"...the Society has been leading this campus in all aspects and promoting school spirit for more than 100 years."
The Innocents Society is the Chancellor's Senior Honorary at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Currently in its 107th year, the Society has been an integral part of the campus community throughout the history of the University. Below are selected pieces of that history.
Founding
The Innocents Society was announced in the Daily Nebraskan on April 24th, 1903. Roscoe Pound, one of the guiding forces behind the establishment of the Innocents Society, was a dean at the University at the time and went on to become the dean of the Harvard Law College. It was after the societies of Harvard and Yale that the Innocents Society was modeled. The tackling tradition, among other things, was established based on the traditions of these Ivy League groups. Pound characterized the purpose of the Innocents as this: “to advance University interests at every possible point; to furnish a compact corps of harmonious workers, where college spirit and enthusiasm might be generated; to give a body of men who would be pledged to put their shoulders to the wheel in all University undertakings; to be a guiding central body to lead in those things that fail in the University of Nebraska because, being left to the student body in general, the old maxim applies, ‘What is everybody’s business is nobody’s business.’”