{"id":62492,"date":"2012-07-11T08:25:13","date_gmt":"2012-07-11T12:25:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/?p=62492"},"modified":"2012-08-17T15:35:36","modified_gmt":"2012-08-17T19:35:36","slug":"changing-times-yes-and-no-herbst-looks-back-82-years-at-uconn","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/2012\/07\/changing-times-yes-and-no-herbst-looks-back-82-years-at-uconn\/","title":{"rendered":"Changing Times? Yes and No. Herbst Looks Back at UConn 82 Years Ago"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"The<\/a>
The Connecticut Campus, April 11, 1930.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Dina Plapler, vice president for development at the Health Center, was recently rummaging through items at a yard sale when she came across a UConn newspaper \u2013 The Connecticut Campus<\/em><\/a> \u2013 dated April 11, 1930. UConn was then known as Connecticut Agricultural College and the paper was a sort of amalgam of what is now the Daily Campus and UConn Today \u2013 written by both students and faculty.<\/p>\n

Dina said she thought I\u2019d find it interesting and sent it my way \u2013 she was right. As much as anything, it\u2019s fascinating to see how far we\u2019ve come in 82 years \u2013 not all that long, as universities go \u2013 growing from a small agricultural school to one of the best public research universities in the nation.<\/p>\n

In April 1930, Herbert Hoover was President of the United States, the stock market had crashed only a few months before \u2013 heralding the onset of the Great Depression \u2013 World War I had only ended 12 years earlier, our current president would not be born for another three decades, and women had only been able to vote for 10 years.<\/p>\n

\"Farming<\/a>
An article by history instructor Andre Schenker harks back to the days when women were first admitted \u2013 amidst protests \u2013 to Storrs Agricultural College. The accompanying photo shows a class in gardening 'in the days when women were supposed to tend to the kitchen fires.'<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Actually, the fact that women were attending the college was apparently still a fresh issue in people\u2019s minds: under the headline \u201cAdmitting Women to Storrs School Makes Period of Growth,\u201d a history professor recalls a battle on the floor of the state legislature in the 1890s, after the college first began admitting women. After recalling that a legislator had decried the idea of women at the college, the professor went on to write of the response:<\/p>\n

\u201cBut the very next day, John L. Saxe of Waterbury, pointed out before the House how fitting and necessary it was that the farmer\u2019s wife should be able to help the farmer\u201d \u2013 remember, it\u2019s an agricultural school in the 1890s \u2013 \u201cin his work. \u2018Surely\u2019, he added \u2018no one will attempt to degrade womanhood, when she stands side by side with her husband whom she has chosen to support.\u2019 Following this statement the House roared in laughter.\u201d<\/p>\n

I suppose that\u2019s a little amusing. The story is accompanied by an old photo (even then) of female students working outdoors with a caption reading: \u201cEquality Seekers.\u201d<\/p>\n

Women took courses for the first time in Storrs in 1891, and the college saw its first female graduates in 1893. Today, of course, women make up a little more than half of our student population.<\/p>\n

Another headline reads: \u201cEfficiency is Aim of New College Policy by Dr. Works\u201d (its then-president). This is a good example of \u201cthe more things change, the more they stay the same.\u201d The UConn of 2012 is fresh off an engagement with McKinsey and Co. designed to save tens of millions over a period of years \u2013 in the name of efficiency.<\/p>\n

The paper\u2019s editorial also complains that students are not using their time wisely enough during breaks \u2013 choosing to stay up late \u201cprowling around the countryside\u201d instead of devoting themselves to their studies. This also has a familiar ring to it.<\/p>\n

In lighter news, in recent years, it wasn\u2019t all that unusual to walk around campus and see the occasional student sporting an animal tail hanging out of the back of their pants. As odd as that was, it turns out this sort of thing was not novel: as part of \u201cJunior Week,\u201d running from May 8 to 10, 1930, the paper notes that \u201cfive freshman co-eds were to be seen walking around the campus and through the various buildings backwards with yellow ribbons and streamers flowing down their back and around their heads, arms and feet.\u201d They were apparently being initiated into what was known as \u201cThe Exalted Order of Ground Hogs.\u201d The names of those being inducted into this unfortunately-named organization were then noted for posterity.<\/p>\n

The most amusing content \u2013 actually a trigger for eye-rolling \u2013 is the \u201crisqu\u00e9\u201d jokes listed on the humor page. They include the following (note that students of the time called themselves \u201cAggies\u201d):<\/p>\n

Aggie \u2013 Do you believe in the hereafter?
\nCo-ed \u2013 Why, certainly.
\nAggie \u2013 Well, how about a little necking; that\u2019s what I\u2019m here after. <\/em><\/p>\n

And:<\/p>\n

Co-ed \u2013 Isn\u2019t the moon beautiful?
\nAggie \u2013 I\u2019m in no position to say. <\/em><\/p>\n

Ahem.<\/p>\n

Finally, a note of pride: though a small agricultural school, the Connecticut Agricultural College was already home to distinction \u2013 front-page stories note that the Registrar was departing for a fellowship at Stanford University and a faculty member had been awarded a University of Chicago fellowship. These are two of the great schools we interact and collaborate with now. My takeaway: UConn has always been home to great faculty.<\/p>\n

I would urge the students, faculty, and staff of today\u2019s UConn to make it a point to go to the Homer Babbidge Library to peruse their vast collection of historic papers, such as this one. It\u2019s a look into a distant past that helps us truly appreciate how far we\u2019ve come and who we are today.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A chance find of a 1930 campus newspaper prompts President Herbst to reflect on UConn’s growth from a small agricultural school to one of the best public research universities in the nation. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":55,"featured_media":62348,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_crdt_document":"","wds_primary_category":0,"wds_primary_series":0,"wds_primary_attribution":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"magazine-issues":[],"coauthors":[118],"class_list":["post-62492","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"pp_statuses_selecting_workflow":false,"pp_workflow_action":"current","pp_status_selection":"publish","acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-08 11:07:34","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62492","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/users\/55"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=62492"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62492\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":64368,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62492\/revisions\/64368"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media\/62348"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=62492"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=62492"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=62492"},{"taxonomy":"magazine-issue","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/magazine-issues?post=62492"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=62492"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}