HOYA History:
Eighty Years In Black & White

A review of the paper's first eighty years is found in a Jan. 21, 2000 story by staff writer Heather Burke. Here is the text of that article.

"Blushing as coyly as any schoolgirl, and with the exited fears and hopes of a debutante or a Mexican insurrecto before a firing squad, we lay this first edition of The HOYA at the feet of the student body, and retreat to a safe distance to observe the effects," wrote Joseph R. Mickler, Jr., (CAS '20), The HOYA's first editor-in-chief, in the paper's debut issue. With the saying "Vos Plaudite," or "With Both Hands" - evidence of Georgetown's curricular grounding in the classics in the 1920s - Mickler, his fellow editors and successive staffs over the past 80 years have worked to build The HOYA into a campus institution for all Georgetown students to enjoy, learn from and hopefully applaud with both hands.

Humble Beginnings

On Jan. 14, 1920, a Wednesday morning, Georgetown's virtually all-male student body awoke to find copies of a new newspaper. Publications had existed at Georgetown long before The HOYA. Besides the literary magazine the College Journal, a newsletter/gossip sheet known as The Hilltopper had appeared on campus in 1919. Mickler and his fellow three founders intended The HOYA to be more comprehensive than The Hilltopper. The HOYA was also cutting-edge for its time on Georgetown's campus because it intended to cover the news of all schools, including law, medical, dental and foreign service, not just the College, at a time when classes and activities were segregated between schools. While the Dean of the College Rev. W. Coleman Nevils, S.J., allowed Mickler and his fellow founders to use the College as a publication base, The HOYA would attempt to unify all the schools.

First produced out of Mickler's bathroom on the second floor of Ryan Hall (now part of the Jesuit Residence), the first issue of The HOYA ran front page stories (without bylines) on the funeral of University Treasurer Rev. James B. Becker, S.J., in Dahlgren Chapel and the naming of ROTC officers for the term. Besides sporting a catchy logo designed by Al Reid (CAS '21), the paper contained tongue-in-cheek editorials by Mickler, humor pieces such as "Senior Smoke-Stuff: Being a Series of Imaginary Interviews with Certain Seniors" and sports features on Georgetown's track and "basket-ball" teams. Many of the articles were little more than news briefs and announcements of events such as the Philodemic Society Merrick Medal Debate and, most importantly, a piece on the upcoming junior class prom which will "eclipse all other social efforts of Hilltop," according to the headline. As it is now, The HOYA was completely self-supported by advertising, a condition Nevils mandated for university recognition.

Growth in Size and Scope

As the paper moved through the 1920s and 1930s, stories focused on all aspects of university life in concurrence with its original mission. When Old North caught fire on Feb. 3, 1921, The HOYA got the story into the issue right as it was heading to the printer and hit the streets with the story an hour after the fire was extinguished. The story made the Associated Press wire that night. As it grew, the paper moved locations, finally obtaining an office in the basement of Copley when the dorm was built in the early 1930s.

As World War II began, The HOYA became one of the few college papers to continue publication throughout the war, although stories focused on military activities such as blood drives, military drills and war bond programs. One of the few student groups left on campus, The HOYA sponsored many of the few social activities on campus.

After the war, according to Don Casper (CAS '70), editor-in-chief of The HOYA during the 1968-1969 school year, The HOYA and the campus as a whole changed as returning, older veterans brought a new, mature perspective to campus. Coverage of the Yard, the precursor of GUSA, Chimes and lectures eclipsed social commentary. While schools such as Foreign Service and Languages and Linguistics grew on the East Campus, where most of its students lived and took classes, The HOYA focused on the Main Campus and its primary traditions, institutions and activities remained for "men of the College." Through the beginning of the 1960s, the College remained a bastion of tradition in a university with growing professional undergraduate schools and a growing female population.

The 1960s: An Age of Transition

English Professor John Glavin (CAS '64) served as editor-in-chief of The HOYA during 1963 and 1964 as Georgetown began to be effected by the social changes of the 1960s. When he worked for the paper, the staff was exclusively male because it still was only a paper of the College. Unlike today, editors-in-chief were always rising seniors who generally served the second semester of their junior year and first of senior year. According to Glavin, the paper had a more structured apprenticeship system. Freshmen served as staff writers in order to learn how to write and their pieces were heavily edited and often rewritten. In their second year, staff members usually became assistant editors while juniors and seniors served as section editors and in other top posts. While The HOYA had columnists in the early 1960s, the viewpoint section did not exist and any entertainment-related stories fell under the domain of the features editor. Glavin added that The HOYA's philosophy during his tenure was "for students, about students, by students," to let students know what other students were doing. The paper covered all activities broadly and deeply and included biographical information about students as much as possible.

