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Blue Notes

Ask the Archivist

Nancy Griffith
ngriffit@presby.edu

About Blue Notes:

Archivists are always doing research and organizing our various collections, and we often discover interesting things along the way. We also, like most researchers, frequently discover interesting facts while actually looking for something entirely different. Hopefully this little blog, which I plan to update at least once a month, will enable me to share some of this information with others of you who are interested in Presbyterian College and its history.

If anyone has a question, or a suggestion for a future entry, please don’t hesitate to get in touch with me (contact information above).

Nancy Griffith

Previous entries:

June 2008
May 2008

July 2008

THE TURBULENT 60s AND 70s

CHAPEL REQUIREMENTS

At the beginning of the 1960s, the student body at P.C. was quite conservative. According to a poll taken in 1960, students supported Richard Nixon over John Kennedy almost 3-1. Thus it isn’t surprising that the first demonstrations on the campus were not political, but concerned more local issues. The first of these actually concerned the tennis program. According to a new athletic plan adopted by the trustees in 1963, related to the college’s planned move to the Carolinas Conference, spring sports were to be allotted only two scholarships. This meant the de-emphasis of tennis, a sport which had brought national attention to PC for two decades. There were numerous letters and articles in the Blue Stocking, as well as a petition to the Board sponsored by the Blue Key leadership society and a mass meeting of protest. A poll at the time indicated that 40% of PC students preferred tennis as an intercollegiate sport, compared to 29% for football and 24% for basketball. Any change in the situation, however, was constrained by Carolinas Conference rules; the only compromise that could be made was to award both of the spring scholarships to tennis.

That same year, the students’ long-standing concern about required chapel surfaced again. According to an editorial published in the Blue Stocking on February 22, 1963: “Although it involves beating one of the oldest of PC’s dead horses, something should be said about required chapel, which is currently a completely ridiculous situation. A speaker must be appalled to look out upon a sea of sleeping and reading people; and no doubt the people are equally appalled at being there…A religion is a chosen discipline, not a dictated one…Many of the students we contacted felt that the religiously associated compulsion placed on them three times a week was more than enough to quell a desire to attend further sessions.” Other causes of unrest were college regulations on class cuts, drinking, ROTC, dormitory visitation, student input into policy-making, and the curfew, sign-out and dress regulations for women students.

A cartoon from a 1965 issue of The Blue Stocking

Although the earliest PC catalogues don’t list specific chapel requirements, students were “encouraged in every right-way to put their religion into active exercise, and the older classes especially shall, as far as practicable, be familiarized with Sabbath-school, Missionary, and prayer-meeting work.” By 1887, however, all students were required to attend morning prayers each day, and “to attend Sabbath-school and public worship at the Presbyterian church, unless otherwise directed by parents.” This tradition continued until around 1950, when chapel services were reduced to three days a week. The students’ vocal protests of the 1960s, however, eventually resulted in the dropping of the chapel requirement. The required assemblies, however, remained on the schedule, and students were still urged to attend Sunday services at the church of their choice. Gradually, the program of required assemblies was replaced by the Lectures and Fine Arts Series, which was voluntary. In 1983 this was replaced by the Cultural Enrichment Program (CEP), and students were required to attend a certain number of CEP events in order to graduate.

On the national front, PC students supported the Vietnam War in its early years. According to a Blue Stocking poll published in 1966, 82% of the students surveyed agreed with the war policy, and 90% were in favor of America’s intervention in Vietnam. Students held blood drives for the troops, and organized projects to send them Christmas cards. Protests were still local in nature. In early 1967, many students and faculty protested the decision not to renew the contract of popular professor. Some faculty saw it as infringement on academic freedom, and some students demonstrated. According to a letter to the editor published in The Blue Stocking on January 20, 1967: “January 17, 1967 is the day on which Presbyterian College announced that it would no longer defend free speech, free thought, and honest inquiry. The announcement came in the form of the dismissal of H. Larry Ingle…from his duties as history professor after this year. Professor Ingle is one of the most qualified men on campus. He possesses a devotion to his subject and to his students that is second to none. His shortcoming was that he spoke out firmly for free speech, for inquiry, and for rational thought. Undoubtedly, his downfall came about because of the probing nature of his questions.”

