An old table gets a new home
Students put memories of "the horseshoe" into words

photo by Will Moss

An icon of the J-School, the "horseshoe" table in Room 211 of the J-School is loaded with graffiti and memories. The table will have a new life in Anderson Hall next fall.

Room 211 of the J-School contains a behemoth copy table used by generation of students learning the finer points of editing, the difference between who and whom, affect and effect.

With the construction of the new journalism building, Anderson Hall, nearing completion, students and faculty, past and present, have inquired about the fate of the beloved table.

Professor Sharon Barrett recently assigned her Feature Writing class to report and write a story about the well-known table.

The table will cost the journalism department $3,660 to move Journalism Dean Jerry Brown told Barrett’s students. Currently capable of seating close to 20 people, the table will likely be used in a faculty conference room, shortened by six feet at its ends to fit in the room, Brown said.

photo by Tim Kupsick

Journalists from around the state gathered around the table for a workshop taught by Professor Sharon Barrett in September 2004.

The U-shaped table — also called “the horseshoe table” — was probably built inside Room 211, says Nathaniel Blumberg, J-School dean from 1956 to 1968.

“It was there when I arrived as dean in 1956,” Blumberg told one of Barrett’s students.

Based on the size of the table, Blumberg speculated that it was built along with the current journalism building in 1936.

Students and faculty, past and present, have fond memories of the table. Here are some of their favorites, excerpted from stories written by Barrett's feature-writing students.

- James Laber

************************************************

The door of Room 211 in the University of Montana Journalism Building swung open and a student armed with a Super Soaker water gun yelled, “You blew my four-point!” and fired a stream of water at reporting professor Michael Downs.

Downs rolled halfway over the top of the room’s large, U-shaped table – nearly kicking photography student Mary Hayes in the face, Downs remembers. Then the door slammed shut and the student was gone.

The table, which for more than 70 years has resided in what a campus map now calls the Old Journalism Building, didn’t creak, groan or budge under the sudden weight of Downs, who calmly stepped back down to the floor and told us, “Write it down.” 

It was just one more day in the life of a journalism school table.

Looking like a giant, brown horseshoe, the table is a throwback to pre-computer newsrooms, when copy editors sat around the outside of the table – called the rim – and edited stories.

Carol Van Valkenburg, print chair and 1972 J-School graduate, says the table is likely as old as the building itself, which was dedicated in 1936. And when Anderson Hall, a new, state-of-the-art journalism building behind Jeannette Rankin Hall, opens in the fall, the old table will be waiting there on the fourth floor as a relic that many alumni are unwilling to let fade away.

On the day of the water-gun ambush, which, it turned out, was only an exercise to test our eye for detail, 20 or so journalism students filled the rim.

Moments before the scheduled assault, Downs had described how a reporter discovered drops of blood near a crime scene and then measured the drops against coins from her purse so she could tell readers whether they were the size of a nickel, dime or quarter.

What could we tell a reader now about what just happened? What, for instance, was the shooter wearing?

To help refresh our memories, Downs brought the student, Kristen Inbody – then a graduate student in political science and now with the Peace Corps in Romania – back for one more quick look.

When we stood to examine the water evidence, I saw that thin streams remained streaked across the top of the table, which was a bit player one more time in a lesson that would be imprinted in the memory bank of at least one future alumni.

Now, two years later, I may be one of the last students to sit at the table in a class. Next fall it will sit in a faculty meeting room in the new building, no longer used for classes.

                                                                                    - Ethan Robinson

*********************

Charlie Hood received an unexpected gift when he retired as Dean of the University of Montana's School of Journalism in 1993: a piece of paper that read “Hood Sucks.”

“I thought I was pretty good,” said Hood.

Dean Hood’s colleagues had rubbed the epithet from the once deeply-carved surface of the copy desk that has resided in Room 211 of the journalism building for decades. 

photo by Will Moss

The view from underneath: Throughout the years the table has acquired other lasting signs of student use.

