Guilford College - Quaker Yearbook (Greensboro, NC)

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The Fire This Time It was the sort of year whose ironies were subtle, tleetiiiglike the play of sunlight on the dewy grass of fall mornings; they were there if you cared to look for them but they evaporated in the distraction of a busy day. Unless such things haunt you. your awareness is free of them after the few moments m which they come to life, glisten and then fade. Few students had access to the knowledge needed to place the year in ironic perspective. For them it began in an even greater than usual confusion with overflowing dormitories, students living m rooms that had been study lounges and even in the Frazier Apartments and Dana Houses that had previously been reserved for married students and faculty members. Before the first semester ended tlic apartments would also hold the population of Mary Hobbs Hall, forced to vacate then huild- ing alter an arsonist ' s fire destroyed the attic. Cox Hall had also been vacated, the faculty offices the build- ing had housed were shuffled into space created by the transfer

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m « Contents The Fire This Time 4 Mary Hobbs Is on Fire 10 Response (Faculty Questionaire) 46 Organizations 66 Faculty 100 Administration and Staff 118 Seniors 134 Underclass Persons 182 lo4E2(i

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of the Academic Dean ' s offices into newly renovated quarters on tlie first lloor of the gymnasium. No tragedy emptied Cox, thougli. It was being renovated, end wings and inner walls re- moved to create studio space for a new art buildmg. Cox, Mary Hobbs and Archdale had all been born of a set of circumstances at once similar to and different from those that changed them during 1976-77. In order to trace the story and to isolate the ironies one must be aware of anotlier fire at Guilford College and of another housing shortage. The two students in the photograph (opposite) stand before one of the first of a group of handbuilt cottages that were once located near the present baseball diamond. The first of these Boys Cottages , as they were officially known, had been pieced together beneath a porch roof scavenged before fire destroyed the first King Hall in 1885. Records show that six cottages and a common dining room eventually comprised the cottage system, more commonly known as Shack Row. However, no one seems to have recorded the number of young Guilford men who survived tlieir College years there. Shack Row persisted in physical fact until the completion of Cox Hall in 1 91 8. By that time it had evolved into a system of co-operative living, by means of which the residents reduced ex- penses by providing food for themselves and muscle for house- keeping and maintenance chores. Tlie college provided a woman to cook since, as Dorothy Gilbert Tliorne relates, it could not be assured that in every group of boys there was one with cuhnary experience . The co-operafive living system that grew up in Shack Row pass- ed across the campus to become incarnate first in a set of Girls Cottages . The dormitory for women that replaced them in 1907, is now named after the woman whose labors and dreams made it possible, Mary Mendenliall Hobbs.