The College of Charleston in the 1920's

     by J. H. Easterby

The following excerpts are taken from A History of the College of Charleston: Founded 1770, written in 1935 by J.H. Easterby and reprinted with permission from the Board of Trustees of the College of Charleston. Photos provided by Special Collections, Robert Scott Smalls Library.

On April 6, 1920, Mr. M. Rutledge Rivers, the chairman of the finance committee, reported to the board "that he had appeared before the ways and means committee of city council in the interests of the College and its appropriation and that he […] has further asked … [for an additional sum] for the purpose of paying the expenses of a Professor to canvas the state for one month in an effort to further advertise the College and increase its student body." The ways and means committee, Mr. Rivers also stated, had recommended "that the College be made a free college for all Charleston boys and girls."

During the spring and summer of 1920 the College was widely advertised. Professor Robert H. Coleman […] visited prospective students throughout the state. […] The result was that on his return in the autumn from his nineteen months' leave of absence President Randolph found the College for the first time in its history with a student body of more than a hundred. The total enrollment for the session was 138, of which forty-three were women.

[…] In October 1921, Mr. Rivers disclosed plans for a "business course," and the first step was taken with introduction of instruction in Spanish. The following year the Night School of Commerce and Administration was established as an adjunct of the College for the purpose of offering "higher commercial training" to the adult citizens of Charleston. Preparations were made for thirty-five students; 149 were registered […]. In 1923 [...] free tuition was extended to the residents of Charleston County. The results of these measures were immediately apparent in the growth of the student body. By 1923 the enrollment in the College classes had increased to 180; by 1926 it was 253. […]

[The freshman class of 1926]

The time had been reached when the facilities of the College were obviously inadequate. "It can be seen," the President reported to the board in 1925, "that the present building is already yielding the full results when it is realized that its 34 rooms provide 3 administrative offices, 4 professors' offices, 2 department libraries, 3 lavatories, 3 service rooms, a women's rest room, the chapel, 9 lecture rooms and 8 laboratories utilized by 16 professors, 5 secretaries and officers, and approximately 350 students throughout the day, from 8:30 to 4:30 (Saturdays from 9:00 to 2:00) and on four nights of the week from 7:00 to 10:00 o'clock." […] The new chemical laboratory would take care of the present enrollment but made no allowance for further expansion. It had been necessary to convert vacant rooms in the dormitory into professors' offices and a preparation room for the biology department.

[…] The next improvement was made in the library building. […] The student body could no longer be accommodated at the Charleston Library Society. In the spring of 1926 Mr. Rivers presented the problem to the city council […]. By the opening of the next session President Randolph was able to say: "An inadequately heated and poorly lighted library with insufficient space to provide properly for its collections has been transformed into an attractive and comfortable building; modern heating and lighting systems have been installed; and by converting the cellar into and English basement, room has been secured for substantial additions to its shelf space." An assistant librarian had been added to the staff, and arrangements had been made to have the building available to readers during the greater part of the College day.

The installation of a furnace in the library immediately suggested a similar improvement in the main building. The substitution of coal for wood as fuel in 1838 and the introduction of stoves in the majority of the rooms during the early years of President Randolph's administration represented great advances at the time, but they could hardly be regarded as adequate in a day of steam heat and oil-burning furnaces. There was a time when the professor and his class of six or eight might gather comfortably about an open fireplace, but with classes of thirty or forty that was now impossible. Dank corridors that were taken as a matter of course a few years before were now regarded as a potent cause of ill health among the students. […] [B]efore the next winter had run its course, stoves were discarded, grates were sealed up, and professors and students were enjoying a comfort they had never known before.

[…] Meanwhile the curriculum was being strengthened and expanded. […] In 1923, the department of romance languages was established. Better laboratory equipment made it possible to give greater emphasis to physics. Provision was made for courses in public speaking and psychology. The introduction of the Night School of Commerce brought with it the department of economics. If the alumni had any reason to feel that the classical courses were in danger of displacement by the technical subjects, their fears were quickly laid to rest; for the College continued to fortify its older curriculum: fine arts courses were instituted in 1924; Greek was separated from the department of Latin and Greek and was made into a department of its own in 1928; engineering was completely dropped the next year; and the Night School found itself making concessions to a demand for subjects of the liberal arts type. Earlier the ancient language requirement for the Bachelor of Arts degree had been raised from two to three years. The next few years were to see the introduction of Italian and sociology and the strengthening of the history department by additions to the courses in European history.

With some reluctance did the College make provisions for courses in education. Only after the Southern Association had ruled in 1927 that teachers in schools on its accredited list must have a prescribed amount of professional training was the subject added to the curriculum. It was not until 1930 that courses in education were accepted for credit toward the bachelor's degree.

