ASU Trivia

• The Great Depression hit SAC hard, with the junior college forced to operate on a month-to-month basis. Scholarships like the one from Mrs. Robert Massie in 1931, who established in her will provisions for full-tuition scholarships for SAC students, allowed the college to stay open and provided an education to students who otherwise might not have been able to afford one.
• College Rampage newspaper debuted in 1936.
• First Hispanic students, Lilia Gonzales and Helen Robles, graduated from SAC in 1938.
• The first mascot was Shorty, a purebred Rambouillet ram nicknamed “Ramses I,” and was given to the college in 1940 by the father of two SAC coeds.
• First football squad was created in 1939, but the program was canceled in 1943 due to no transportation because of gas rationing and a dwindling male student population as many students joined the Armed Forces.
• By the end of World War II, 700 people, or one-fifth of all students who had ever attended San Angelo College, had served in the Armed Forces.
• San Angelo College was one of the first junior colleges nationally to build dormitories, with Mayer Hall and Carr Hall (later Runnels) being completed in 1950.  Each dorm lobby received its first TV set in 1952 so “students could watch out-of-town football games and the World Series.”
• Freshman were required to wear beanies around campus in 1949 because they added color and spirit.
• By 1954, Carr Hall girls were permitted to wear jeans in the dorm lobby and to the cafeteria (but only on Saturday night!)
• San Angelo College blazed the trail in the South by integrating in 1953, when three African American students enrolled—Ben Kelly, Annie Owens and Mary Simpson.  Ben broke down racial barriers to likely become the first African American to enter a football game for a previously segregated team in Texas and when he was elected Freshman Class Favorite.  Mary Simpson, SAC’s first black graduate, was named Outstanding Graduate in 1955.
• The 1954 football team was the first to have horns emblazoned on the sides of their helmets.
• In 1957, the Rams win the National Junior College Basketball Championship, their first national title.
• Governor Connally signs the bill to make San Angelo College a state-supported, four-year college in 1963. 
• One of the supposed reasons Angelo State College was not named San Angelo State College was so that it would appear at the top of an alphabetized list of state four-year institutions, effectively becoming the No. 1 college in Texas.
• Angelo State’s first baccalaureate degrees were awarded in 1967.  A memorial plaque with all 178 graduates’ names is prominently displayed at the entrance of the LeGrand Alumni and Visitors Center.
• Angelo State College became Angelo State University in 1969.
• The cartoon-like character “Tuffy the Ram,” was created in 1969 and became the most recognized symbol of the ASU Rams, gracing T-shirts, coffee mugs, flags and all other kinds of university items.
• The biggest building boom in the history of the university was in the late 1960’s.  Between 1968 and 1972, the campus added the Porter Henderson Library, Academic building, Cavness Science Building, Physical Education Building, University Police Station, Physical Plant Complex, Houston Harte University Center, Tennis Courts, Central Plant, Athletic Field House, Practice Football Field, Intramural Fields and both the Men’s and Women’s High Rises.
• The 10-story Men’s and Women’s High Rises, later renamed Concho and University Halls when the dorms became co-ed, are some of the tallest structures in San Angelo.  They can prominently mark the location of ASU from anywhere in the city and make up most of the San Angelo skyline.
• Room and board in the High Rises in 1969 was $427 per semester.  Today, a student who lives with a roommate and is under the 7-Day Meal Plan for Concho Hall (University Hall has since been closed) pays approximately $2,700 per semester.
• Visitation in rooms by the opposite sex became permissible in 1974.
• On a weekend in March 1974, students united in a well-organized, mass streaking episode that was so open in its planning that local citizens actually visited campus to see the show. A participant remembers “It was the scariest feeling in the world running, even with a crowd of equally deranged guys sprinting around you, to have that crowd screaming toward you.”
• Intercollegiate athletics for women began in the fall of 1975.  The Rambelles, more popularly known as the “Battlin’ Babes,” had their own mascot—“Scooter,” a sweetly portrayed running lamb.  In an effort to bring out the more competitive side of women’s athletics, “Scooter” was retired in the late 1990’s and ASU’s women athletes became the Belles.
• ASU has had two Olympic competitors.  Joshua Owusu competed in the 1972 Olympics for his native Ghana and Tranel Hawkins competed in the 2000 Los Angeles Games and finished sixth for the U.S. in the 400-meter hurdles.
• The first microcomputer lab was available in the Rassman Building November 1983.  Included in the lab was 25 TRS-80 Model 4 computers, 21 IBM PCs and 21 Apple IIe computers.
• By 1994, the card catalog was permanently removed from the library, replaced by a computerized card catalog that made bibliographic search more thorough and less time-consuming.
• Since its inception in 1981, more than $44.3 million in Carr Scholarships have been awarded to ASU undergraduate and graduate students.
• The Rams’ 1982 Homecoming game against Abilene Christian was televised on an ABC-TV regional telecast, marking the first network appearance of the Rams.
• Pierce Holt, ASU Class of 1987, earned two Super Bowl rings with the San Francisco Forty-Niners, two Pro Bowl appearances and a berth in the College Football Hall of Fame.
• In 1990, U.S. News and World Report named ASU one of the top ten up-and-coming regional universities nationally and one of the top three in all of the western United States.
• One of the most unique and identifiable symbols on the ASU campus is “The Quest.”.  This sculpture, created by SAC graduate Lincoln Fox, features an American Eagles swooping over a stack of books and lifting with his claw a partially opened book skyward.  It is a memorial to Dr. Lloyd D. Vincent, who served as ASU President from 1967 until his death in 1994.
• Dr. Lloyd D. Vincent held the position of President of Angelo State University for 27 years. During his presidency, the student population grew from 2,566 in 1967 to 6,276 in 1994.
• December 1993 was the first Fall Commencement ceremony.
• In 1999, ASU graduate Jimmy Morris became the oldest rookie to the major leagues in over 30 years when he was signed to pitch for the Tampa Bay Devil Rays.  Disney would make The Rookie starring Dennis Quaid, about Morris.
• In the late 1990’s, the ASU Rams’s Head logo replaced “Tuffy” and “Scooter” as the symbol of both men’s and women’s athletics
• With the exception of one dorm, all ASU resident halls became co-mingled in 2002. By having dorms co-ed, ASU saw an increase in students staying on-campus as well as improved academic performance and university retention.