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UNCG CENTENNIAL ORAL HISTORY PROJECT COLLECTION
INTERVIEWEE: Betsy Bulluck Strandberg
INTERVIEWER: Missy Foy
DATE: May 10, 1991
[the Unidentified Person present is indicated by “UP”]
MF: And if you could start, I guess, with just some general information like where you’re from, when you attended Woman’s College [of the University of North Carolina].
BS: I’m from Rocky Mount, North Carolina, and I attended from ’44—’44, yes, to ’48 when I graduated. I particularly wanted to come here because my mother [Josephine Jenkins Bulluck] was a graduate, the Class of ’23, and had grown up reading her annuals. I knew all the people in her class as well as she did. [chuckles] And she recently died, and I have her annuals, still enjoy them.
MF: Oh, great.
BS: And I intended to be a music major because my mother always intended me to be. [conversation with someone else redacted] I got up here and found that I was spending all my time in the music building and not getting enough else, so I decided to change my major after my freshman year to biology. I had to go to summer school to get enough credits to make up the credits from the music that I had and got my first two jobs, I think, because I could play the piano and lead a choir. Those jobs were teaching. I wish I could have taken those but since I minored in music and since I couldn’t, I majored in biology and had a teacher, Miss Helen Ingraham [biology faculty], and she tried to influenced me to go into biology. She didn’t try, but I just liked it. I started taking English my sophomore year. I took English, Spanish, two sociology courses and two science courses to try and decide what I wanted to do.
MF: [side comments to someone else redacted]
BS: So anyway, after going to summer school for two summers to get caught up, I did graduate with my class.
MF: Oh, involved a little work.
BS: I think it was.
MF: Was that going to like full-time summer school with two classes? 2
BS: Oh, no, one session each time. I went down to Beaufort [North Carolina] with Dr. [Archie] Shaftsbury. His zoology lab, marine zoology. And took a class in that, which was wonderful. I still love it.
MF: Oh, yes, I bet it was.
BS: I still really—I teach my grandchildren things I learned.
MF: I think that’s still there.
BS: The Duke [University, Durham, North Carolina] lab is still there, but this was UNCG [The University of North Carolina at Greensboro]—WC-UNC’s lab. It was down past Beaufort.
MF: Yes. East Carolina [University, Greenville, North Carolina] has a lab down there.
BS: Do they?
MF: And I know Duke has a lab.
BS: Yes, they have a large one.
MF: Near Wrightsville Beach [North Carolina]. I think they have two labs. I know they have one near Wrightsville Beach, is what I’ve heard.
BS: But last summer I rode down where ours used to be, and I can’t even orient myself to find it. I tried my best to find it or some sign of it, and I couldn’t find any sign of it.
MF: I suppose the biology teacher—
BS: He died, and it was because his father-in-law lived down there, I think, that we probably got that going that. But he was a very interesting character. [laughs] We had a grand time there.
MF: And I suppose you lived in the dorm?
BS: There?
MF: Here.
BS: Yes, I did.
MF: Which dorm did you live in?
BS: I lived in Cotten [Residence Hall] my first year, Jamison [Residence Hall] my second year, and after going—at four o’clock in the morning, my to-be roommate and I slipped 3
across campus and slipped outside the dean’s office to be first in line to draw rooms for those rooms that would be vacated during the summer and that would become available. We got in Winfield [Residence Hall] and lived there the last two years.
MF: And that was the newest dorm at that time, wasn’t it?
BS: Yes, I guess it was. Weil-Winfield [Residence Hall], yes.
MF: Yes. So what was dorm life like? What are some general things you remember?
BS: I studied. I really did. But dorm life was real fun—lots of socializing, lots of getting to know people. I don’t know, I really did study. I didn’t do a whole lot of bridge playing and things like that.
MF: Yes.
BS: But I liked it. [laughs] Talking to the—we lost our two ladies.
MF: [laughs] There were a lot of rules also to follow.
BS: Oh, yes. You had to check out and in and sign out for a date and check in by eleven o’ clock [pm] and all kinds of rules and regulations. Only you had to sign out for the weekend and you were very much looked after. [laughs]
MF: [laughs]
BS: My freshman year I had an invitation to go to Woodberry Forest [Virginia prep school] for the weekend, and that was a big do. Fortunately my counselor that year had a nephew, I believe, who went to Woodberry and so she was all for it and she saw to it that I got on the train and rode on the train from here. There was another Greensboro girl going whose father was a professor right here at the college, Dr. [Leonard] Hurley’s [English professor] daughter, and so we rode the train up to Woodberry with Miss [Annie Fulton] Carter’s [Class of 1921] blessings and—but it was very much regulated. You had to have all kinds of permission from home to go do. But it was all right. It didn’t bother me that much.
