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 MoreThe Loy Center ‘Spirit Rock’
Julia Mueller May 9, 2014 In 1997, the Elon College Greek Courts were renamed from the Greek Lodges to the Loy Center in honor of William (Bill) E. Loy, Jr. and in memory of his wife, Elizabeth Apple Loy ’47. Two rocks were added to the neighborhood. The first rock belonged to Mrs. Loy’s family, and was placed in the Greek circle. A plaque commemorating the Loy family is attached to the rock. This rock is not to be painted. The second rock became known as the ‘spirit rock.’
Read MoreSpecial Olympics at Elon
Betty Garrison April 11, 2014 Elon and the Special Olympics have always had a special bond. Elon College hosted the first state Games in 1972, just four years after the first national Special Olympics Games were held in 1968 at Soldier Field in Chicago. Over the years, Elon has supplied thousands of volunteers, from those who plan the event to those who partner with an athlete for the day to all those who sit in the stands to cheer them on. Each athlete is a winner and each receives a medal on the day they compete.
Read MoreMartin Luther King, Jr. Beloved Community Celebration–“His Past. Your Future. One Dream.”
Julia Mueller January 17, 2014 The annual Martin Luther King, Jr. Beloved Community Celebration at Elon University commemorates the life and service of MLK, Jr. It also celebrates tolerance and diversity on campus. Elon Teaching Fellows, DEEP, the Kernodle Center for Service Learning and Community Engagement, the Multicultural Center, the Black Cultural Society, the National Panhellenic Council, the Office of Student Activities, and the Truitt Center for Religious and Spiritual Life organized the 2014 program.
Read MoreThe Literary Societies of Elon College
Randall Bowman December 13, 2013 In 1913, the first yearbook was published at Elon College, the PhiPsiCli. The name was derived from the three literary societies that existed at Elon during its early years; the Philologian, Psiphelian, and Clio Societies. These three organizations were founded soon after the college opened its doors; like most college literary societies, they no longer exist. Literary societies were a mainstay of college life from the colonial era to the early twentieth century. Often just called “societies,” they usually had names derived from either Latin or Greek. Societies organized debates and social events, and members wrote original compositions such as essays, poetry, and music. Since most college graduates were men who went into law, the ministry, or teaching, literary society activities supplemented the classical education students received. Their debates gave members the chance to practice their oratory and rhetorical skills.
Read MoreState of the art: The Carol Grotnes Belk Library
Randall Bowman December 6, 2013 By the mid-1990s, it was very obvious that the Iris Holt McEwen Library was woefully inadequate to serve as Elon College’s library. The college was growing and progressing as an institution; the student body was not only increasing in size, but in quality. Planning began to build an innovative library that would be a key component of Elon’s increasing emphasis on engaged learning. Fundraising for the new library was part of the Elon Vision, a five-year, $40 million strategic plan for strengthening academic programs. An Elon Vision brochure established that this library would be something new. “The new library will be located at the center of campus, serving as a dynamic intellectual hub between instructional facilities to the south and residential halls to the north. This 75,000 square foot facility will combine the traditional library collection with the latest electronic information capabilities and an array…
Read MoreBubble Bitching : Elon’s satirical underground newspaper
Shannon Tennant November 29, 2013 The Pendulum is Elon’s official student newspaper, but there have been several unofficial, “underground” publications offering different viewpoints of campus events. One of the most amusing was the satirical paper Bubble Bitching. In the style of the Onion, Bubble Bitching was created by a senior Business major and a senior Communications major in the spring of 2003. “We’ve been making these jokes to each other for three years,” said one editor in a Pendulum interview. “Now we’re putting them down on paper.” Bubble Bitching was produced biweekly for a year, printed double-sided on a piece of regular paper (this was in the days of unlimited campus printing, before print dollars!) and slipped into the Pendulum’s newspaper racks. The front page of Bubble Bitching contained two stories and a sidebar of funny headlines. There was a joke under the masthead, and the reported price of each…
Read More