1870: Ohio State University is founded by an old white man with prodigious facial hair as a school that can service the entire population of future old white men with facial hair in the state of Ohio.
1878: Due to a paperwork mishap, fifty-eight new colleges are named Ohio State University, causing the addition of a very forceful “The” to the university’s title. One of the other schools drops the “State” to become the much less confusing Ohio University. The remaining fifty-seven rename themselves Kent State.
1878 & ½: OSU’s first secret society, the Ohio State University Marching Band, is formed, beginning an era of dark necromancy and supernatural activity housed in the university’s newly erected necrotic mansion/football stadium. No reanimated corpses will be reported until the following year.
1900: A new, comprehensive language arts focus is added to the university’s charter, mandating an extensive list of new cheers and spirit-based spelling in order to reinforce the principle that, if nothing else, all graduates will be able to spell the word “Ohio.”
1916: The Ohio State University contributes to the war effort by providing Buckeye gift bags to American troops overseas, the chocolatey contents of which promptly melt and motivate culinary scientists to invent the more structurally sound M&M.
1942: In an attempt to capitalize off of the number of unused buckeye candies left over from World War I, OSU weaponizes their mascot nut as ammunition for troops on the Western Front. Germans with severe tree nut allergies are devastated by the new technology.
1950: The unpopularity of OSU’s original mascot, Saponin Aescin the Poisonous Nut, prompts administration to adopt the friendlier, definitively-less-menacing Brutus the Buckeye, an equally poisonous nut who will steal your cell phone, sit on you, jump in your car, and beat his head inexplicably while young children are slowly deprived of their innocence.
1951: New football coach Woody Hayes spruces up the OSU team, wears visors.
1956: The groundskeepers of the university decide to play a prank on the administration by adding as many diagonal pathways as possible to the Oval. No one notices but the OSU squirrels, the longest residents of the university. Protests are held in trees across campus.
1969: Not to be outdone by the Woodstock music festival in New York, OSU hosts its first and last Buck-stock, an event held on the Oval and attended entirely by wild squirrels.
1978: Facing criticism due to having a 100% in-state student body, OSU implements its first quota, requiring three of its fifty-thousand-plus undergraduates to come from somewhere other than Columbus, Toledo, Cleveland, Westerville, Akron, Cincinnati, or Dayton.
1987: Messiah Woody Hayes leaves the world of men. His disciples quickly begin naming everything after the Visor God.
1989: The Berlin Wall falls in Germany, prompting hundreds of students to jump into Mirror Lake in celebration. The event becomes an annual one, although the origins are forgotten the next year when no one is sober enough to remember how it started.
2000: The number of out-of-state undergraduates reaches an all-time high when four students from the same Illinois high school are admitted for the fall term.
2015: Coinciding with winning the first-ever College Football National Championship, students decide to combat the freezing temperatures and devastating wind chills by burning their couches for warmth. Local authorities misunderstand the attempt to keep up body temperature in the tundra-like climate and respond with tear gas and general disapproval.
2018: An interdimensional portal to Hell opens in Mirror Lake and postpones the jump, while hordes of undead demons overrun campus. Michigan still sucks.
-Charlotte Racioppo, Contributor