Two weeks ago I wrote:
It seems like that time of year where you try to catalog the changing of the leaves, because they’re pretty, but because you want them to stay.
So I’m doing that this week, which feels like the peak of the leaf turn. Here are two more examples from campus.
This is the newly renamed Francis Morgan Swain Student Building:
Before women could vote, Francis Morgan Swain was making waves on the IU campus. She lobbied the university for a space meant for female students. She was in school here for two years, from 1889 to 1891. During that time she raised $6,500 from alumni and members of the community — that’s about $200,000 today. Her husband, Joseph, a math professor, was the ninth president of the university. They stayed on to lead the university for nine years. She came back in 1904 for the groundbreaking, laid a cornerstone and she was here again when the building was formally opened in 1906. In September of last year the university rededicated the building in her honor.
And this is the side of our building, Franklin Hall, the brand new 110-year-old, $26 million dollar renovation, featuring all the bells and whistles journalism and broadcast and video game majors and comm scholars could ask for.
My office is somewhere behind that tree.
