The story
With the support of Governor George Washington Steele, on December 18, 1890, the Oklahoma Territorial legislature established three universities: the state university in Norman, the agricultural and mechanical college in Stillwater (later renamed Oklahoma State University) and a normal school in Edmond (later renamed University of Central Oklahoma). Oklahoma's admission into the union in 1907 led to the renaming of the Norman Territorial University as the University of Oklahoma. Norman residents donated 407 acres (1.6 km2) of land for the university 0.5 miles (0.8 km) south of the Norman railroad depot. The university's first president ordered the planting of trees before the construction of the first campus building because he "could not visualize a treeless university seat." Landscaping remains important to the university.
The university's first president, David Ross Boyd, arrived in Norman in August 1892, and the first students enrolled that year. The university established a School of Pharmacy in 1893 because of the territory's high demand for pharmacists. Three years later, the university awarded its first degree to a pharmaceutical chemist. The "Rock Building" in downtown Norman held the initial classes until the university's first building opened on September 6, 1893.
On January 6, 1903, the university's only building burned down and destroyed many records of the early university. Construction began immediately on a new building, as several other towns hoped to convince the university to move. President Boyd and the faculty were not dismayed by the loss. Mathematics professor Frederick Elder said, "What do you need to keep classes going? Two yards of blackboard and a box of chalk." As a response to the fire, English professor Vernon Louis Parrington created a plan for the development of the campus. Although much of the plan was never implemented, Parrington's suggestion for the campus core formed the basis for the North Oval. The North and South Ovals are now distinctive features of the campus.
The campus has a distinctive architecture, with buildings designed in the unique "Cherokee Gothic" style, a term coined by American architect Frank Lloyd Wright when he visited the campus. These buildings are similar to Collegiate Gothic but are built from lighter stones. They combine conventional Gothic Revival architecture with Native American elements. The university has built over a dozen buildings in the Cherokee Gothic style.
In 1907, Oklahoma entered statehood, fostering changes in the state's political atmosphere. Up until this point, Oklahoma's Republican tendencies changed with the election of Oklahoma's first governor, the Democratic Charles N. Haskell. Since the university's inception, religion had divided those on campus. Early in the university's existence, many professors were Presbyterian, as was Boyd. Under pressure, Boyd hired several Baptists and Southern Methodists. The Presbyterians and Baptists coexisted but the Southern Methodists conflicted with the administration. Two notable Methodists, Nathaniel Lee Linebaugh and Ernest Taylor Bynum, were critics of Boyd and activists in Haskell's election campaign. When Haskell took office, he fired many of the university's Republicans, including President Boyd.
The campus expanded over the next several decades. By 1932, the university encompassed 167 acres (0.7 km2). Development of South Oval allowed for the southern expansion of the campus. The university built a new library on the oval's north end in 1936. By convincing the Oklahoma legislature to increase their original pledge of $200,000 for the library to $500,000, President Bizzell ensured an even greater collection of research materials for students and faculty.
Enrollment in 1945 dropped to 3,769, from its pre–World War II high of 6,935 in 1939.
The north campus and airfield were built in the early 1940s as Naval Air Station Norman. The station served mainly an advanced flight training mission and could handle all but the largest bombers. A large earthen mound east of Interstate 35 and north of Robinson Street, colloquially known as "Mount Williams", was a gunnery (the mound has been removed to make way for a commercial development). In the post–World War II demobilization, the university received the installation. Naval aviator's wings displayed at the entrance to the terminal commemorates this airfield's Naval past.
Read the full text
The southern portion of south campus near Constitution Avenue, still known to long-time Norman residents as "South Base", was originally built as an annex to the Naval Air Station. It contained mostly single-story frame buildings used for classrooms and military housing. By the late 1980s, most were severely deteriorated and were demolished in the 1990s to make room for redevelopment. The Jimmie Austin University of Oklahoma Golf Course was originally built as a U.S. Navy recreational facility.
During World War II, OU was one of 131 colleges and universities nationally that took part in the V-12 Navy College Training Program which offered students a path to a Navy commission.
in the post-war period, the university saw rapid growth and a surge in enrollment. By 1965, enrollment had risen over 450% to 17,268, causing housing shortages. In the mid-1960s, three new 12-story dormitories were erected immediately south of the South Oval. In addition to these three towers, an apartment complex for married students, including men returning to college under the GI Bill, was built.
In 1943 George Lynn Cross took over as president of the university. He served until 1968, 25 years later.
