About The University daily. [volume] (Morgantown, W. Va.) 18??-????
Morgantown, W. Va. (18??-????)

West Virginia University Daily (The University Daily)

Seven years before West Virginia University's student newspaper, The Athenaeum (later the Daily Athenaeum, began publication, undergraduate members of West Virginia University's literary societies came together to publish a paper that revolved around the University's activities during the week of commencement—usually the second week of June. Published daily throughout the week of graduation each year under a variety of related titles ranging from the University Daily to the W. Va. University Daily, the paper provided literarily inclined students the opportunity to compile a paper for a wide-ranging audience in service of a particular event in the life of the city each spring. Under the masthead of The New Dominion, the leading local newspaper in Morgantown, West Virginia, the Daily used its weeklong access to The New Dominion's readership to publicize university news, student achievements, and share updates from other "principal schools of the state" during the season of commencement (June 5, 1880).

Each year, the Daily's editorial board consisted of two upper-class editors from the student body and "society editors" who served the paper as representatives of the university's two literary societies, the Columbian and the Parthenon. As mentioned above, The New Dominion handed over the use of its press to the student editorial board, who then used their access to the paper's resources to publish a daily, four-page update regarding graduation events and the goings on at other seminaries and universities throughout the state. Where The New Dominion often dedicated a column to "University Items," demonstrating the centrality of the University to life in Morgantown, the Daily offered an account of the specifics of university life at the turn of the twentieth century, written by the students experiencing it.

The Daily's student publishers set out to create a "newsy and representative paper" that reflected on the university's academic year, gave voice to its most accomplished students and professors, and provided its editors the opportunity to select for their readers 'news' as they defined and experienced it (June 6, 1898). Often the Daily published commencement week speeches and sermons, including baccalaureate addresses from local religious authorities and prize-winning speeches delivered by members of the student body as part of graduation festivities. Beyond these sanctioned addresses, the Daily also provided student journalists a platform from which to share stories and social commentary. The paper included nineteenth-century colloquialisms and poems, offering a window into some of the ways nineteenth-century undergraduate students interacted with the professional, literary, and social worlds they entered upon graduation.

The Daily provides a unique perspective on some of the ways that participants in higher education experienced and articulated gender and co-educational classrooms (from the perspective of male students), and it reveals how undergraduates perceived their sense of professional and personal trajectories and identities. Even though surviving issues of the paper are limited, researchers interested in the study of journalism, the history of higher education, gender, and changes at West Virginia University over time will find the Daily to be a helpful resource.

Provided by: West Virginia University