MF: Yes, I guess, those rules lasted until—I just found out sometime in the past couple of days those rules lasted until 1972.
BS: Was it that late?
MF: Yes.
BS: I had no idea. My heavens, my daughter was at Carolina, UNC-Chapel Hill, by that time, and I remember I did have the choice of regulating hers to whether she had to be in by a certain time and she was studying abroad that summer so I said yes and it made her 4
furious that I didn’t trust her enough. [laughs]
MF: Right.
BS: So I didn’t realize that this school had them that late. I guess if Carolina over there did, we did too.
MF: Some of the rules started to become more lax, I believe, when it became a university, co-educational, but they didn’t actually really go out the window until I think ’72. That’s also when a lot of the traditions—
BS: I know. The classes—
MF: Class jackets.
BS: All those things went out—
MF: A lot of changes happened.
BS: And did they not have student government officers for a few years? Had you found that out? Was there a time that we actually didn’t have any?
MF: I’m not sure. I don’t—
BS: I remember getting a letter saying—I was student government president, and getting a letter saying, “Do you favor continuation of this or not?” So they did write about that.
MF: Do you remember about when that was?
BS: No, I can’t remember. It was already a number of years after I graduated. It was probably in the late seventies. [background conversation]
MF: I haven’t run across that. I know there was a time—
BS: I know they de-emphasized.
MF: Yes, definitely, I’ve run across that. Yes, definitely. In the late ’60s, early ’70s, student government became very, shall we say, non-critical.
BS: Yes.
MF: But during the time you were here student government was very important, wasn’t it?
BS: Oh, very important. Oh, yes. You worked on your campaign and you had—see at that time, the president of the student body was also head of the judicial board. I think later on those two were separated. 5
MF: Yes.
BS: But at my time, they were the same, and the judi board met every Monday night in the Horseshoe Room and handed out punishments, and I tell you another something that I found interesting from that time as contrasted to today. We had a girl who was a freshman who came before the judi board for coming in inebriated at eleven o’clock or eleven-thirty [pm] or whatever time.
MF: Oh, no.
BS: She obviously had had too much—had something to drink, which was not allowed, and too much of that something. And she came before us—I don’t know whether this is giving a good or bad insight into Dr. [Walter Clinton] Jackson’s [chancellor] character. See, he was still here. But she came before us and according to our rules written in boldface type in the handbook, you would not drink any alcoholic beverages while a student at this college. It didn’t say, “On campus, in Greensboro.” It said, “While a student.” And that would cover weekends in Chapel Hill and things like that. Anyway, this young lady came before us and according to our rules she should be expelled. Well, we wrote up this decision and, of course, anything that momentous had to go to Dr. Jackson for approval. So he called me in the next day or so, and he said, “Miss Bulluck, this young lady has excellent grades and if she had chosen to go to a college up North, they would never have even frowned upon her coming in in this condition. And I really do not want us to damage her for the rest of her life by having on her records—” I’m trying to talk like he did. He was very clipped. [laughs]
MF: Yes.
BS: “By her having on her records that she was expelled from college for this reason.” And he said, “So I believe we will give her an opportunity to withdraw.” Which he did and she did, and she went on to have a fine record at some other college. I don’t know where she ended up going, but I think that’s a real insight into his character.
MF: Yes.
BS: You bend the rules. See I was so young and inexperienced at twenty two; we weren’t grown up at twenty two in those days, that if a rule was a rule then we followed the rule, and he was smart enough to know that sometimes you bent the rule.
MF: That is an interesting story. That would be neat to find somebody who—somebody like this girl and talk to her. Yes. Although I doubt that she would be very willing to talk about that. [laughs]
BS: [laughs] She may not want you to talk to her.
UP: One from your hometown.
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BS: Oh, that’s right. I don’t know what her problems—see I only knew her problems up here though. Was it bad?
UP: See, she came in drunk at our graduation. I mean, she did not graduate. She did not—her name was not even on the program.
