The Cooper Union Archives & Special Collections

Election Season at The Cooper Union

From panels debating the electoral college to pies thrown at politicians, our tiny college has seen more than its fair share of election season action. A new library exhibit, "Election Season at The Cooper Union," presents a selection of these moments, with imagery of politicians speaking in the Great Hall alongside student coverage of and opinions about elections.

A few fun facts we learned along the way:

• Student newspaper The Pioneer first endorsed a politician in 1952, advocating for Adlai Stevenson for president. Stevenson lost to Eisenhower a month later.
• Not one but two politicians had pies thrown at them on the Cooper campus: New York City Mayor Abraham Beame at a pre-primary mayoral debate in 1977, and California Governor Jerry Brown on his way in to speak at the invitation of the Student Council in 1979. Both pies were thrown by Aaron Kaye, who became notorious for throwing pies at politicians. New York City Congressperson Bella Abzug, who participated in the 1977 mayoral debate where Beame was hit, identified the culprit in the Times: “Yeah, it's Kaye. He threw a pie at me a while ago.” 
• Abraham Lincoln's iconic 1860 speech in the Great Hall - which set the tone both for his campaign and the Great Hall's future events - was actually scheduled for the Plymouth Church in Brooklyn, but was relocated due to weather. Ah, February!

...and a few great quotes we found listening to archival voices:

• "The State has no right to abolish the suffrage for any class of people... Do you tell me suffrage is a privilege? Allow that sentiment to crystallize in the hearts of the people and we have rung the death knell of American liberty." - political activist Elizabeth Cady Stanton, “Mass Meeting of Women Suffragists,” May 7, 1894
• “For the success of our democracy depends on the extent to which politics can serve the end of education, of justice, of truth.  Those who would degrade our political processes threaten to destroy the very essence of a free system.  If these methods succeed today then they will be used again and again until freedom, dignity, decency themselves sink from sight into quicksands of confusion, of mistrust and of fear.” - Politician Adlai Stevenson, “Address to Democratic Party State Committee, in Regard to New York State Elections,” October 30, 1954
• “The cities which in many cases can be referred to and used as refuge centers for the nation’s destitute must elect and work for candidates that are willing to create a national education standard, so that a little Black boy from Mississippi will know as much as a middle-class youngster in Boston, Massachusetts. We must elect men who will not play games with the people’s money. Who do not behave as if our tax dollars suddenly became their own personal treasury, and how this power of money can move city elected officials, move them around like pawns on a chessboard. I personally am nobody’s pawn.” - Newark Mayor Kenneth A. Gibson, “The Cities' Stake in the Election,” October 2, 1972

Come through the Library Atrium now through November 8th to view "Election Season at The Cooper Union."

Interested in learning more? All the materials for this show were sourced from two collections: Voices From the Great Hall and The Pioneer student newspaper collection. If you'd like to view particular materials in person, please reach out to us at archives@cooper.edu.