[…] More than a hundred courses are now included in the curriculum. From eighty the student body has increased to 413. Again the old problem of finding space for the students who seek admission to the College every fall—a problem temporarily solved so many times in the past—is becoming acute.

[Members of the Coed Club, 1927]

[…] The effects of the decision to admit women students [in 1918] are the most obvious and the most revolutionary. From the original group of ten the number has grown to 184, constituting 44 per cent of the student body. It has long ago been forgotten that the board of trustees reserved the right to abandon the "co-education of the different sexes." One or two mild restrictions imposed upon the woman student in the beginning have been discarded, and she now enjoys as much freedom as the man on the campus and in the classrooms and corridors. Unwritten laws, which she does not care to break, forbid her election to the presidency of her class, of the athletic association, and of the student council; but other offices in these organizations she may, and frequently does, occupy. As often as not a woman is made editor of the Magazine or of the Comet. The Chrestomathic, the Cliosphic, and certain other clubs and societies have not admitted her, but she has substitutes of her own making. In virtually all the organizations which have appeared on the campus since her coming she has full privileges of membership. Her debating, swimming, and basketball teams represent the College in intercollegiate contests, and other similar activities may be cultivated if there is desire. In competition for scholastic and literary honors she has shown herself to be the equal, if not the superior, of the man. Finally, after graduation she is automatically voted a member of the Alumni Association. On every side the influence of the woman student is manifest, and men students do not "peer longingly" across St. Philip Street into the yard of the Charleston Female Seminary, as Frederick Tupper and his contemporaries of the late eighties did, for the Seminary is gone and the granddaughters of the girls who once attended it have come upon the College campus.

[…] Heeding President Randolph's warning that the College will not be "educationally as effective for its own constituency" if it discontinues its efforts to draw students from other parts of the country, the trustees have purchased the property adjoining it on the west in the hope of being able some day to provide a building which will contain both a dormitory and a gymnasium.

[…] A larger student body has brought extra-curriculum activities in greater number and greater variety. Particularly is this true of fraternities. […] In 1929, the twenty-fifth anniversary of its [Pi Kappa Phi fraternity] establishment was marked by the presentation to the College of the Pi Kappa Phi Memorial Gateway. There were no additions to the fraternities on the campus during the next eighteen years. Since 1922, however, the number has rapidly increased. The men have introduced a chapter of Tau Epsilon Phi and organized a local known as Pi Delta Kappa; the women have formed organizations which have rapidly gained admittance into such national orders as Chi Omega, Delta Delta Delta, Alpha Delta Theta, and Beta Phi Alpha. Virtually all have their rooms or their houses near the campus […].

Literary societies of older type wax and wane in accordance with the interests of successive generations. All have received in recent years a fresh impulse from the introduction of courses in public speaking. […] Among the more informal literary clubs are the Gyro (1921) for the men, the Quill Club (1923), the Pierian (1925), and the Scribblers' Club (1929) for the women, and the Newman Club (1922) for both men and women. The Dramatic Society dates from 1923; it has recently instituted a dramatic workshop as a complement of its regular work of play-production. One organization, the Glee Club, founded in 1927, draws its membership from among those students who are particularly interested in music. There is at present only one professional society—the Pre-Medical Club […].

[The Cliosophic Club, 1927]

[The Pierian Literary Society, 1925]

At the turn of the century the College found itself suddenly aspiring to athletic prowess. Football, baseball, and basketball were quickly introduced. […] But the difficulty of maintaining all these major sports was too great. After tragic defeats at the hands of Stetson and Florida in 1921, the football team was disbanded. Baseball was continued for a number of years, but in the end it, too, was abandoned. […] Today both men and women content themselves with basketball […].

Leisurely hours and Saturday holidays have disappeared in these more intensive times. The first morning bell rings at 8:25. With the exception of a short period for chapel, classes are in session from then until 1:45, and at 2:30 they begin again and continue until 6:30. The student must spend from fifteen to twenty hours per week in classroom and laboratory, but no longer is it required, as in former days, that free periods shall be "unremittingly devoted to the duties of the College."

Nowadays, owing to the mere physical fact that the student body has outgrown the seating capacity of the auditorium, juniors and seniors are required to attend chapel only two mornings in the week. Sophomores and freshmen, however, are still expected to appear at every chapel service. The old practice of roll call by the registrar, who once stood upon the rostrum and shouted out the name of each student, has given place to the more efficient method of counting empty chairs and recording the results on printed charts. When this process is completed, the president reads from the Scriptures, and then, after the students have turned their backs upon him for a reason which no one has been able to explain, he prays. Student business is transacted in the few minutes which remain before the bell rings for the next class.

[…] The old graduate will find the College much changed but the changes are in the externals. There are still today found the same democratic spirit which has ever pervaded the true republic of letters, the same respect for intellectual honesty, and the same high regard in the fundamental value of a liberal education.

J.H. Easterby
1935