ML Archives and Special Collections

We’re all familiar with the University of Montana’s long-running daily, the Kaimin. The Mansfield Library holds issues of the student-run newspaper dating back to 1898. In that 111-year run, however, the Kaimin has faced its fair share of challengers, detractors, and lampooners. The UPUBs collection in the Archives holds many student publications from years past, including numerous attempts at alternative student journalism. We’ve picked out a few examples to share with you here.

The Karnival was an annual publication by journalism students. The May 7, 1915 issue (shown below) included a tongue-in-cheek news story about a tick that infiltrated President Craighead’s office, a ballot for “the Most Beautiful Girl in the School,” and a report on the University baseball team’s victory over the Bozeman “Aggies.” (Here and throughout, click image to see full size.)

“Established in the year of A.P. (After Prohibition) Two,” the Stag brought a humorous approach to University news and gossip. Self-dubbed “An International Peddler of Bunk” and the “Official Newspaper of Simpkins Hall,” the Stag admitted in a November 13, 1921 issue that it had no political prejudices, “for Townley, Haywood or Trotsky have not yet offered us any bribes, altho we are always open to anything reasonable.” The editor, Waino S. Nyland, attempted to keep students up-to-date with the “submerged nine-tenths” of news that didn’t make the regular papers, including student-professor conversations from the classroom:

[Professor] Elrod: How many species of the sex are there?

Russel Lewis: Three.

Elrod: Name them.

Lewis: Male, Female, and insects.

Continuing the spoof tradition, the Abattoir was published by Sigma Delta Chi, a fraternity for journalism students. The editors of “The World’s Worstest Newspaper” worked hard to put all the latest gossip in print, then hoped for the best:

In the same issue excerpted above (February 21, 1936), the editors take a shot at their Bozeman counterparts: “the editors of the Aggies’ substitute for the Sears-Roebuck catalog.” Also included are a thorough gossip column covering each of the fraternities and sororities and an “obituary” column full of the editors’ nominations, including “Charlotte Randall because she’s no prize but thinks she is… Atha Quinn – because she’s a typical Delta Gamma – nuff sed… Bartenders who put a big head on beer… Stegner and Porter – the gold dust twins who claim to be referees. The first blind men we ever saw without their dogs… Seldon Frisbee for that Foresters’ ball escapade.” Two more articles are included below:

 On the more serious side, some newspapers took direct aim at the Kaimin and delighted in criticizing the established paper and “scooping” stories that the Kaimin editors didn’t catch. One such paper, Unser Kampf, was published in Spring and Fall of 1958. It took frequent issue with the Kaimin, although it also defended it from others’ criticisms (see issue pictured below). Unser Kampf’s editorials and news flashes included national as well as local news. Frequent targets besides the Kaimin included the University’s student government, the Student Store, the administration, and the paper’s own critics.

Similar to Unser Kampf was the Evening Deviate, which likewise aimed to “scoop” news stories, like a Griz-Cat basketball victory, before the Kaimin could get to them: “Say you saw it first in the Deviate…!” (Issue below is undated, but likely from 1958 or 1959).

 Other alternative newspapers were actually published by the Journalism Department and Kaimin staff. Hit & Run (1969) was one such paper, which lasted for three invective- and obscenity-filled issues (first issue pictured below). The second issue was dedicated “to the anonymous men who got the ball rolling with the Boston Tea Party and whose only fault was that they stopped the revolution TOO SOON.”

Posted by Micah Everson

Archives and Special Collections has recently made available the papers of Clifton R. Merritt, an environmental activist from the Helena Valley in Montana.  Merritt was instrumental in the preservation of public lands throughout the United States as well as in his home state of Montana.

Merritt helped found the Montana Wilderness Association in 1957 and also served in various positions for the Montana Wildlife Federation from 1950 to 1964. With these organizations, Merritt was a leader in getting the Montana Stream Preservation Act adopted and halting the establishment of the Spruce Park and Glacier View dams on the Flathead River, as well as spearheading the movement to get the 15,000 acre Jewel Basin Hiking Area established.   

 Map of Proposed Jewel Basin Hiking Area, undated, Clifton R. Merritt Papers

In 1966, Clifton Merritt established and oversaw The Wilderness Society’s regional office in Denver, Colorado.  Through the efforts of Merritt and his 15-person staff, working closely with local groups, millions of acres were added to the National Wilderness Preservation System.  Among those added were the Scapegoat, Absaroka-Beartooth, and River of No Return Wildernesses in Montana.