BS: You had to have that or you were just—three minutes late.
UP: Yes.
MF: Yes. Back in ’51 a girl showed up the night before graduation drunk and did not graduate?
BS: Right.
UP: It took her—I think it took her quite a bit, but she finally got her diploma but she did not
go through vespers.
BS: She should have had better sense.
UP: I mean, night before. [laughs]
BS: Yes, that’s right, that’s right.
MF: This was a girl from your hometown?
BS: Yes, who happened to have been mascot for my Girl Scout troop when she was that much younger than I, when I was in girl scouts, yes.
MF: As far as having attended a women’s school, is there anything special or unique that you feel that you got out of an education at a women’s school. Not necessarily WC [Woman’s College] in particular, but a women’s school?
BS: I hate to say it but I think it would have been the reverse. I think it would have been better had we been coed in those days. I think it’s a more normal way of life, and I think men’s minds are just different from women’s.
MF: [laughs]
BS: That’s probably stepping on your toes, Missy, but I think it’s more interesting. The classes that I took up here in summer school—there were some men students that could come in the summertime. And I just felt that their outlook was interesting and added a lot to the class. So, let’s see if I can think of something that made it better, having girls. You weren’t—I don’t know—I was going to say you weren’t quite as competitive about dating. I don’t know that I can come up with a single good reason of something that I gained being an all-women’s college. [background comment] You can? You think there 7
are good points of having been all women. My mother was. Mother didn’t think—she recently died, as I told you. She never was converted to it being a coed.
MF: She graduated in?
BS: Twenty-three.
MF: Twenty-three.
BS: She thinks that the college started falling apart when they let men in.
MF: There are quite a few alumni who feel that way.
BS: Who feel that way?
MF: Yes. Quite a few that I’ve interviewed that feel that way, and then there are quite a few who feel the same way you do that it would have been better coed. There are very few in-between.
BS: I think that since it has gone coed we have struggled to get some really effective men. I think we have so long gotten the men who couldn’t get in at Chapel Hill who chose to come here. [background noise] I think it took a while to get really good men. Noisy, isn’t it? [laughs]
MF: Yes.
BS: You have a lot of patience. You can see what is going on.
MF: Oh, sure. [laughs] Also, since you’re on the Alumni Board I’d like to ask you about some of the more recent things going on, particularly the controversy between the alumni association and Chancellor [William E.] Moran.
BS: I’m glad we’ve gotten it worked out. I just hope that it will be smooth from now on because I think it has upset many, many alumni and has tended to turn them off.
MF: Yes.
BS: Just the fact that controversy is going on. And I think we’ve—it took so much work on the part of that committee; that group that did meet for so long.
MF: Right.
BS: I think it’s reasonable. I think that the Alumni Association handled it real well. [background noise] [unclear] [laughs]
MF: [sound of a door closing] Thank you. 8
BS: I really do think that—I think we came out on the better end of it. I know we’ve got to raise a lot of money and that happens to be what my job is—is the fundraising.
MF: Yes, I’ve heard one person tell me they think that there’s a possibility that the Alumni Association may have bitten off a little more than they can chew, so to say.
BS: I think that remains to be seen. I think the thing is we are all, the university and the alumni, going after the same dollars.
MF: Right.
BS: And I think that if we can be tolerant of each other there, it’s going to be the telling factor, and I hope we can be.
MF: Yes. So this could—something I just thought of now—this could foreseeably create a little bit of tension between the Alumni Association and the Development Office.
BS: But [Richard] “Skip” Moore [vice chancellor for advancement] is trying very hard to be very fair. I have already had one long meeting with him.
MF: Yes.
BS: When we talked about these things and we have come to some tentative agreements, although we haven’t gotten any hard, drawn up agreements yet money-wise.
MF: I know that I’ve talked several times with Weston Hatfield in the Development Office. Not about this, but using him as a source for names for the oral history project. Yes, that’s crossed my mind several times wondering what the future of that relationship would be.
BS: Well, one thing that Skip and I agreed on, and as I say, my committee hasn’t yet come to these agreements yet, was that if we work on certain people we’ll let him know who we’re working on, so in other words, he won’t be going after the dollars at the same time we are and then we’ll have x number of months to work on those people and we haven’t produced any results, then we’ll give him the names and see if he can get them.
MF: Oh, sure.
