Colin V. Dyment
By 1917, the year after the journalism program at the University of Oregon was named a professional school, new faces began to appear on the faculty -- faces whose names were to become inextricably bound up with the history of the School of Journalism and Communication. That year, Colin V. Dyment, a 35-year-old journalist and editor of the Oregon Journal in Portland, who had worked closely with Eric Allen since 1913 in the early development of the journalism program at Oregon, left for a post at the University of Washington. When the United States entered the war in 1917, Dyment was still directing journalism at the UW. He took a leave of absence and, as an officer in the American Red Cross, departed for the European front.
In 1920 Dyment was lured back to Oregon as the dean of the College of Literature, Science and the Arts. He also continued to teach in Journalism. where he remained until his retirement in 1925. Dyment stressed accuracy above all else. In fact, one of the most singular memories of those early students is the vast array of signs posted around the School with but a single word: "Accuracy." He is often remembered for his tests on information and accuracy.
It was Mr. Dyment's practice ... now and then to give a quiz in which no one was really expected to make a correct answer to any of the questions. He threw quizzes at you every once in a while to show you how little you really knew and how easily you could be in error. (DeWitt Gilbert ‘20) |
Dyment was also an advocate of posting grades. He believed that grades were everybody's business and convinced the University administration to post a blanket-sized sheet of four pages printed in six-point type consisting of every grade for every student at the University. Students dubbed it the "Scandal Sheet," and it ran yearly from 1920 to 1925 when Dyment again left Oregon for the University of Washington.
In 1922, while still at Oregon, Dyment was asked to develop a code of ethics for Oregon newspapers. It was one of the first codes of its kind in the country and endures today as a testament to the devotion of the School of Journalism and Communication to moral responsibility in the media. |