 Map of Proposed Absaroka-Beartooth Wilderness, Montana Wilderness Association/The Wilderness Society, 1974, Clifton R. Merritt Papers

After leaving The Wilderness Society, Merritt co-founded the American Wilderness Alliance (known after 1983 as American Wildlands) in 1979.  The organization worked with conservation groups throughout the Rocky Mountain West to preserve public lands for wildlife habitat and recreation. American Wildlands was instrumental in getting the 161,000 acre Elkhorn Wildlife Management Unit established in Montana.

  On the Wild Side Newsletter, American Wildlands, Clifton R. Merritt Papers

 In 1990, Clifton Merritt began the Corridors of Life Program. The program would use Geographic Information Systems to map wildlife migration corridors between roadless areas and established wilderness areas. As of 2009, American Wildlands’ Corridors of Life Program continues to work to restore and maintain wildlife corridors.

 Proposed wildlife corridor from Yellowstone to the Yukon.  From an American Wildlands Corridors of Life Program member mailer, Clifton R. Merritt Papers

Merritt continued to assist in local conservation efforts until his death in August of 2008. 

Posted by Amy Casamassa

The Fall 1969 edition of English department journal Garret featured the William Kittredge story, “Breaker of Horses,” with a cover photograph by Lee Nue.

It was the “halcyon spring of 1973,” writes William Kittredge, when University of Montana creative writing director Earl Ganz and celebrated Montana poets Richard Hugo and Madeline DeFrees decided in a faculty meeting to put Kittredge in charge of creating a “first-rate magazine.”

“It’s up to you,” Ganz said to a then-“seriously untenured, very junior” professor Kittredge.

The University in the early seventies was on the heels of a rebellious literary bent. The Book, for example, was devoted to publishing the student opinions of faculty members with the intent to encourage “good teaching,” while the editors of the rogue literary magazine Hazard asserted what they believed was their basic right to publish while protesting “the unjustified and ill-considered suppression and proposed censorship of Venture magazine by the president of the University and the governor of Montana.”

Kittredge, however, was more concerned with providing an outlet in which creative writing students might feel they were “not forever lost in backwater.”  In the vein of former English and creative writing professor H.G. Merriam , who founded the quarterly journal Frontier (later titled Frontier and Midland) to encourage the work of young authors in 1920, Kittredge debuted CutBank—“Where the big fish lie”—in the fall of 1973. Thirty-six years later, the publication continues as a forum for new and venerated writers alike.

Since 1898, with the first issue of the monthly magazine The Kaimin, the University’s literary publications have inspired, protested, riled, honored and provided colorful commentary through works of poetry, fiction and non-fiction. From the satirical—including the 1933 edition of The Growler which says, “If you have gone through these pages you have seen us trampling on people’s toes, poking fun and exploding myths. We are going to keep doing this, and we’ll probably be writing about you and you and you”—to the questioning of intellectual, moral and economic infrastructures found in later publications like Camas, the collection of University of Montana literary journals housed in Archives and Special Collections showcases the emerging and established writers that make up the storied literary tradition of UM.

Posted by Margo Whitmire

This summer all of the Pamphlet Collections in Archives and Special Collections are being renovated to be made more concise and accessible.  One collection that has already seen some attention and new material is the Left-Wing Radicalism Pamphlet Collection.  Most of the material in this collection dates from between 1945 and 1975, with the greatest concentration coming from the Vietnam era.  The notable exception is a number of periodicals from the middle 1990s. The collection includes pamphlets, journals, book-length studies, posters, periodicals, and newspapers.  Here is one highlight from that collection:

                The Object is to Win was a pamphlet influential to the late 1960s New Left, in particular the Weather Underground Organization.  The pamphlet was originally written by Clayton Van Lydegraf in 1967; our copy is from the second, 1971 edition.  The WUO originated as a faction of the Students for a Democratic Society, formally splitting from SDS during their 1969 national convention.  This was due to the WUO’s belief that non-violent resistance, which SDS advocated only, would not stop the war in Vietnam.  They instead advocated militancy and more dramatic forms of direct action.  In 1970 the WUO issued a “Declaration of a State of War” against the US government and was eventually responsible for a number of public demonstrations, a high-profile prison escape, stealing FBI documents, and a successful campaign of bombings against government buildings and banks including the Capitol, Pentagon, and Department of State building.  The group always issued warnings before their attacks and no one outside of the group was ever injured.  The Object is to Win describes some of the ideas important to the group and details some of the tactics and revolutionary strategies they would later put to use.

 Posted by Matthew Shannon