Name-a-Day Calendar, July 3: Rhode Island Rams
Page 239 of 365
Chosen in: 1923
Chosen by: Unclear, but likely either school administration or the student body
The University of Rhode Island exists more or less because Brown University was bad at teaching agriculture. Brown was originally designated Rhode Island’s land-grant university in 1863, but they struggled with agricultural education out of the gates and within a couple decades it became clear the state needed a true ag school to replace it. The state established a new school in Kingston in the late 1880s and opened it in 1892 as the Rhode Island College of Agriculture and the Mechanic Arts. Brown ceded its land-grant status not long after,1 making the new state school Rhode Island’s only land-grant institution: the school for learning agriculture in Rhode Island.
I bring all of this up because it’s here, in agriculture, that the “Rams” nickname finds its origin; sheep are incredibly important animals to agriculture and rams are male sheep.
The school began playing football in 1895, baseball in 1898, and men’s basketball in 1903, but it wasn’t until 1923 that “Rams” became the school’s first official athletic nickname. I have no idea who exactly came to this decision because seemingly every publicly available document that discusses the nickname does so in the passive voice. I feel confident that the nickname came from inside the school—either from administration or from a student body vote—given that newspapers didn’t begin referring to Rhode Island’s teams as the Rams for several years after the fact.
Rhode Island hosted a live ram mascot for a little over 30 years, but they discontinued the practice at some point in the early 1960s, and a 1974 revival attempt proved unsuccessful. Since then, the costumed Rhody has represented the school honorably.
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We got here in a very roundabout way. Seeing no tangible benefit to retaining their land-grant status, Brown first offered to cede it in 1890. Then Congress passed the Morrill Act of 1890, the primary purpose of which was to ensure Black students had access to land-grant institutions. Many states requested additional funding to establish a segregated land-grant institution, but the states whose land-grant institutions did not discriminate by race still received the additional funding. Brown had been racially integrated since the 1870s, so they caught wind of this newfound tangible benefit and rescinded their offer. However, once the state opened what is now the University of Rhode Island in 1892, they removed Brown’s land-grant status anyway. Brown sued the state and lost, then appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, who declined to hear the case. Brown finally waved the white flag on this issue in 1894.