In those first years, students and faculty members made their way up steep, often muddy paths and navigated around construction sites to reach the buildings on the hill. In 1914, the summer sessions met on Front Campus in tent classrooms and a large temporary pavilion (with a wood roof, canvas walls and a dirt floor) while Kent Hall was being built.
“Kent State hill is weariful long—but we trudge on together, a glad-hearted throng.”
The Tabernacle, as it was called, could hold 1,000 people, serving as an assembly hall, auditorium, theater and classroom. On July 29, 1914, a crowd of 3,000 jammed the pavilion and Front Campus to see the school’s first 34 graduates receive a two-year diploma.
In 1929, the Ohio General Assembly authorized the addition of colleges of liberal arts and the awarding of degrees in arts and sciences, as well as baccalaureate degrees in education—and the school (known since 1915 as Kent State Normal College) became Kent State College. (Six years later, in 1935, it became Kent State University.)
This official "Kent State" song was taught to incoming freshmen
Perhaps to commemorate this achievement, and all it took to get there, May Prentice, one of the first four hires in 1912, wrote the lyrics to “Kent State”—with the apt refrain, “Climbing the hill at Kent”—which appeared in the 1930 Chestnut Burr.
It was set to music and included in the first edition of Official Songs of Kent State College, published in 1931, appearing again in a second edition published in 1951. For decades, these official songs were taught to incoming freshmen.
