Fall 2023 45 JULIAN MCFADDEN; OSU SPECIAL COLLECTIONS AND ARCHIVES; ROSINKA79/ADOBE STOCK Nº 12 BECOMING A BEND BEAV Around 2018, student staff at OSU-Cascades in Bend created a new way to welcome students to their young, tightknit campus. At the start of Welcome Week, first-year students painted rocks to reflect their aspirations. Then, the day before classes began, they were gathered for a “secret tradition.” Just after sunset, the students walked silently in single file along a candle-lit path to the top of a bluff overlooking campus. Staff explained it was time to become Bend Beavs and instructed them to throw their painted rocks into “the pit” so that a part of them would forever be a part of campus. “It symbolizes each student’s connection to OSU-Cascades and their lifetime title of a ‘Bend Beav,’” Quentin Comus, ’23, explained. Students were often left speechless and teary. As enrollment grows and the Bend campus’s rough edges are developed, Student Affairs is readying to transform this tradition into something new. That’s why the secret, fondly held by many OSU-Cascades alumni, can now be revealed. —SCHOLLE MCFARLAND ڿ The yearly Peace March pays homage to Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. ↙The university community took to the streets after the civil rights leader’s assassination in April 1968. ↘With about 200 first-year students anticipated at the Bend campus this fall and its undeveloped edges readying for new growth, one secret tradition has come to an end. to the Quad a mile away. One day earlier, legislation to make King’s birthday a federal holiday had been introduced in Congress.Though itwould take 15years before the holiday was signed into law, in the interim, OSU students and faculty began their own traditions to honor the great civil rights leader. The most enduring one began in 1983 when the university launched the Peace Breakfast, the centerpiece of OSU’s annual celebration of King’s life and legacy. Over the decades, the celebration has included guest lectures, films, community service, dances, awards and more. Students also honored King from the 1980s into the 2010s with a candlelit walk from the Lonnie B. Harris Black Cultural Center (LBHBCC) to the Memorial Union. In 2017, this became the current Peace March held after the breakfast. Co-hosted by the cultural center and the Alpha Phi Alpha fraternity, the one-mile march goes fromtheCH2MHILLAlumni Center, past the cultural center on Monroe and back to the Student Experience Center Plaza adjacent to the MU. “The MLK Peace March commemorates Dr. King and also carries significance in reference to the OSU Black student walkout of 1969,” said Jamar Bean, LBHBCC director, referring to the significant nonviolent student action that happened after a football coach threatened to remove student-athlete Fred Milton from the team unless he shaved his goatee. Seeing this as discrimination, the Black Student Union organized, and47Blackstudents symbolically walked out of campus through the east gates. Talks afterward resulted in changes including the creation of the Educational Opportunities Program and the original Black Student Union Cultural Center. “Dr. King’s legacy lives on in our studentstoday,”Beansaid,“andcontinues to inspire them to be agents of change when faced with injustice and oppression.”—CATHLEEN HOCKMAN-WERT 2023 1968
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