The horseshoe-shaped colossus has held the heads of dozing reporting students since the days of the J-school’s first dean, Arthur Stone.  Now the Journalism School wants to haul the relic into the future by moving it into the new building, scheduled to open this spring. 

The table will have to be “dissected” in order to move it, said Dean Jerry Brown.  Six feet must be amputated from both ends and then fused back on after the table is safe in its new home. 

The desktop was once so gouged with students’ etchings “you couldn’t put a piece of paper down and write” without your pen tip slipping into small canyons, said Professor Dennis Swibold. 

The School eventually resurfaced the table with a Formica-like veneer that is too hard to yield to folding-knives and scissor blades.  Today you can take notes at the desk without harpooning your paper, but some entertaining history has been lost.   

“There was some great stuff in the table,” Swibold said. “It was a hard decision.”

                                                                                    - Israel Tockman

*********************

All professor Michael Downs wanted to do was keep his feet on the ground. Instead, he upended a tradition.

Room 211 in the University of Montana School of Journalism was undergoing a floor re-tiling 2003 when Downs walked in and noticed the U-shaped table — usually dominating the room — had been dismantled.  At 36 feet in length, the table resembled an elongated horseshoe suspended by 22 wooden legs, with the base of its “U” nearest the chalkboard.

Downs, who preferred to walk within the sides of the “U” while teaching, had to sit on the tabletop at the base of the “U,” lift his legs from the floor, and swivel them over the table to reach the chalkboard on the table’s outside.

Sick of this acrobatic maneuver and wary of kicking seated students in the head, Downs asked the maintenance crew if they’d be able to reassemble the J-school icon with its open end facing the board.

The crew took the suggestion to heart, though Downs had meant only to ask the question.

“They didn’t realize I was just gathering information and turned it around,” Downs said.  “It’d been that way for 30-something years. Carol (VanValkenburg) came in and went nuts.”

VanValkenburg, chair of the Department of Print Journalism and 1972 J-school alum, said the table had been facing its original direction since before she attended the school as a student.

VanValkenburg and other long-time professors who taught using a lectern placed atop the base of the “U” were now flustered and upset to be facing the U-table's open slot.

“Here I was the youngest member of the faculty, not even on tenure track, and I’m changing school history,” Downs said. “It’s my one contribution to School of Journalism lore.”

                                                                                         - Keriann Lynch

*********************

Bob Gilluly was a journalism student in the 1950s and worked as a copy editor on the Montana Kaimin newspaper.  The copy editor at the time, John Bansch, gave him an A each quarter because he wasn’t afraid to “cut copy.”

He remembers between four and six editors a night working around the copy desk. 

Gilluly, now a retired Great Falls Tribune editor, remembers a typical night around the copy desk. 

The Kaimin copy room was co-ed until 10 p.m. when campus curfew required that female students be checked back into their dorm rooms, Gilluly said.

“[The copy edit table] was a great place to shoot the breeze and compare notes,” Gilluly said.

“There may have been the occasional six-pack of beer,” Gilluly said.  Gilluly being the oldest, because he attended school after serving in the army, was often sent to the nearby grocery store to make the beer run. 

“We drank beer like newspaper people,” Gilluly said.

It was during one of these nights of drinking Gilluly and his fellow copy editors found a hole in the wall of the Kaimin office.

“We would toss the empty cans in the hole in the wall,” Gilluly said. 

“That copy desk is like an old friend to me.” Gilluly said.  “If there is a symbol of the J-school it is that table.”

What will it mean to Gilluly knowing that the Journalism School will be moving the copy desk into its new building?

“It will bridge the gap between(students of today and) people like me; I just hope some of that tradition can rub off.” Gilluly said.

Gilluly’s advice to all those students moving into the new building, “Work hard and have a beer.”

                                                                                            - Jake Grilley

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