University Archives in Action: Renaming Saunders Hall

Today the Board of Trustees voted 10 to 3 to rename Saunders Hall “Carolina Hall.” For those who’ve been under a rock for the past few years, the charge to change the name of Saunders Hall, which was named by trustees in 1920 after William Saunders (1835–1891), North Carolina Secretary of State and chief organizer of the Ku Klux Klan in the state, has been led by various student groups over the past two decades, most recently the Real Silent Same Coalition along with the Campus Y and other student groups.

Saunders’s involvement in the KKK was not ancillary to the decision to name the new building after him, but as seen in the minutes of the Board of Trustees, was indeed central. (You can read the minute books online.)

Saunders_BOT
Minutes, Oversize Volume SV-40001/12 (p. 234), in the Board of Trustees of the University of North Carolina Records #40001, University Archives, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

University Archives staff worked diligently to rediscover this information and provide it to trustees and to the public at large. It is gratifying to know that the (not always easy or recognized) work of collecting, describing, and preserving these materials played a part in energizing students and swaying the board.

We at Wilson Library work very hard to make primary information about the university available to the public, including online exhibits such as “Slavery and the Making of the University,” one of the first exhibits of its kind. We don’t need a mandate to do all we can to make university history public.

We depend on scholars and students to tell the story of the university. We just don’t have the time to read every sheet of paper that comes into our custody. Our job is to collect enough that our researchers have rich and inclusive documentation to work from and to describe it all in a way that gets that material into the hands of researchers as soon as possible.

If you’re interested in any aspect of university history, you can always come to Wilson Library and talk to a reference archivist to get access to the collections that might satisfy your curiosity.

Dr. Tim McMillan on WUNC

If you missed Tim McMillan’s Black and Blue Tour this semester, which traces African American history at UNC, you can listen to Dr. McMillan speak with WUNC’s Phoebe Judge about the origins of and controversies surrounding some of the monuments on campus. Listen here.

Unsung_Founders_Bound_and_Free
The Unsung Founders Memorial, McCorkle Place

 

 

The Scientific Revolution as Cock Fight

[Update 2/15/2017: A 1904 article in the Daily Tar Heel reveals that the cartoons, drawn in the late 1870s, were made in reference to an incident on campus. Read more here.]

Recently, I came across an old hand-drawn cartoon in the University Papers (#40005) that depicts the struggle between physics and chemistry for scientific supremacy as both a train wreck and a cock fight. There’s nothing I can see to date the cartoon—though it’s probably later than 1830 (the earliest railways in the US) and certainly later than 1804 (the invention of the steam locomotive).

Chemistry_vs_Physics_2

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It’s hard to say if there’s any significance to the artist’s inclusion of light rays emanating from the headlamp of the train labeled “Physics.” This drawing appears to have been made prior to Einstein’s 1905 Gedankenexperiment involving light emitted from moving trains, but it certainly could have been made after 1865, when Maxwell discovered that light is an electromagnetic wave and therefore travels at a constant speed. It’s also difficult to interpret an intention behind leaving out the connecting rod on the “Physics” train (see where a second artist, or critic, has penciled in, “You forgot to put your connection rod on this one”), though that might have been mere lack of attention to detail on the part of the artist. Regardless, the game of chicken seems to have solved nothing, and second cartoon depicts the two train operators going head to head.

Chemistry_vs_Physics_1

The same bepenciled critic—who has conscientiously labeled each opponent and the air pump and hastily scribbled a little grass to denote the field of combat—has place in a speech bubble hanging from the lips of “Chemistry” the repudiation, “I’ll be damned if you shall!” Such fierce animosity. Who will win?

Unfortunately, there is no third drawing illustrating the outcome of this heated confrontation. Some say it rages still, and the rumor is you can sometimes catch a glimpse of these two combatants-in-tails struggling with one other on the lofty walkways bridging Murray and Venable.

[OPF-40005/16 in the University of North Carolina Papers #40005, University Archives, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.]

