The Reflector Begins

Debaters also launched The Reflector (1891–1894), the university’s first student newspaper. Its pages carried spirited arguments and student perspectives. By the early 1900s, the same students helped create The Oregon Weekly, which would evolve into today’s Oregon Daily Emerald. Journalism at Oregon, like the library, began with debaters.

Citation: Morris (1920).

“Knowledge is chiefly valuable as a means of mental activity, but unless the individual obtainer of it possess the power of expression, unless that which he has acquired by diligent study and perseverance be at his command to explicate, he practically knows but little. On the contrary a thorough mastery of language, which to a certain degree lie within the province of a debating society, makes his knowledge valuable. Again in the whirl and entanglements of topics, comparatively speaking, the individual sees nothing in an undivided light and receives no lasting impression. He reads passively, conceives feebly and forgets speedily. While in a debating society, led on by a desire for supremacy, the actions of an adversary are watched with intense interest and keen thought. While the points in debate are logically related as the more or less interdependent parts of the whole, each receives justice by being made in its turn the central subject of thought. The mind in its work thus becomes more animated and energetic because its ideas are kindred, all converging to a single impression. By such an arrangement the logical powers are trained and the student unconsciously acquires the habit of bringing in writing or speaking his thoughts out of chaos into order.”