It’s an 8, not a 9.
I immediately saw it as a '9' adjacent to a divider line, as did several other people independently in the first thread I saw about this. Despite the line, you can tell the number is a '9' by the slant on the lower part.
It would be better if there were a higher resolution image, but there are other ways you can tell the number must be a '9'. The fall quarter at the University of Washington always starts in the latter part of September. I checked to see if UW was on the quarter system in 1961 and it was then also. Reading this number as an '8' would mean the fall quarter was almost 4 months long, which doesn't make sense. It's clear on the transcript that the following quarter of classes ran for less than three months.
There was a summer quarter in 1961 which was still going on in August. This would have had to be extremely short to fit in between graduation in June and the arrival of students on campus for the fall term if fall classes began on August 19th. The fact that 1961 graduation was in June is another indication that all the other quarters were just under three months long.
BTW while doing research on this I found out that 1961 was the 100th anniversary of the University of Washington. President Kennedy gave a speech there on November 16th.