In honor of the 150th anniversary of Bowie State University’s founding in 1865, we have scanned all the currently held editions of the Normal Eye and College Eye, the earliest student newspaper held in the Bowie State University Archives. It started out as the Normal Eye, since at that time Bowie was known as Maryland Normal and Industrial School at Bowie. The name changed to College Eye in the September 1938 issue. A “normal school” was where high school graduates were trained to become teachers, and where they learned the teaching standards, or norms, of their time. In 1938, the name of the school changed to Maryland Teachers College at Bowie, and this was reflected in the changed name of the newspaper. At this time the school principal, Leonidas S. James, became President of the college.
The means of producing this newspaper changed over time. The printed versions are the easiest to read, and search. The typed editions were reproduced by the use of a mimeograph machine. You typed the copy (and drew the pictures) onto a master sheet, paper coated with wax backed by stiff cardboard. This created a stencil, and the ink was forced through holes in the stencil onto paper, allowing multiple copies to be made from one master. All editions from 1942 on were offset printed, as were the March and May/June 1935 editions.
The original scanned images have been combined into PDF files. We've tried to make each one searchable by running OCR (optical character recognition) software on each PDF file. However, due to the inconsistent quality of the typed editions, those may present difficulties in searching.
If you have questions or problems with any of these files, please contact the Archives.