The first students at Southwestern Louisiana Industrial Institute, UL today, were so well-liked by the people of Lafayette that the kids asked for school uniforms so that they could be better recognized.

SLII President Edwin Lewis Stephens described the school’s early support by the town, as “the greatest local support to the establishment of a State institution of learning that ... had ever been given in this section of the country.”

The support, he said, generated such enthusiasm and school spirit among the students, that they passed a petition for compulsory school uniforms to attract attention and to the place the students “under the solicitous (surveillance) of the friends of education and of the Institute.”

Stephens applauded the spirit, but turned down the uniforms.

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Jim Bradshaw