Elon College and the First World War, part 4: After the War
By Randall Bowman, Archivist and Assistant Librarian. In December 1918, the SATC unit at Elon was officially disbanded; members of the company were discharged, and the officers who had trained them departed just before Christmas, to be reassigned by the Army. In May 1919, at the end of the academic year, President Harper informed the Board of Trustees that the college was in debt due to the cost of housing the SATC unit. The cost of hosting the company had exceeded the War Department’s payments to the college by $14,065.05 ($233,368.53 in 2017 dollars). College officials reached a compromise with the U.S. Government that reduced the deficit to $4,896.86 ($81,249.13 in 2017), still a large sum of money for the small college. Over the course of the following year, things began to return to normal at Elon. Many college activities that had been suspended during the war resumed; the PhiPsiCli…
Read MoreElon College and the First World War, part 3: The SATC at Elon, 1918-1919
By Randall Bowman, Archivist and Assistant Librarian. In May 1918, the War Department formed the Student Army Training Corps (SATC). Similar in many ways to the Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (ROTC), the SATC was created to encourage young men to attend college and receive military training at the same time. Unlike ROTC, however, SATC members were not training to become commissioned officers. Elon College became one of twelve colleges in North Carolina to qualify for a SATC unit; the Board of Trustees overwhelmingly approved plans to host the company, and the college administration began working with the War Department to prepare Elon to receive the unit for the fall semester 1918. As part of this preparation, a group of Elon students were chosen to attend a school for military instructors in Plattsburgh, New York, during the summer months of 1918. A photograph published in the August 1918 issue of the…
Read MoreElon College and the First World War, part 2: Patriotism at Elon, 1917-1918
By Randall Bowman, Archivist and Assistant Librarian. As soon as the United States entered World War I, Americans began volunteering to enlist in the Army, Navy, Marine Corps, Coast Guard, Merchant Marine, and the Red Cross. Elon students were no exception to the patriotic fervor that swept the country. On the very day war was declared, three Elon students volunteered for military service: W. F. Odom, William M. Horner, and Elvin Tuck. Such enlistments soon had a visible effect on Elon’s campus; some members of the graduating class of 1917 were graduated in absentia since they were already in uniform. This was possible because the faculty chose to give credit for courses to any male or female student whose studies were interrupted because they were serving. Elon College encouraged other ways of supporting the war effort; it was announced by the Board of Trustees that the college would give three…
Read MoreElon College and the First World War, part 1: On the eve of The Great War
By Randall Bowman, Archivist and Assistant Librarian. November 11, 2018, is the 100th anniversary of the cease-fire that ended World War I, often ironically called “The War to End All Wars.” What was Elon like in the early years of the Twentieth Century, before this First World War? When William Allen Harper became Elon College’s fourth president in 1911, the school was very different from the university it is today. In the fall of 1911, total enrollment for the college was only 234, although that was the largest enrollment since the school opened its doors in 1890. Dr. Harper, then thirty-one years old, was an 1899 alumnus of Elon College, and the first graduate to serve as president. He set out on an ambitious program to expand the school’s physical size, allowing for an increase in enrollment. He was also determined to standardize and expand the curriculum. In addition, Harper…
Read MoreVeritas: The “liberated” Elon College Newspaper
Shannon Tennant March 28, 2014 The late 1960s were a time of turmoil on college campuses, and Elon was no exception. Serious issues such as the Civil Rights movement and the Vietnam War polarized public opinion in the United States. Rock and roll, “hippies” with long hair, and women’s changing roles were exciting new trends or the end of civilization, depending on your point of view. Elon had possessed a student newspaper since its earliest days. The Maroon and Gold was founded in 1919 to replace the defunct Elon College Weekly. Though initially independent, by the 1960s the paper was financially supported by the college and produced by a for-credit journalism class. Distrust of the college administration and concerns about censorship prompted a group of students in the Student Government Association to found a “liberated” newspaper. They called it Veritas, meaning truth.
Read MoreElon and the Olympics
Katie Nash June 29, 2012 Elon has a long-standing connection with the Olympics, going back to 1980. However, not all of the connections have been related to sporting events. We have highlighted below all of the documented connections Elon has had with the Olympics through the years.
Read MoreRacial Integration at Elon
Jess McDonald ’12 August 19, 2011 Paul de Montaigne was the first black student to attend classes at Elon College. Paul was a faculty member of Palmer Institute and, although he was not seeking a degree, he attended evening classes at Elon in the spring of 1963. Paul was from Martinique and, accordingly, his first language was French. Some argue that Paul was viewed predominantly as a foreigner rather than as black, and that (combined with his taking only evening classes) certainly eased his entry into Elon College.
Read MoreElon during World War II
Jacob Chitwood – Class of 2011 February 22, 2011 While it was by no means ever a military institution, Elon played an important role in conjunction with the U.S. Army during World War II.
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