How Well Do You Know the UConn Story? Answers

 Answers to UConn's holiday trivia quiz.


1. UConn Health Center
2. Avery Point
3. Fort Trumbull
4. The Depot Campus

A: Fort Trumbull. From 1946 to 1950, more than 5,000 students – mostly GIs returning from World War II – attended classes at the renovated Maritime Training School in Fort Trumbull, a property acquired by UConn to handle enrollment that had quadrupled from its pre-war levels. The Fort Trumbull campus, nicknamed “Siberia” because of its distance from Storrs, included a bookstore, dining hall, student radio station, and a weekly campus newspaper called the Trumbull Tide. The Depot Campus was a residential facility in its days as the Mansfield Training School, but that came to an end before UConn took over responsibility for the property.


1. Wilbur Cross
2. D.C. Phillips
3. John Graham Mellor
4. A.B. Bronwell

A: Wilbur Cross. Cross, a Mansfield native, taught English at Yale and was the first dean of that university’s graduate school. He served as governor of Connecticut from 1931 to 1939, and during that time he sponsored legislation that funded the expansion of the UConn campus and the building of its first library, named the Wilbur Cross Library, which now houses numerous student services offices as well as Wilbur’s Café.


1. 1893
2. 1897
3. 1894
4. 1890

A: 1894. Even though they weren’t allowed as students under state law, the college began admitting women in 1890, thanks to President Benjamin Koon’s belief in the importance of educating men and women together. Nellie Wilson, a Mansfield native, was the first woman to enroll at what is now UConn, and since she walked to class every day from home because there was no dorm for women, also the first commuter student.

The first women's basketball team.


1. 1-5
2. 10-3
3. 0-1
4. 2-0

A: 2-0. In February and March 1902, women students at what is now UConn played their first organized basketball games, both against Willimantic High School. UConn won 15-6 and 25-6. Standout players for the team included Grace Koons, daughter of the school’s former president, Benjamin Koons, and team captain Marjorie Monteith, daughter of history professor Henry R. Monteith. In 2002, 2009, and 2010, the UConn women’s team would again achieve undefeated seasons, to significantly greater fanfare.


1. Prohibition Party
2. American Conservative Party
3. Party for Socialism and Liberation
4. Communist Party USA

A: Sam Webb has been the chairman of the Communist Party USA, the largest and oldest Communist organization in the country, since 2000. He has a master’s degree in economics from UConn.


1. Blue and white articles of clothing
2. Shirts emblazoned with the letter ‘F,’ for “freshman”

3. Beanies
4. Roller skates


A: Beanies. Starting in 1922, freshmen were forced to wear beanies (cloth caps) during their first semester, a common practice at universities. By the 1960s, this was reduced to Orientation Week. At UConn, the practice largely came to an end in 1968, when freshmen were allowed to donate money to famine relief in the breakaway African nation of Biafra rather than wear a beanie. The so-called “Beanies for Biafra” campaign, organized by the UConn chapter of Students for a Democratic Society, netted more than $214 that year.



1. 187
2. 5,823
3. 10
4. 1,721

A: 1,721. Two students, Barbara Everett and Rod Longley, divided up the campus between them and counted all the fallen trees. In the aftermath of the storm, messages were broadcast to students and parents by makeshift radio hookup, and the student newspaper was produced on a hand-cranked mimeograph press. And incidentally, classes started on schedule that semester.


1. 249
2. 281
3. 300
4. 193

A: There are 281 blue lights on campus. The institution that became UConn opened its doors 132 years ago, in September 1881.


1. Homework
2. Milk cows in the barns on Horsebarn Hill
3. Attend religious services
4. Sing the school’s fight song

A: Attend religious services. Students were required to attend chapel services every day while school was in session, which generally meant worship at what is now the Storrs Congregational Church. Until 1932, the church provided for-credit religious education classes to students, and its minister served as university chaplain until 1960. The other houses of worship along North Eagleville Road weren’t built until after World War II.


1. 1,881
2. 7,979
3. 5,635
4. 10,013

A: 7,979 undergraduate, graduate, and associate’s degrees were awarded in May 2013, including 5,575 bachelor’s degrees, 1,537 master’s degrees, and doctorates in law, medicine, pharmacy, philosophy, dental medicine, physical therapy, audiology, musical arts, education, and nursing practice. To put that in perspective: There were four times as many degrees awarded this year as there were total enrolled students in 1941.