A cartoon from a 1967 issue of The Blue Stocking

Students continued to push for improved communication and representation. In 1966 they requested non-voting membership on two faculty committees. Their request was denied at first, but membership on a number of committees was granted the following year. The trustees also worked to improve the lines of communication. At one of their board meetings in 1968, they set aside an hour for an informal meeting with students. The rules for chapel and assembly were also changed, making attendance at worship services voluntary, while attendance at weekly assemblies was still required.

During this period, an alternative student newspaper called The Blue Spectre appeared on campus. According to its first issue, published on March 21, 1967, “The Blue Spectre is able to criticize more directly and without fear of reprisal from the administration. We, the writers of the Blue Spectre feel the time is at last here for the students to actively dissent against administrative policy…Why do we as students at P.C. repeatedly skirt our duties to demand recognition of our beliefs. Saturday classes, too many cars on campus, religion course requirements, the drinking rule. What next? It is our future that is at stake and it is now our decision to make.” The paper also attacked the continuing racial segregation at PC. The college had declared its compliance with the Civil Rights Act in 1965, but the only two African-American students to attend came for summer school. The Blue Spectre was published a number of times during the spring of 1967, and appeared sporadically during the next few years.

Tensions seemed to begin escalating in 1969. In answer to a Board resolution that urged “all segments of the college community…to continue to exercise sound judgment so that institutional and individual freedoms may be preserved in an atmosphere most conducive to learning,” the president of the student body replied “We do not try to usurp any authority from our elders, but students do feel a degree of responsibility to speak up for change where it seems needed.” At this same time, the Board issued a college policy on demonstrations. All such activities were to be registered with the dean of students, who was to “designate an appropriate area for the purpose.” Demonstrations were not to interfere with scheduled college activities, destroy property, or involve any occupation of buildings or physical contact. Students failing to comply with these rules were to be subject to the college’s regular judicial processes.

In April of 1969, twenty students held a peaceful demonstration at the ROTC battalion’s day of Federal Inspection. According to The Blue Stocking, the main issue involved was whether or not ROTC should be compulsory at either a Christian or a liberal arts college. That same year, there were indications that support for the Vietnam War was lessening when a number of students, faculty and staff participated in the national Vietnam Moratorium Day. Student opinion eventually led to changes in the two-year ROTC requirement. Starting in 1970-71, participation was to be voluntary for sophomores and required for freshman. After that, it would become voluntary for everyone.

Other campus issues continued to simmer. In October of 1970, President Weersing and Dean of Students Tom Stallworth, awakened in the middle of the night, held a midnight rap session with 85 students in the lobby of the Administration Building. Student complaints ran the gamut from drinking to the cut system to women’s rights. Unrest continued into 1971. In February, the SGA held an open meeting to address such concerns as student representation on the Board of Trustees, the system of class cuts, the “antiquated” drinking rules, and dormitory visitation. Following this meeting, students marched from Neville Hall to the Broad Street side of Belk Auditorium. There students were allowed to speak and voice their concerns.

A cartoon from a 1971 issue of The Blue Stocking

The following month, when the Board of Trustees held their meeting on campus, the campus was papered with streamers and signs. The trustees held an open meeting with students, with some positive results. Students were permitted to sit with both voice and vote on the Board’s academic affairs and student activities committees. As for meetings of the full Board, they would be permitted to speak, but would have no vote. The Board refused to grant open dormitory visitation, and discouraged the use of alcohol or drugs on campus. Later, however, limited use of beer was allowed on campus, in certain places at certain times. Limited dormitory visitation was finally permitted in 1974.