In 1967, The HOYA moved to the old Ye Domesday Booke office in Copley basement, a larger room facing Copley Lawn that the paper would inhabit until it moved to its present quarters in the Leavey Center in 1988. The paper published weekly on Thursdays. On Sunday, according to Casper and Gene Payne (CAS '69), editor-in-chief in 1967-1968, typed copy was submitted to the printer which set the stories in linotype. This was a "large, lumbering" machine that melted drops of lead into molds to form a letter in a certain typeset, then dropped the letter into a sentence after the lead quickly cooled.

By the end of the decade, Georgetown College was still male while the School of Foreign Service, School of Languages and Linguistics, Nursing School and Business School admitted women. However, The HOYA's staff was mostly male, although Casper and Payne said that the copy editors were generally females from the nursing school. The paper's executive secretary, who performed tasks such as opening the mail, was also generally a female.

In general, Casper said The HOYA enjoyed a good relationship with the university while he was editor-in-chief. He said he had beers with Father Thomas Fitzgerald, the academic vice president, on a regular basis and chatted often with other administrators. While Casper concurs that the administration did this in part to ensure fair treatment of the university in The HOYA, he said that this relationship was a "two-way street" because he got stories from the administration.

Yet change was afoot. Glavin said he saw signs of social change while he was editor-in-chief. In 1963, an article appeared about the beginnings of the civil rights movement. The author noted that students at Ivy League and Quaker schools were in the forefront of the movement while no Catholic colleges were involved and accused Catholic universities of apathy. Glavin said he wrote an editorial: "Yes, there is an apathy" at Georgetown that he connected to the university's Catholicism. Glavin said he wrote that if students received a Catholic education, they believed everything was settled as it should be, which diminished the possibility of activism. The dean of the College was infuriated and tried to punish him, refusing to nominate him to Who's Who.

Glavin said Georgetown underwent a profound change in the 1960s after the election of John F. Kennedy Jr in 1960. JFK's election signaled the end of the Catholic ghetto and proved that America had become a meritocracy, as old WASP views did not hold Catholics back from getting a job if they were qualified. After the Civil War, Georgetown had fashioned itself as a place for well-to-do Catholics to receive an Ivy League education. Georgetown needed to reinvent itself, and students in the late 1960s began to come for reasons other than the fact that it was Catholic, he said.

According to Casper, the paper underwent great changes in the 1960s as Georgetown changed in the wake of and under the influence of the great social movements of the decade and, most importantly, the Vietnam War. "Georgetown was not immune to the changes sweeping the country" in the mid-1960s, Casper said. During his years at Georgetown, 1966-1970, Casper said the university changed in ways that prefigured the university in its present form.

The long-standing dress code, which required men to wear jackets and ties to class, chapel and New South, and also forbade both sexes to wear Bermuda shorts on the front part of campus, was lifted. Visitation rules, which forbade women from entering men's dorms except for a few hours on special weekends such as Homecoming, were relaxed. Finally, in the greatest change to old traditions and the College in particular, women were admitted, beginning in fall, 1969.

The HOYA followed the trends of campus and social life as a whole. Covering all of the aforementioned events, the paper in 1964 shed its College-only orientation, becoming a paper for the university as a whole. As part of this transition, Glavin said, he was the last editor-in-chief to sit on the Yard as editor-in-chief of The HOYA. The Yard was a historic College student government organization consisting of class officers and club presidents. In 1964, The HOYA voted itself off the Yard as part of its effort to represent all undergraduates.

The social turmoil of the 1960s led to a dispute over what the proper focus of the student paper at Georgetown should be. One group of students wanted The HOYA to cover sit-ins, draft card burnings and other aspects of the controversy over the war Vietnam. They contended that HOYA editors were becoming more conservative and not adequately covering campus opinion, which generally opposed U.S. involvement in Vietnam. In 1965, for example, The HOYA encouraged anti-Soviet imperialism demonstrations. Members of the Class of 1972 even burned a stack of HOYAs on the Quadrangle.