The Civil Rights Movement began a new era as the university began policies against racial discrimination and segregation after legal challenges and court cases outlawed discrimination. The Bizzell Memorial Library has been designated a U.S. National Historic Landmark in commemoration of the cases of G. W. McLaurin, a black man denied admission to graduate school in 1948. A court case effectively forced the Board of Regents to vote to admit McLaurin, but he was directed to study in a separate area within the law library and to be allowed to lunch only in a segregated area. The National Association for Advancement of Colored People brought the case to the U.S. Supreme court in McLaurin vs. Oklahoma State Board of Regents. In 1950, the court overturned the university's policy for segregation at the graduate school level. The case was an important precedent for the more famous and sweeping 1954 case of Brown v. Board of Education which disallowed "separate but equal" policy at all school levels.
Since David Boren became president in 1994, the University of Oklahoma system has experienced tremendous growth and purchased 60 acres (0.2 km2) for OU-Tulsa, the new Gaylord Hall, Price Hall, the ExxonMobil Lawrence G. Rawl Engineering Practice Facility, Devon Energy Hall, the Wagner Student Academic Services Center, the Research and Medical Clinic, the expansions of the Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art, and the National Weather Center.
In March 2015, the University of Oklahoma shut down the Oklahoma Kappa chapter of the Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity when a video surfaced that showed members singing a racist chant as they rode a bus. University of Oklahoma president David Boren gave members two days to leave the fraternity house. He also expelled two students who he said, "played a leadership role" in the incident, creating "a hostile learning environment for others". The expulsion, allegedly without due process, earned the university a spot on the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education's 2016 "10 Worst Colleges for Free Speech".
David Boren, a former U.S. senator and Governor of Oklahoma, served as the university's president from 1994 to 2018. James L. Gallogly succeeded Boren on July 1, 2018, only to retire ten months later. OU College of Law Dean Joseph Harroz Jr. was appointed effective immediately May 16, 2019, to a 15-month term as interim president. On May 9, 2020, Harroz was announced as the 15th president of the university by the Board of Regents.
Second Trump administration
Following the second inauguration of Donald Trump as President of the United States, and the creation of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) on January 20, 2025, several major changes occurred across the United States, including changes to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and to OU. These changes to the University of Oklahoma included employees being terminated, protests on campus, threats from the federal government of lease terminations, and grants being terminated. Shortly after the firings, William Alsup, Senior Judge of the United States District Court for the Northern District of California, ruled that the OPM "had no authority to order the firings of probationary employees". The Supreme Court of the United States later stayed Alsup's ruling.
On March 3, The Verge & Axios reported leaked information from DOGE saying, NOAA was planning to terminate the building lease for the Radar Operations Center's building at the University of Oklahoma Westheimer Airport. On March 5, M. Scott Carter, the chief political reporter for The Oklahoman, reported that the National Weather Center is among many Oklahoma offices that have been included on a Department of Government Efficiency list of federal buildings to be closed. On March 17, ABC News, reporting from the word of an anonymous NOAA spokesperson, stated the Storm Prediction Center (SPC), located in National Weather Center, was set to be closed by DOGE.
In March 2025, the United States’ Office of Management and Budget (OMB) released a seven-page proposed budget for NOAA in 2026. The proposed budget was proposed to cut 27.28% of NOAA's budget in order to "eliminate functions of the Department that are misaligned with the President's agenda and the expressed will of the American people". The Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research (OAR) had a 73.86% budget cut proposed, which would "eliminate all funding for climate, weather, and ocean Laboratories and Cooperative Institutes. It also does not fund Regional Climate Data and Information, Climate Competitive Research, Sea Grant (College and Aquaculture), or the National Oceanographic Partnership Program. This includes the complete defunding of the National Severe Storms Laboratory (NSSL) and the Cooperative Institute for Severe and High-Impact Weather Research and Operations (CIWRO), both located at the National Weather Center on the university campus.
In April 2025, the United States government terminated the visas of over 1,000 international students, particularly pro-Palestine supporting international students and academics, for possible deportation. Several OU student visas were among those terminated, however, OU never released how many were terminated. On April 25, the Department of Justice announced the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) "is working on a new system regarding international students studying in the U.S. and, until the system is issued, no students will have their student visas revoked".
On May 3, one day after the second protest at OU, the Department of Government Efficiency announced that it had terminated a $300,519 grant for OU from the National Science Foundation that was for "collaborative research" for the "understanding [of] the evolution of political campaign advertisements over the last century". DOGE announced it saved the United States government $124,466.78 by terminating the grant.
In December 2025, the university received national media attention for firing a transgender teaching assistant who assigned a failing grade to a student who didn't appropriately complete an assignment. The university categorized the assistant's grade as inadequate when defending the firing.
From Wikipedia’s article on University of Oklahoma, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.5