Mississippi State University - Reveille Yearbook (Starkville, MS)

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Students gather in Activities Building (now the ' Y ' ) for studies and play. 1915 A M Cager. heritage . . . nineteenth century, the administration had its prob- lems — threatened strikes, that is. In General Lee ' s time there had been occasional exhibitions of an insubordi- nate spirit, but things always calmed down rapidly. At the turn of the year in 1907, military commandant Ira C. Welborn, who was famed for having more empty liquor bottles in his garbage pail than other faculty members, had a row with Vice President Magruder, who was backed by President Hardy. Before the ruckus was over many a latent grievance was aired; and even though the senior class withdrew in a body with a bit of coaxing by some discontented faculty, peace broke out in the end and no student was shipped. Another strike in 1912 had a more serious out- come. Dr. Magruder discovered a male student in the English library talking to one of the young ladies who were students. The outcome was an order that the cadets not visit the young ladies ... in their study rooms at the noon hour or when they were not in reci- tation, or anywhere else for that matter. The cadets promptly decided the women students had been grossly insulted. The senior class, joined by others, demanded an apology and when that was not forth- coming, the seniors and many underclassmen, includ- ing some of the girls, rebelled. In the end, nearly every- one was readmitted, but there were two unfortunate results. First, the senior class cadets were all demoted to be buck privates; second, the Board forthwith ruled that the striking girls not be allowed to reenter and that female students would henceforth not be admitted! The outbreak of World War I decimated the student body. By May, 1917, most of the students had with- drawn, if not to enter the service, to do their duty in farm or factory. Meanwhile, the War Department had arranged to send to the campus groups of 600 young men for two-month periods to be trained for the tech- nical branches of the service. Also army volunteers 12

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i I % LEFT: President Hardy. TOP: 1907 staff. 1920 a financial crisis generated by World War I facili- tated the departure of Smith. Politics and strikes notwithstanding, the college sur- vived both politics and the twentieth century teens and teenagers. It also survived a world war. Actually, some excellent progress was made. There was, for example, the creation of Mississippi ' s first collegiate school of business. Its dean, James V. Bowen, came to the college to teach foreign languages, but found few takers; so he decided to appeal to the students on the grounds of American involvement in foreign trade by offering commercial foreign language courses. When these proved insufficiently attractive, he simply scuttled the languages in the course titles and salvaged the com- mercial. The result was the creation in 1915 of a com- mercial program that became the School of Business. Meanwhile, in 1914, the Smith Lever Act provided the college with a full-scale cooperative extension program. In 1917, under the Smith Hughes Act, which provided funds for collegiate vocational programs for agricultural high schools, the college became the state training school for this program. As for student life in the first two decades of the n

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fe y m. kf IUJ ffhJtK ' ,-» ' t ' jm. :sf u. I ' lese two girls were about the only women on campus in their day. 13