However, Casper said, at the time, he upheld The HOYA's traditional stance on primarily covering campus news and events, because he felt the paper lacked the manpower and money to cover outside events that were shaping the university. Casper added that, partly as a result of his intransigence regarding The HOYA's focus, Stephen Pisinski (CAS '71) and a group of students founded The Voice in 1969 in response, focusing on covering events of the anti-war movement and social disorder from a liberal perspective. With a wider editorial content, it wrote in its first issue: "We shall not limit our editorial content to campus topics … we promise to present and analyze national and local issues of concern to the students." Though The HOYA covered Vietnam-related events, it did so from a campus-based perspective and often from a more conservative viewpoint than the Voice.

Casper said that before he and Payne entered the university, The HOYA was "a relatively tightly-controlled university paper." Before the mid-1960s, all copy was reviewed by the faculty adviser, who was usually a Jesuit. Glavin said that, as a freshman in 1960, the Jesuit moderator interfered and would often order copy changed. By the time they were editors in-chief, this practice was largely a formality as the paper became more of an independent student voice. The role of the faculty moderator largely died out by the mid-1970s.

One of the biggest campus controversies in the late 1960s stemmed over the voice of student government. Three student governments existed in the late 1960s: the Nursing Student Council, the East Campus Student Government, which represented the SFS, SLL and business school, and the Yard.

In February, 1968, when he was news editor of The HOYA, Casper said he sat in on the Yard as a member of Sodality, an ancient Jesuit religious organization. Before one Sunday night meeting, the East Campus and Nursing student governments met and voted in favor of a unified student government, a motion favored by Dean of the College Rev. Royden Davis, S.J. (CAS '47). Casper said a majority of the Yard, led by Yard President Lawrence O'Brien (CAS '68), felt that the College embodied Georgetown's tradition while the other schools were on the periphery; therefore, they did not want to set the long tradition of the Yard aside.

Before the issue of unification was taken up by the Yard that night, according to Casper, Bill Clinton (SFS '68), dressed in a black leather jacket - a contrast to the jackets and ties of the Yard members - walked in having just come from the East Campus meeting. He addressed O'Brien and urged the Yard to vote for unification.

In response, O'Brien told Clinton, "This is a meeting of the Yard. Only students of the College may address the Yard. You, Mr. Clinton, are enrolled in the Foreign Service school and you may not address the Yard." According to Casper, Clinton reddened and shouted, "I come from the land of prejudice but I have never seen prejudice as I've seen tonight." He then stormed out. After the meeting had been called to an executive session, with the doors locked and room cleared of observers, O'Brien said that the Yard would defeat unification because, "I'll be goddamned if I have to sit down at the same table with those Pompasitos [a derogatory College nickname for Foreign Service students.]"

He added, "As for that goddamned Clinton, we're going for his jugular."

Casper said, as HOYA News Editor, he offered the anti-unification campaign good advertising rates. The unified student government referendum was defeated in 1968. However, the Yard finally disintegrated in 1969 because students wanted a unified voice speaking on major national issues, especially Vietnam, according to Casper, and a vote for one student government uniting all the undergraduate schools passed. However, as this anecdote shows, sometimes The HOYA did not cover "all the news that's fit to print."

The 1970s and 1980s

By the beginning of the 1970s, as the campus controversies of the 1960s died down, Georgetown emerged as a national university. New dorms and buildings such as Harbin, Reiss and Lauinger had been constructed and enrollment increased, particularly of women, while the student body was becoming ever more diverse. Yet this expansion had its price as headlines filled The HOYA telling of increased tuition, decreased financial aid, inflation and a too-small endowment

As the Vietnam War ended, The HOYA and Voice began to compete for news and became rivals. In November, 1970 a HOYA editorial called for the two papers to merge because of similar coverage and financial problems; The HOYA felt that the editorial views and news scope were not as radically different as they were when the Voice was founded. The Voice believed that The HOYA was still favored on campus by the administration and that a merger would not benefit students. During the 1970s, The HOYA became more critical of the administration, such as severely criticizing University President Robert Henle's decision to sell WGTB for $1. Many of the HOYA staff reporting on these issues were now female; in 1972-1973, Bernadette Savard (CAS '73) became the first female editor-in-chief of The HOYA.

