# William Oxley Thompson

William Oxley Thompson, D.D. (November 5, 1855 – December 9, 1933) was the fifth president of Ohio State University. During his term as president, he was known for his practice of segregationist policies against black students on campus.

## Biography

Thompson was born in Cambridge, Ohio, to David Glenn Thompson and Agnes Miranda Oxley. Thompson was educated at Muskingum College and Western Theological Seminary. An ordained minister, Thompson spent the first half of his career in Presbyterian ministry. Upon his first wife's death in 1885 he turned to higher education and became the first president of the Longmont Presbyterian College founded by the Presbyterian Synod of Colorado. He was appointed president of Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, in 1891 and served until 1899 when he resigned to become president of the Ohio State University.
His extensive service at Ohio State University (26 years) is honored with a larger-than-life bronze statue by Erwin Frey of President Thompson in academic dress, positioned in front of the eponymous William Oxley Thompson Memorial Library on "The Oval" (the central green space on the Ohio State University campus). He is known for being involved in students education and social lives, presiding over the Ohio State win over Oxford University on October 10, 1924, in intercollegiate debate. Thompson's tenure at Ohio State was marked by two seminal events. The first occurred in 1906 with the passage by the Ohio Legislature of the Eagleson Bill, which formalized and legally locked in Ohio State's flagship role in the state's public system of higher education. The Eagleson law mandated that only Ohio State, among Ohio's public universities, would be allowed to offer doctoral education or conduct basic research. The second event, and the culmination of both the raison d'être for Ohio State's founding in 1870 and the aim of the Eagleson Bill in 1906, occurred in 1916 with Ohio State's election into the Association of American Universities. Thompson also served as President of the university during World War One, which saw a massive drop in student attendance for 1917-1918 as many left to join the military or other war-related activities.
As well as serving as Ohio State President, Thompson also served on the Columbus Board of Education for a number of years in the early 1900s. While School Board President, Thompson pursued segregationist policies, leading efforts for "changes in district lines for student attendance, and a new placement policy which limited Black teacher's placement in schools where there was a significant Black population," as well as to racially segregate the schools themselves (despite an 1881 Board resolution abolishing separate schools for Black children, as well it being unlawful in Ohio since the passage of the Arnett Bill in 1887). In 1907, he introduced a motion to determine if the Board had "the power... to establish separate schools for the white and black races and to compel the children... to attend." Despite de jure segregated schools being forbidden in Ohio, as well as organized protests and a successful civilian lawsuit against creating a segregated school, Thompson and the Board, through the use of "the political process, [neighborhood] gerrymandering, and the establishment of discontinuous school attendance zones," were able to build and open the Champion Avenue School in 1909, a de facto segregated school. Thompson refuted the assertion that it was a segregated school, saying "It is not true that the Board of Education of Columbus is establishing a school for colored youth. It is true, however, that the Champion Avenue School will have more than 90% of colored children in it. All the teachers will be colored teachers."
In 1924, he retired as president of Ohio State. He died on December 9, 1933, in Columbus, Ohio. Thompson's nephew, William Hertzog Thompson, was a prominent academic at the University of Nebraska, and the father-in-law of Warren Buffett.

## Honors

In 1926, Thompson was elected Moderator of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America.