The college had actually weathered this period of campus unrest fairly well. In 1974, the Board issued a resolution praising “the Faculty, Administration and Student Government for their part in resolving past problems and in returning the affairs of the college to a condition of tranquility and Christian cooperation.” One of the keys to this success was the college’s commitment to a free press. The editor of The Blue Stocking had the following to say in 1975: “I was forced to take a new awareness of the freedom that the PC Administration has allowed The Blue Stocking. I am also thankful that their tolerance has not been manifested in indifference toward the paper. The fact that PC has protected the freedom of the student press (despite temporary reasons not to) makes it much easier to listen to other ideas that the Administration has concerning other areas of student freedom.”

June 2008

Special thanks to Chris Bates, PC Class of 1986, for the question that inspired this entry

THE LEGACY OF WOMEN AT PRESBYTERIAN COLLEGE

When Presbyterian College was founded in 1880, it was open to women as well as men. According to the catalog, “young ladies are entered in the same classes and upon the same footing, except that in their case, the classical studies are optional.” Female students were not, however, permitted to live on campus. They were either local women, or made arrangements to board with families in town. The college’s first graduating class, in 1883, consisted entirely of women, including Dr. Jacobs’ daughter, Florence. According to the 1888 college catalog, the presence of young women on the campus “has in no way proved detrimental to the scholarly work of the Institution, and has materially lessened difficulties of discipline.”

According to Fronde Kennedy, who graduated in 1896, the college took no responsibility for the co-eds when they were not on the campus. However, while on campus, “they were carefully chaperoned, being required to spend their free hours under the eye of a professor – an arrangement equally distasteful to both parties.” Among the social activities were parties in local homes, dancing (not, however, on the campus – dances were held in Copeland Hall, in downtown Clinton),

The PC Crowd

swimming in the Enoree River, picnics, hikes, and fraternity banquets. Co-eds did not engage in sports, except for recreational tennis on the college tennis court. They of course attended other games, including baseball, where, in the absence of stands, they “sat in chairs brought from the mess hall by devoted swains.”

In the early years, there were very few female students at PC, with only 11 in 1915 and 21 in 1918. Indeed, the College’s slogan in those days was “Where men are made.” For a time, between 1921 and 1931, no women were admitted to the college, because the Synod of South Carolina wished to bolster enrollment at Chicora College, its women’s college in Columbia. When Chicora merged with Queens in Charlotte in 1932, women day students were once again welcome at PC.

One woman student from this period described some of her experiences in the college magazine in 1932. Although her experience as a co-ed at PC was a positive one, apparently the co-eds had to make some adjustments in the classroom. “At the beginning of the year, we took seriously the masculine idea that boys know more than girls; we listened attentively when they opened to us their spacious minds. But it didn’t take us long to realize that masculine knowledge is mostly masculine bluff. Now we listen demurely and allow them to get what satisfaction they can from telling us things that we already know.”

There were still not many social activities for women.
A local sorority, Alpha Psi Delta, was organized in 1933. Otherwise, women were involved in campus organizations only as “sponsors” -- women, sometimes girlfriends or wives, sometimes even mothers and children, who were chosen by the organization to represent them. Aside from a short-lived women’s basketball team in the 1930s, there were no women’s sports except intramurals until 1974, when the varsity tennis team was organized.

Alpha Psi Delta

Housemother and coeds, 1965

In the 1950s, the Synod of South Carolina began to discuss making PC fully co-educational. The first step in this process was the opening of Calvert House, a house on Calvert Avenue which housed 14 students and was supervised by a faculty family that lived on the first floor. Full co-education arrived in 1965, when Clinton Hall was opened. In a truly amazing article in The State in October of 1965, the reporter noted that “Girl-Watching is now one of the

favorite sports at Presbyterian college, with the advent this fall of full co-education.” Included was a picture of three male students sitting on the steps, “absorbed in their work.” Apparently, male students were terribly distracted during meals and study time, but appreciated the fact that they didn’t have to travel 60 or 70 miles to date girls from nearby colleges. By 1966, Clinton Hall was almost full, with 118 women, who made up 17% of the student body.