 

President Swain Requests Exemption of UNC Seniors from Conscription

On this day in 1863, university president David Lowry Swain wrote to Jefferson Davis, President of the Confederate States of America, requesting exemption from conscription for university seniors. There were many exemptions to conscription, most resting on the petitioner’s class—one was automatically exempt for owning twenty or more slaves, and one could buy exemption for $300 (around $5,500 in 2013 dollars)—or social status (certain government employees and workers deemed necessary, such as railroad workers). Below is the response, dated November 3rd, from Colonel Peter Mallet, Commandant of Conscripts for North Carolina.

(University of North Carolina Papers (#40005), University Archives)
(University of North Carolina Papers (#40005), University Archives)
(University of North Carolina Papers (#40005), University Archives)
(University of North Carolina Papers (#40005), University Archives)

 

 

 

 

Old East: The First Building of the First Public University

Two-hundred-and-twenty years ago today, the Board of Trustees of the yet-to-be-opened University of North Carolina contracted with James Patterson, a contractor from Chatham County, to build the university’s first building, Old East. Below is Patterson’s drawing and description of the building to be constructed, from July 19, 1793.

Old_East_web
Patterson’s drawing and description of Old East (front and back) from “Old East Interior and Exterior Plan,” 19 July 1793, in the University of North Carolina Papers #40005, University Archives.

New University Archives Collections and Additions

Below is a list of new collections and additions to collections in University Archives. The finding aids include a brief description of the contents of the collection, historical information about the department from which the records originated, and a container listing of the collection’s contents. For questions about these collections, please contact Wilson Special Collections Library at wilsonlibrary@unc.edu.

New:

Assistants to the Chancellor of the University of the North Carolina at Chapel Hill: Susan H. Ehringhaus Records, 1964-1985 (40031)

Susan H. Ehringhaus was appointed assistant to Chancellor N. Ferebee Taylor in 1974. Her primary responsibility was to provide legal counsel to the chancellor on university policiee.

Records include correspondence, legal documents, and other materials related to legal issues concerning the university and to court cases involving the university.

http://www.lib.unc.edu/mss/uars/ead/40031.html

Additions:

Department of Athletics of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Records, 1919-1997 (40093)

The Addition of June 2012 includes files of the director of athletics and other Department of Athletics administrators related to the overall administration of the department and to individual intercollegiate sports, 1919-1997.

http://www.lib.unc.edu/mss/uars/ead/40093.html

Office of the Vice Provost for Health Affairs of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Records, 1932-2005 (bulk 1950-2000) (40110)

The Vice Chancellor for Health Affairs (later Vice Provost for Health Affairs) was administrative head of the university’s Division of Health Affairs, created in 1948 as the Division of Health and Medical Affairs.

The Addition of January 2013 includes files of Vice Provost for Health Affairs H. Garland Hershey, chiefly 1996-1997, and some files of Associate Provost Edward F. Brooks, 1997-2001.

http://www.lib.unc.edu/mss/uars/ead/40110.html

New Finding Aids for University Archives

Below is a list of new finding aids to collections held in the University Archives. These finding aids include a brief description of the contents of the collection, historical information about the department from which the records originated, and a container listing of the collection’s contents. For questions about these collections, please contact Wilson Special Collections Library at wilsonlibrary@unc.edu.

Architectural and Engineering Services Department (#40250): http://www.lib.unc.edu/mss/uars/ead/40250.html

Design Services Department (#40324): http://www.lib.unc.edu/mss/uars/ead/40324.html

Office of the Senior Associate Athletic Director for Business and Finance (#40335): http://www.lib.unc.edu/mss/uars/ead/40335.html

Folklore Program (#40362): http://www.lib.unc.edu/mss/uars/ead/40362.html

UNITAS (#40366): http://www.lib.unc.edu/mss/uars/ead/40366.html

New and Revised Finding Aids for University Archives

Below is a list of new and revised finding aids to collections held in the University Archives. These finding aids include a brief description of the contents of the collection, historical information about the department from which the records originated, and a container listing of the collection’s contents. For questions about these collections, please contact Wilson Special Collections Library at wilsonlibrary@unc.edu.