The 1980s saw The HOYA emerging into a similar format to the paper seen today. For example, the paper's modern masthead logo first appeared around 1982 and remains largely unchanged to this day. Sports coverage in particular expanded as the men's basketball team rose to win the NCAA championship against Houston in 1984 and then lost to Villanova the next year. Mary Prahinski (CAS '85), Director of the Blue and Gray Society in Alumni Affairs and editor-in-chief in fall, 1983, and spring, 1984, said the biggest story she covered while at The HOYA was the special issue in March, 1984 about the championship victory, when The HOYA had staff members in Seattle covering the NCAA tournament.

The opportunities for news and sports coverage grew so it became a dream of HOYA editors in the 1980s to expand to twice-weekly publication. Prahinski said The HOYA ran advertising surpluses under the editor [after] her, Jim Horan. Although all of The HOYA's ad revenue went back to the university, the Media Board, a part of the Student Activities Commission established in the 1970s, allowed the paper to save money for a fund to expand the paper to twice-weekly. As part of this transition, The HOYA printed a glossy magazine of in-depth stories and analysis with color photo spreads - technologically revolutionary for a college paper at the time, Prahinski noted - four to six times a year. This pullout, entitled The HOYA Review, began in the fall of 1985 and lasted from two to three years, according to Prahinski. It then stopped so the paper could go twice-weekly, which it did regularly by the fall of 1988.

The HOYA of the mid-1980s still published in Copley basement and, when Prahinski began, only owned one manual typewriter, having lost typesetting and production equipment it gained in the 1970s. She said that, while editor-in-chief, the paper bought several IBM electric typewriters to bring it to where it ought to be technologically, although it took time to get the university to authorize new equipment. Publishing on Fridays, although it was often twice the size of today's issues, according to Prahinski, The HOYA used wax galleys, sending copy to Graftec on M Street to be typeset. She said the editors would go down to Graftec, the printer, on Thursday nights to layout and proof the final copy of the issue, including any late news and sports stories, which was then pasted up and taken to the Northern Virginia Sun for printing.

While Prahinski worked for The HOYA, the present sections and editorial positions of today's HOYA fell into their contemporary structures, although The Guide was known as the entertainment section. During Prahinski's time, Campus Opinion started in its regular format and became an institutionalized feature of The HOYA. She believes The HOYA covered more campus news that in the mid-1980s than it does today.

Challenges for the Future

Prahinski sees today's HOYA devoting more space to national college news and sports, particularly women's athletics, in the last few years. Expansion has been the key word to describe The HOYA in the 1990s. In the last few years, The HOYA has run special issues on the protest in the office of University President Leo J. O'Donovan, S.J., in February, 1999, by the Georgetown Solidarity Committee over the university's ongoing dealings with licensing companies that refused to disclose their factory locations, and on the resignation of Men's Head Basketball Coach John Thompson in January, 1999.

Coverage has expanded in virtually all sections over the past few years. In fall, 1996, the entertainment section of The HOYA expanded its coverage into a four-to-eight page pullout entitled The Guide. In fall 1998, as a result of its expanded coverage of Georgetown athletics, sports expanded into an eight-page pullout section on Tuesdays. The HOYA has adapted its production techniques to new technology. Finally, the paper launched its Web site, www.theHOYA.com, in the fall of 1998 with special features such as the Guice Box and The HOYA Course Review.

Prahinski said that, when she worked for The HOYA, if news had to get to the campus as a whole, it had to go through The HOYA or the Voice. With the invention of the Web and the emergence of other papers such as the Blue and Gray, Prahinski said she believes The HOYA's challenge is to "be able to continue to remain a source of news and information in a changing information age."

Glavin said he was concerned about apathy on campus as editor-in-chief in the mid-1960s and believes "in a curious way" that this apathy has returned today and is reflected in campus publications, for papers are always a barometer for their times. "The role of The HOYA is best when it covers student activism with compassion and accuracy," Glavin said.

The HOYA has evolved over the past 80 years, constantly changing in format, technology and content with the times. With each new generation of Georgetown students, student editors and writers have covered and responded to the stories of each era with an eye towards capturing the spirit and key issues of the time. While many aspects of The HOYA have changed, one aspect of the paper has remained the same - The HOYA's commitment to coverage of Georgetown campus life and to excellence in student journalism, a commitment hundreds of HOYA staff members have made following Mickler's vision.