‘Rock Chalk’ chant

The University Science Club officially adopted the famous “Rock Chalk” chant in 1886. E.H.S. Bailey, a chemistry professor, and some of his associates were returning from a conference by train to Lawrence. As they traveled, they talked of the need for a good, rousing yell. The click-clack of the train wheels passing over the rail joints suggested a rhythm and a cadence to them.

At first, their version was “Rah, Rah, Jayhawk, KU” repeated three times. Later, in place of the rahs, an English professor suggested “Rock Chalk,” a transposition of chalk rock, the name for the limestone outcropping found on Mount Oread, site of the Lawrence campus.

The cheer became known worldwide. President Teddy Roosevelt pronounced it the greatest college chant he’d ever heard. It was used by Kansas troops fighting in the Philippines in 1899, in the Boxer Rebellion in China and World War II.

The words to the chant are simple. “Rock Chalk, Jayhawk, KU” is repeated five times.

School colors and seal

Kansas University’s colors have been crimson and blue since the early 1890s.

Originally, the Board of Regents had decided to adopt the University of Michigan’s colors, maize and sky blue.

Maize and blue were shown at oratorical meets, and they may have colored the Kansas crew in rowing competitions in the mid-1880s. But in 1890 when football arrived at KU, a clamor arose for Harvard’s crimson to honor Col. John J. McCook, a Harvard man who had given money for KU’s athletic field. Faculty members who had graduated from Yale insisted that their academic lineage and Yale blue not be overlooked. In 1896, crimson and blue were adopted officially.

KU’s first chancellor, the Rev. R.W. Oliver, chose the seal in 1866. It pictures Moses kneeling in awe before a bush that is engulfed in flames but “is not burnt.”