The University Star Fall 2017 shirt

In 1911, Fred Adams was working night and day milking cows, carrying wood for his room and board, and selling his father’s extracts to pay for an education at a small teacher’s college in the Texas Hill Country.

So, what did the 20-year-old Austin resident have to lose when he made the proposal that the college needed a newspaper?

Adams assured the president he would absorb any printing costs that advertising didn’t cover. In exchange, the president allowed Adams to keep the profits.

With student body approval, the newspaper joined the Pedagog; the yearbook that has been published ever since the institution opened its doors in 1903, in becoming the documentation tools of the institution’s history.

The name of the paper, The Star, can be traced to Adams' diary where he wrote, “The Star rose again all right today.” And, it has been rising each day on the institution’s grounds ever since.

As one of the oldest student publications in Texas, The Star has published steadily through the Great Depression, two world wars, and through the Korean, Vietnam and Gulf Wars. Lyndon Johnson, the 36th president of the United States, served as the summer editor of The Star in 1930.