Acquisitions Department of the Library of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Records (#40057): http://www.lib.unc.edu/mss/uars/ead/40057.html

Gifts and Exchanges Section of the Library of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Records (#40058): http://www.lib.unc.edu/mss/uars/ead/40058.html

UNC Media and Instructional Support Center Records (#40071): http://www.lib.unc.edu/mss/uars/ead/40071.html

University of North Carolina Press Records (#40073): http://www.lib.unc.edu/mss/uars/ead/40073.html

Carolina Inn Records (#40098): http://www.lib.unc.edu/mss/uars/ead/40098.html

NEW! Health and Safety Office of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Records (#40101): http://www.lib.unc.edu/mss/uars/ead/40101.html

Property Office of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Records (#40103): http://www.lib.unc.edu/mss/uars/ead/40103.html

NEW! Office of the Manager of the Student Stores of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Records (#40104): http://www.lib.unc.edu/mss/uars/ead/40104.html

New UARMS Website

UNIVAC 1105, ca. 1960. Academic Technology and Networks Records, #40224.

Update your bookmarks, UARMS has a new website:

http://www.lib.unc.edu/wilson/uarms

We have new pages with updated content to help you with your records management needs.

Hope that you find the new website useful and easy to use. Thanks to our former student workers Mattew Farrell and Lori Neumeier for their hard work building the new site.

Enough to Ruin a Saint

University campuses have always been places with lots of pressure and little supervision. From the time of the university’s founding, when there were only 41 students in one building in the middle of the woods, up to the present day, 30,000 students on 800 acres out of which rise some of the most state-of-the-art buildings in North Carolina, students have had access to the vices of their times—access that the administration has continually tried to control if not outright restrict. As James Johnston Pettigrew (famous for giving his name to Pettigrew Hall and a handful of other exploits) wrote in a letter in 1842, “a sojourn of two years and a half in a place like this, is enough to ruin a saint much more a mortal.”

Drugs 1961-1967, in the Office of the Vice Chancellor for Student Affairs of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Records #40124, University Archives, The Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

The volatile combination of students and alcohol has been well documented since the founding of the university. But the industrial-scientific boom following the Second World War led to the creation of a variety of potent and readily available illicit substances—including Dexadrine, which plagued the university in the early 1960s, when amphetamine and similar drugs, such as Valium, were prescribed with wild abandon.

The abuse of Dexedrine, a popular diet pill of the 1960s now used to treat ADHD and narcolepsy, can be tracked through the correspondence, memoranda, and other policy documents held in the records of the Vice Chancellor for Student Affairs. Abused for many of the same reasons as students abuse Ritalin and Adderall today, Dexedrine, of which Adderall is mostly composed, was used by some students to help them cram all night for exams. Above is a a letter from Dean of the General College Cecil Johnson to Assistant Dean of Student Affairs William Long remarking on this problem. Below is a letter enclosed with the first describing the sad case of a student for whom the pressures of higher education were too much and the use of Dexedrine ill advised.

Drugs 1968-1972, in the Office of the Vice Chancellor for Student Affairs of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Records #40124, University Archives.

The folders “Drugs 1961-1967” and “Drugs 1968-1972” contain references to various drug-related incidents involving students—allegations of LSD, marijuana, and heroin being sold out of Granville Towers; girls buying “Black Beauties” from boys in the Kappa Sigma House; and a Student Health Services pamphlet entitled “On Either Side of the Mushroom;” among other documents.

It should be noted that when the university created a new drug policy in the late 1960s, it was one of only a handful of schools that treated student drug use as a medical issue rather than a criminal one. The first offense resulted in medical treatment; the second, more treatment coupled with administrative action; the third, the student is turned over to the authorities.

The 1960s and ’70s weren’t the first time the university had dealt with its students abusing illicit substances. The Board of Trustees tried many times between 1796 and 1801 to ban students from local taverns. In 1827, the board petitioned the General Assembly to ban the distilling and sale of spirituous liquors “at or near Chapel Hill” and from selling alcohol to students. If those motions had stuck, Franklin Street would have looked very different than it does today.

Drugs 1961-1967, in the Office of the Vice Chancellor for Student Affairs of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Records #40124, University Archives, The Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.