The rules for these new students were quite different than those today. Clinton Hall was supervised by a housemother. There was a curfew, and coeds were required to sign out of the dorm any time they planned to be out after 7 p.m., or any time they planned an out-of-town trip. “Anyone leaving the campus after 7:00 in the evening must be accompanied by a date, an adult, or another student.” Parental permission was required for overnight trips. No men were permitted in the living areas of the dorm, and a dress code required skirts or dresses except for PE class.

Eugenia Carter

Women were also added to the faculty and Board of Trustees. Eugenia Carter, who had been teaching in the science department since 1958, was joined by 5 women professors in 1967. In 1968, Mrs. J.B. Fuqua of Atlanta and Dr. Virginia S. Hardie of Clemson were added to the Board. By 1973, PC had its first female student body president, Ginny Nichols.

The number of women students continued to grow – by 1968-69, they made up 21.4% of the student body, 222 students. This was the year that Bailey Hall was turned into a women’s dorm to house the overflow. By 1975, when Mary Erwin Belk Hall was added, there were 358 women on campus, comprising 39% of the student body. There were also more activities for women students. In 1981, Martha Anne Green started Women’s Social Hall, a campus-wide organization for women. In 1989, national sororities were permitted on campus for the first time, and Alpha Delta Pi, Zeta Tau Alpha, and Sigma Sigma Sigma were organized.

The percentage of women students gradually increased, until it reached 48% in 1990-91. Women continued to be housed in Clinton, Bailey and Belk. The following year, Grotnes and Barron were added as women’s residences, as were three houses on Calhoun Street. By the fall of 1993, women made up 50% of PC’s student body; since that year, they have surpassed 50% in all but two years, reaching a peak of 56% in 2001-2002. Additional facilities that have been opened to women over the years include the townhouses, Laurens, Smyth, Carol International House, the Scottish Arms, and the Senior Hall.

Prominent women who have graduated from PC include Anne Austin Young (1910), pioneering SC doctor; Ann Eliza Hatton Lewis, (1922) founder of Georgia Magazine; Mary Ella Williams Osman (1938), journalist and senior editor of Architecture; Julie Johnson Weatherly (1983), lawyer and nationally recognized expert on school law and special education cases; Joan Standridge Gray (1973), current moderator of the PC(USA); and Capt. Kimberly Hampton (1998), helicopter pilot, killed in Iraq in January of 2004.

Anne Austin

Kimberly Hampton

May 2008

THE EARLY DAYS OF PRESBYTERIAN COLLEGE

So, where to begin? Perhaps the best place to start is at the beginning, with PC’s early history. The college, founded in 1880 as Clinton College, was a result of the work of Rev. William Plumer Jacobs, then the pastor of the Clinton Presbyterian Church.

The first classes were held in a white frame building located near the center of town. The only existing photograph shows it in later years, when a porch had been added.


	The first college catalogue includes an interesting description of the town:

Both men and women students were accepted, although the female students were not permitted to live on campus, and were either local or made arrangements to board with local families. Although the college was largely governed by the session of the Presbyterian church, it was non-sectarian. According to the catalogue, “its teachings shall be such as to build up pure religion, and to attract students of all denominations. Hence while avoiding the so-called ‘Liberalism’ of Modern Philosophy, yet this Institution shall not be exclusive or illiberal in its Christianity .”

Tuition was much less in 1880 than it is today, but it must have seemed high at the time, since the catalogue takes great pains to justify it:

Like many schools of the period, Clinton College also had a Preparatory Department for the education of younger students:

The Preparatory Department existed until the 1920s, and many students received their entire education from Clinton College.

The college’s first class graduated in 1883. Among the three members of the class was Florence Lee Jacobs, who was the eldest of William Plumer Jacobs’ five children.

If anyone has a question, or a suggestion for a future entry, please don’t hesitate to get in touch with me (contact information above).

Nancy Griffith

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