THE FERDINAND SOCIETY was founded at Portland State College in 1956 by a group of faculty members who wanted a way for faculty from different disciplines to meet socially and share ideas. Once a month, members would meet for lunch and conversation. The Society was also interested in making connections with the Portland community, and local politicians were invited to participate. To make sure that no part of the College and, later the University, dominated the meetings, each division was assigned a specific number of members, depending on its size. Passing years brought changes, but the Society preserved its original purpose as a place for faculty to socialize and converse. The original Society was limited to male members. That changed finally with the admission of Maxine Thomas, who was nominated using the gender-neutral name “Max Thomas.” The original plan for the monthly lunches was that they should be like a conversation around a boarding house table. In fact that notion may have lain behind the Society’s name, which was taken from the children’s story of Ferdinand the Bull. Meetings were to be “bull sessions.” (The other rationale for the name was that, like Ferdinand, members would rather smell the flowers than fight.) The venue for luncheons was local restaurants and finally meetings were moved to the Cascade Room in Smith Center. In later years, meetings, though still social, were more formal, with presentations by outside speakers, in a lecture plus questions format, very much like our RAPS luncheons. The Society also had a couple of other gatherings, a dinner in the winter holiday season and a get-together in the summer. In the early years of the 21st century, RAPS and the Ferdinand Society sometimes sponsored joint activities. The founding members belonged to an earlier – or “greatest”—generation, for whom liquor played a larger role in their life, and early years of the Ferdinand involved the consumption of a fair amount of whisky. Retiring members were given a bottle of Four Roses until that brand went out of business. In fact, the Society owned a considerable collection of bottles of liquor. History seems not to have recorded what happened to them. 6 Past Tense: The Ferdinand Society, 1956 to 2006 Though membership was limited, the Society did partially fill the function of a faculty club. Indeed, members talked about the possibility of establishing a faculty club at PSU. Instead, life at PSU went in the opposite direction. The increased workload of faculty members meant that most felt that they could not set aside the time for the once-a-month gatherings, and it was impossible to attract enough new members to sustain the Society, as older members retired. The end came in the fall term of 2006, when the last President or Matador, Scott Burns, announced that the Society was no longer sustainable. Its demise was the front-page story of the Vanguard for November 2006 and was noted in the RAPS Sheet for March 2010. Many RAPS members recall with affection their membership in the Ferdinand. Friendships still survive that were formed across disciplinary boundaries. The records of the Ferdinand Society are now in a metal box that will be turned over to the University archivist. —Jack Cooper —Photograph by Jack Cooper
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