Here's why I think the story of DeWitt Wallace and the cow is an urban legend:

If you think the story is true, you pretty much have to assume the story was passed down orally from one student to another starting around the time when DeWitt Wallace was a student until the present day. Now it's somewhat believable that a funny story about a famous person would be repeated over and over, but there must have been a period of time when DeWitt Wallace wasn't famous.

Maybe people would remember his name for a few years after he was gone, but eventually he would be forgotten, and if the story was repeated at all, it would just be "some guy" who led a cow to the top floor of Old Main. It took DW many years to become rich enough to start donating millions of dollars to the college, and until that happened, the average student wouldn't have known who the heck he was. Even if newspaper articles identified him as the son of a former president of the college, they wouldn't have made the connection.

Oh, I suppose it's possible that some classmate of DW's, while visiting the campus many years later, made the connection, and said, "Hey! I remember him! He's the guy who got kicked out for leading a cow to the top floor of Old Main!" And maybe some student heard him, and the story took off from there.

But even if something like that happened, it's not enough to convince me the story is reliably true.

And the same objection could be made to the story about Burl Ives.

Burke: Where do you work?