Hair, gum wrappers and pool water: The unique treasures in UNI Archives
Hair, gum wrappers and pool water: The unique treasures in UNI Archives
Beneath the surface of the University of Northern Iowa’s official history — meeting minutes, annual reports and administrative documents — lies a more personal record of campus life.
Inside the University Archives, student scrapbooks dating back more than a century preserve pieces of everyday experience: candy wrappers, handwritten notes and reflections on long-forgotten campus traditions.
“These are just as valuable as the school records,” said Tessa Wakefield, university archivist and special collections coordinator. “They show what students found important while they were here at UNI.”
And then, things like wood chips and even water from a former swimming pool complement the official story of the university.
But among the most interesting items in the collection is a scrapbook compiled by student Lucille Beman in the early 1920s. The book contains everything from candy to handwritten notes and even 14 different locks of hair meticulously arranged with a name under each one — a common token of friendship at the time.
“This was a very common practice in the older days when photos weren’t easy to access,” Wakefield said. “People would take little chunks of their friends’ hair and preserve them as a memento.”
What some may consider ordinary — gum wrappers, bits of ribbon or notes — offer a glimpse into what daily life looked like for students at the time.
“Scrapbooks show the student experience while these students were on campus,” Wakefield said. “We also have a lot of records officially telling the university story but these scrapbooks talk about what the students found important. And those are just as valuable.”
Another scrapbook, kept by student Carol Froning from the 1930s through the 1950s, reflects a different era of campus life. One page includes a handwritten complaint about the freshman beanie tradition — a short-lived custom that required new students to wear small caps for their first six weeks on campus. Froning’s note says, “The bane of my life for six weeks.”
Beyond scrapbooks, the archives also house physical fragments of UNI’s evolving landscape. Tiny wood chips from the Founders Elm — a tree that dated back to the university’s founding in 1876 — were saved as souvenirs when it was taken down in the 1960s to make way for Maucker Union. A section of the original UNI-Dome roof, once part of the landmark structure that opened in 1976, also found its way to the archives after renovations.
In a memorable preservation effort, water from the former East Gym pool — now the Innovative Teaching and Technology Center (ITTC) — was scooped into jars before the facility was closed and remodeled in the early 2000s.
Each of these pieces, no matter how small or strange, tells a story that might otherwise be lost. Together, they form a kind of unofficial memory of UNI — a record not of policies and programs, but of people.
To explore these artifacts or learn more about UNI Archives, visit https://scua.library.uni.edu/, where you can view online collections or arrange a research visit in Special Collections.
