By 1880, the Normal School reached an enrollment of 250 students. The institution’s growing student body devised ways to entertain themselves on campus and form communities with their peers. They held musical performances in the Chapel and organized literary societies or “debate clubs,” respectively called The Philomathean (all-male) and The Alpha (all-female), where they debated social and moral issues of the day. For the athletic students, in 1886, the first organized baseball team was formed. Prior to this, casual baseball games between “the Normal School boys” and “the Cedar Falls boys” took place. The women also formed a gymnastics club; admission to their performances cost ¢15 ($4.89 in today’s money). In the early 1880s, Maude Gilchrist, Principal Gilchrist’s daughter, was allowed to enroll at 14 (she was given a huge exception to the minimum age of 16) and became the literary editor of the student newspaper, The Students’ Offering. Maude also organized and led the popular gymnastics club (with 30 members). Maude and Anna McGovern were the first two students to graduate with a four-year degree from the institution in 1880, earning a bachelor of science in didactics. Maude’s brother, Fred Gilchrist, also attended the Normal School and lived in North Hall, where he reported “abominable” living conditions. Faced with a student population that seemed destined to continue increasing, the necessity for more space also grew–standing during lectures or having classes in the hallways was not sustainable! The students and faculty were overjoyed to learn of the approval for a new building, Gilchrist Hall, named after Principal Gilchrist, in 1882. In the fall of 1883, when the building was ready for use, Gilchrist contained three floors and an attic. The chapel within could seat seven hundred people. The building also had a library, chemical and physical laboratories, music rooms, offices, reception rooms, coat rooms, six classrooms, and a model school. Principal Gilchrist, who had led the school for a decade, resigned over a competing philosophy of school curricula: Gilchrist favored more humanities classes, while the rest of the faculty favored pedagogy-related subjects. Homer Horatio Seerley became President of the school in 1887.