The history of the referee shirt
Imagine how embarrassing it would be if you were a quarterback playing a game of football, and you screw up by accidentally throwing the ball to the referee that you thought was one of your teammates, because he was wearing a white shirt just like your uniform. That is what happened to an Arizonan college athlete when he was playing against Eastern Michigan University in 1920 according to the New York Times. The referee was named Lloyd Olds.
“He was the guy who came up with the referee shirt,” Greg Steiner, EMU’s senior associate athletics director for external affairs, explained.
The Olds Rec/IM is a wonderfully rambling collection of buildings yoked together near the middle of campus named after him. The incident obviously corrupted the result of the game, which bothered the professor so much that he asked a friend of his to help design him something so unique that nobody could possibly mistake him for a player again. The ditching of the formal wear typical of referees at the time was not well received by everyone according to the Times, but it has now been standard practice for so long that it is surprising that it needed to be invented – but it was invented at EMU.
Michigan State Normal School
This funny little story is just one of the surprising ones that you can delve into at Eastern Michigan University, which turned 175 in 2024. EMU started out as a Michigan State Normal School, an institution dedicated to providing schoolteachers across the rapidly expanding United States.
The university has also grown a lot since 1849. There were only a handful of students and teachers when Normal College opened. But one point of pride that EMU has is that the school was unusual at the time because the doors of higher education were open to both men and women from the beginning. The University of Michigan would continue, point blank, to refuse to admit any female students at all until 1870.
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As the College of Education, the core college of EMU that grew out of the Normal College while other schools and colleges formed around it, recounts the story on its website: “The ‘Normal’ was only the sixth teacher-training institution of its kind in the United States and the first to be built west of the Alleghenies. From its inception, the school valued practical training and established the nation’s earliest laboratory schools. Also embracing the needs of children with disabilities, the school quickly became a pioneer in special education. By the early twentieth century, the school also recognized the benefit of community engagement and was a national leader in developing partnerships with local schools, community organizations, and other prominent institutions of learning. Always anticipating what can be in the ever-changing social, economic, and educational landscapes, the school’s leaders cultivated opportunities and shaped teacher training, policy, and higher education across the state and quickly established an enduring national and global reputation.”
Faculty and students
In fall 2024, EMU had 11,129 undergraduate students and 2,223 graduate students being taught over 1,500 majors and minors by 1,014 faculty members. One former faculty member was the late Mark Jefferson, whose namesake building forms the central forum of most of EMU’s STEM programs.
“Mark Jefferson was a geographer most famous for drawing the maps for the Treaty of Versailles,” Ping Zhou, a professor who has been teaching geography for 14 years at Eastern, said.
A Massachusetts native and graduate of both Boston University and Havard according to EMU Today, Jefferson became the chair of the geography department from 1901 until 1939.
Inclusive resources
EMU also has a well-earned reputation for being LGBTQ friendly. The LGBT Resource Center is the most visible part of the campus’ welcoming attitude, but it is also reflective in coursework. After a five year hiatus, EMU introduced a queer communication course, running against the current trend of attempts at homophobic, transphobic and racially charged censorship on college campuses nationwide.
From the university’s current inclusive resources to its worldwide impact on referee uniforms, EMU has made its mark in the last 175 years.
Drew Saunders is a freelance business and environmental journalist who grew up just outside of Ann Arbor. He covers local business developments, embraces his foodie side with reviews restaurants, obsesses over Michigan's environmental state, loves movies, and feels spoiled by the music he gets to review for Ann Arbor!
