California State University, Sacramento

California

The first graduating class at Sacramento State was one student.

historicalpeople

In the spring of 1948, Sacramento State College held its first graduation ceremony. One student walked. His name was John J. Collins, a history major who had transferred in from UC Berkeley. The college was less than a year old at that point, and it did not yet have a campus of its own. Its first semester had put two hundred thirty-five students into forty-four sections of class, borrowing space from Sacramento Junior College. That was the whole operation. A mascot had been picked a few months earlier, in December of nineteen forty-seven. The finalists were a hornet and an elk. The elk lost because it wasn't considered aggressive enough. The hornet got a name, Herky, short for Hercules. Green and gold became the colors, chosen for the foothills and the trees. Today the school enrolls around thirty thousand students a year and has more than two hundred ninety thousand living alumni.

This is the first of 3 parts. The rest runs about 3 minutes and is read to you as you drive past. Hear the whole piece.

What this was written from
A single student, history major John J. Collins, who had transferred from UC Berkeley, graduated.

Written from Wikipedia, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.

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