Davidson College - Quips and Cranks Yearbook (Davidson, NC)

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QUIPS AND C 3R. A K K- S Dr. Walter L. Lingle President Page Twenty-tiVo NINETEEN THIRTY FIVE

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QUIP AND R A K K, S r M [;TJ .tP y f LL • several other professors, when they ar- rived at the Hormitories, found all the hoys in their rooms, studyinR attentively for the next day ' s lessons, or sleepinK innocently in their hcds. Xo individual culprit could he found until one hoy from Arkansas refused the professor ad- mittance to his room, rndaunted. the investiKating professor prrxrured an axe and heat down the door; inside they found a student fully dressed with his hoots still on and he was later susjiended from college on circumstantial evidence. This action so angered the remainder of the student hody. that all quietly left school and returned to their homes, leav- ing two hoys to c institute the Davidson student hody on the campus. It should l)c added that most of the students were reinstated several weeks later. And thereafter college discipline grew steadily hetter. PROGRESS A member of the class of 1859 has ma Ie the following interesting comment: Student life was primitive, as viewed from the comforts nf a later time. We chopped most of the wood we used. We drew water from a well and brought it to our rooms. These exercises took the i.iact- ..i atiucii. . I ru- iiiMrnuii; h. il r.u.u sunrise. Then five minutes before sunrise it rang again, sounding its last stroke at When it ceased to ring every student was exl)ected to be in his place in the chapel. The $200,000 legacy of Mr. Maxwell Chambers, of Salisbury, started the first real progress at Davidson. The Chambers building was erected and Davidsoni soon came into state-wide prominence as an institution of learning. It was the Chambers building, erected at a cost of $81,000, that built the Davidson tradition which we know to lay. It was the focus of college life for sixty years until it burned in 1921. During the Civil War | eriod, most of the students withdrew from school and patriotically supported the South. .Many sons of Davidson were lost in the conflict and for a while it was doubtful whether the Presbyterian institution could successfully sustain all its losses. At the close of the Civil War, a period of slow reconstruction set in at Davidson as well as over the entire South, EXPANSION At the turn of the century came a turn in the development of Davidson. Under the aggressive Presi- dent Henry I. Smith, the student body was enlarged, the faculty increased, the grounds and buildings improved, and the curriculum made more adequate. The undergraduate hotly came consistently over the two hundred mark after 1900. Several years later, the increasing importance and influence of the coUese necessitated the building of the Martin Chemical Laboratory, Shearer Hall, Rumple an l Watts dormitories, and the heating plant. The Student Council was inaugurated in 1910 and still exists as the most powerful undergraduate group on the campus. Davidson is among the oldest schools in the country to adopt a system of self- government for its scholars. The Y. M. C. A. probably came into being as a religious organization on the campus in 1878 an l is today a great Christian influence at the college. The Davidson Monihiy was the first publication relascd by the students of the college and it proved to be a short-lived magazine, its last issue being in 1S72, just two years after its initial edition. The Pavidsonian was founded by the class of 1915 and has exerted an increasingly strong eHect on student life since its fir.st issue in April, 1914. Since the decline of the Eumenean and Philanthropic Literary Societies, social and honorary fraternities have taken an increasingly important part in campus life. There have been fraternities at Davidson since 1869, in one form or another. The full story of the origin, growth, and development of Davidson College is indeed a recor I of high achievement and hard-won success, in many ways typical of the devote l idealism and undaunted ising of the purpi ..f th,- f.. Kdi. h! tlu-i NINETEEN THIRTY FIVE

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QUIPS AND C R. A K FL S Dr. R. a. Dunn Pri ' sulcnl ol Board ut Irustees Page Twenty- three NINETEEN THIRTY FIVE