library underscores a path that has seen the formal replaced by the informal, the traditional by the new, and the collective by the individual.⁶ The history of academic regalia at Oberlin charts a similar course. In this history, two time periods are of particular interest: the period between 1881 and 1907 when traditional academic costume becomes established amid notable signs of general "collegiateness," and the period between 1970 and the present day, during which time academic dress has been rejected by some, embraced by others, customized, individualized and politicized.

We consider these periods in turn.

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