Collins Unbound

Looking to learn a little bit about fingerprinting between your classes or errands? Ron Thom has got you covered! President Emeritus Ron Thomas donated a collection of his favorite books to the Archives & Special Collections upon his retirement, and one of the books is Practical Fingerprinting by B.C. Bridges. In this book you can discover a little more about the history of the fingerprint identification process. You can learn terms like “Radial Loop” or my personal favorite, the “Exceptional Arch” to describe attributes of fingerprints. President Emeritus Thomas was specifically interested in the history of criminology in the Victorian Era. At this time the modern police force was emerging, identification technology was becoming more advanced, and detective stories were booming. President Emeritus Thomas wrote in his essay, “Literature is Everything”,that these phenomena were all “forms of storytelling, too, about the very nature of individuals during a time of dramatic social change”. The book collection also contains many other criminology books such as Crime: It’s Causes and Remedies by Cesare Lombroso and Criminal Sociology by Enrico Ferri. Come to the Archives and Special Collections and explore a bit of the history of criminology!

The Archives & Special Collections is open on Monday – Thursday from 10:00-3:00 p.m. or by appointment.

By Laure Mounts

FROM TOP:  1.) AWS president-elect, Marian Swanson (center) with Rosemary Martinson (left) and Betty Rusk (right). A Sound Past. 2.) New Otlah members. A Sound Past. 3.) New SPURS members. A Sound Past.

On December 30, 2017, Imperial Dragon, a Chinese restaurant on Sixth Avenue in Tacoma, shut down. Although the Imperial Dragon restaurant had been in operation since 1993, the site was previously home to two other restaurants: Empress Garden, from 1971 until Imperial Dragon’s opening; and The Towers Restaurant from 1947 until the late 1960s.

The Towers Restaurant was frequently used as a venue for University of Puget Sound (then College of Puget Sound) student events. One such event was the Associated Women Students’ annual banquet on May 15, 1950, celebrating the first anniversary of the Associated Women Students (AWS) as an organization. Women’s groups on campus such as the Women’s Athletic Association (WAA), Otlah (an academic honors group for senior women and the predecessor to Mortar Board), and SPURS (a service honors group for sophomore women) were present at this event. WAA introduced the president and cabinet for the 1950-1951 school year, as well as awarded individual students and sororities for athletic achievement. Both SPURS and Otlah announced their new members for the 1950-1951 school year. The AWS president-elect, Marian Swanson, received the president’s book. For more detail about the women present and the awards given, see the May 19, 1950 issue of The Trail or take a look at A Sound Past to see our collection of photos from student events held at The Towers.

For more information about Imperial Dragon and its history, see the Tacoma News Tribune article from January 4, 2018.

The Archives & Special Collections is open Monday – Thursday from 10:00 a.m.-3:00 p.m. or by appointment.

By Julia Masur