Wofford College - Bohemian Yearbook (Spartanburg, SC)

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The War Between the States halted its progress in 1861, calling its students to arms, and dissipating its endowment and material resources. The ravages of war were followed by the poverty, distress and confusion of the reconstruction era and the long, lean years in which South Carolina struggled heroically to repair the dam- ages of the war. The best that President A. M. Shipp (1859-1875) and President J. H. Carlisle (1875-1902) could do was mainly to preserve the spiritual ideals of the college and maintain high standards of rcholarship. And this they did to an extraordinary degree. The torch of religion and learning was kept burning in un- dimmed power and brightness, and in spite of its meager resources the college trained for important leadership successive generations of men who have been real builders in church and state. No feature of the exercises connected with the seventy-fifth anniversary was more significant than the interpretation of this phase of the history of Wof?ord College — the quality of its product in terms of men who, having been trained in its standards and having caught the deeper meaning of its ideals, have lived worthily and contributed much to what is best in the life of their day. But the seventy-fifth anniversary was also an interpretation of progress m other ways. That small group of students of 1854 has grown to a student body of 450 in 1929; a faculty of four men has become twenty-six, giving instruction in many fields of knowledge that were not dreamed of seventy-five years ago ; those five build- ings, thought quite sufficient for the work and service of the college seventy-five years ago, have been multiplied into seventeen buildings— four additional professors ' houses, the W. E. Burnett Gymnasium, now used as the R. O. T. C. headquarters, the John B. Cleveland Science Hall, the Whitefoord Smith Library, Carlisle Hall, Archer Hall, Snyder Hall, the Jeter Infirmary, the Andrews Field House, and, finally, the splendid steel stadium and outdoor playing fields. Measured in terms of money, its physical plant and equipment are now valued at approximately $700,000, and it has an invested endowment of $740,000. Thus the seventy-fifth anniversary recorded seventj -five years of real progress in the things that mark growth in the life of college— enrichment of curriculum, in- crease in teaching force and student attendance, large additions to the physical plant and endowment to meet developing educational needs, and a growing body of loyal alumni who represent in their own lives the spirit and ideals of their Alma Mater. Moreover, with this record of achievement behind it the college looks to the future with hope and confidence. Being a member of the Southern Association of Schools and Colleges, of the Association of American Universities, of the American Council on Education, and the Association of American Colleges, it has the stamp of approval of these great academic agencies upon the quality of its work. With the continued mam- tenance of its intellectual and spiritual standards and with added material equipment and resources to meet increasing needs, the next seventy-five years of history should show a record of even greater progress than that celebrated with such impressiveness on the 1 8th and 19th of October, 1929. Henry N. Snyder. i 5