Marquette men should consider themselves fortunate that University President the Rev. Robert A. Wild does not follow too closely in the footsteps of his predecessor of days long past, the Rev. Albert C. Fox, according to Associate Professor of History Thomas Jablonsky.

In 1923, Fox received a letter from a young woman who was being courted by a Marquette student, asking for advice on the student's character.

Fox had his staff compile an extensive report on the student. He then relayed the report, which turned out to be highly unfavorable, to the young woman.

The Fox story was among several Jablonsky shared Tuesday night for about 20 members of the Marquette community who came to the Alumni Memorial Union's Henke Lounge to hear him speak about the university's history. Phi Alpha Theta, the history honor society, sponsored the event.

For Jablonsky, who is authoring a history of Marquette's first 100 years to coincide with the university's 125-year anniversary in 2006, the anecdote is just a part of "the story of student life that isn't in the statistics."

Jablonsky said he was part of a committee formed by the university eight years ago charged with looking into writing a serious history of Marquette, which had not been done since the 1950s.

As a historian familiar with the process of researching and writing such a history, Jablonsky volunteered to undertake the project.

Jablonsky's lecture ranged from the amusing, such as the letter to Fox, to the poignant, such as then-University President the Rev. James McCabe's decision to admit female students in the summer of 1909, making Marquette the first Jesuit university in the country to do so.

Women's rights was not the only social issue in which Marquette was a leader, according to Jablonsky.

He said Marquette also took a progressive stance on racial issues, chastising other universities which practiced segregation and aggressively investigating any allegations of discrimination on campus.

He cited an alleged incident of racism on the football team in the 1920s that drew a swift and stern response from university administrators.

Assistant Professor of History Lezlie Knox, Phi Alpha Theta's faculty adviser, said she enjoyed "seeing the parallels between what students do now and what students do in Marquette history."

Some of Jablonsky's stories were ones to which today's university can readily relate: When the first student identification cards were issued in the 1950s, the university had to suspend the distribution of cards briefly until it could figure out a way to stop students from falsifying their ages.

But some students, such as College of Arts & Sciences sophomore Lauren Demshar, said they likely would have taken issue with some former Marquette policies, such as a longstanding rule that required women to wear skirts to class and other public events.

"I don't think I'd do very well with that, considering I wear sweatpants to class," she said.

As Knox pointed out, the lecture showed how university efforts to control student conduct were much more agressive in the past.

Jablonsky cited an instance in which a student was facing expulsion for allegedly attending a communist meeting.

When the student appeared before university officials to refute the charges, she indignantly told them she would no longer be attending University Masses or Catholic functions — and was promptly expelled for apostasy.

Jablonsky said such examples lend a personal facet to Marquette's history.

"These are individual people's lives," he said.