BS: I hope it’s going to be that way. I hope it’s going to be a work-together situation rather then a vying for the same dollars and pulling against each other.
MF: Sure.
BS: And Skip gives every indication of wanting it to be that way, and I certainly do. It’s just such a mammoth undertaking that I cringe at the thought.
MF: Yes. Even something like this alumni weekend is this going to be something that the 9
Alumni Association’s going to have to raise?
BS: Answer to? I don’t know.
MF: So that really hasn’t been quite spelled out yet, you know. I guess—
BS: I think the—well, see the alumni pay their own way a great deal to this, and they are all paying a lot.
MF: Oh sure.
BS: A lot. I mean I paid $29, and I’m going to be here from tomorrow before lunch—I mean from today until before lunch tomorrow, so when you think about it—if all these alumni are paying that much, they are taking care of a lot. I know they’re not taking care of all the expenses. But the university, I think, has been generous in saying what they would still pay for. They are going to pay for half of [Director of Alumni Affairs] Brenda’s [Meadows Cooper, Class of 1965, MEd 1973] salary. We are going to pay for half of it. We are probably going to have dues. This is the big proposal that we’ve had.
MF: Yes, that’s a big change.
BS: Yes, it is. Chapel Hill has had dues for years.
MF: Oh, really? I wasn’t aware of that.
BS: And a lot of—I’ve talked to the man over there, and they have $25 a year dues. I don’t think that’s a lot of money to ask.
MF: No.
BS: But who knows whether somebody from the Class of ’35 who’s here is going to think that’s a lot of money.
MF: Yes.
BS: My mother thought it was a lot of money.
MF: Sure.
BS: See, when I compare her—she remained interested in this university, but she was rather turned off by it.
MF: Yes. Yes and also I guess most of the members of the Alumni Association, even though it’s been coeducational for over twenty-five years, are still female.
BS: Yes, the great majority. But see, they’ve changed these alumni retreats. I’ve lived from 10
the past—class of—I don’t know where the break off is. I noticed from the Class of ’73 has their reunion up; has their reunion in October at Homecoming.
MF: Yes. That’s not it. I think there’s something; that sounds vaguely familiar.
BS: Yes.
MF: Yes.
BS: What is it? Up—does it begin with the Class of ’73 that has their reunions in October?
UP: Gee whiz. I’m not sure.
BS: You know they don’t—they don’t like the older classes do. I mean this weekend.
UP: And it’s homecoming weekend that they call it.
BS: Well, anyway, it’s the younger alumni have their meetings in the fall.
MF: Oh, okay, yes. That sounds vaguely familiar.
BS: And they don’t meet the same way. See they meet by degrees, by subjects.
UP: By schools.
BS: By schools. The school of biology, the school of whatever, education.
MF: Oh, okay.
BS: See, we don’t emphasize that so much, the older ones.
UP: At the picnic, they have the tables with the years.
BS: Right, they have a big picnic.
MF: Okay.
BS: And the older ones are invited to come in the fall and in the spring, but it’s just not the big reunions.
MF: I guess finally I’d like to ask you what you see for the future of UNCG
BS: Missy, I hate to answer that because I’m not real enthused about UNCG going into, for example, this—
MF: [National Collegiate Athletic Administration] Division I athletics? 11
BS: Well, I’m not so excited about that either. I just feel like we’ve done pretty well without having to emphasize athletics that much, although I know that everybody thinks of [University of] Notre Dame [South Bend, Indiana] and their football team. That’s the first thing that you think of but—
MF: Oh, yes, but what were you going to say?
BS: No, I was thinking about this engineering school that we’re talking about doing with A&T [North Carolina Agricultural & Technical State University, Greensboro, North Carolina]?
MF: Yes.
BS: I don’t know why we can’t leave engineering to Raleigh, to State College [North Carolina State University]. I don’t know why we have to get into every single field.
MF: Yes.
BS: Why can’t we do our own thing? We can do the teacher training over here. And I know there are men that go into that too.
MF: We’ve been historically, strictly a liberal arts college.
BS: Right, right. So why do we have to get into engineering? And I know Dr. Moran is very excited about that. And there are lots of other points that we are reaching for in the future that—I don’t know why we have to give—we have to have emphasis on—. What are you reaching for? Your doctorate?
MF: Well, I just finished my master’s and, I guess, I don’t know. [laughs]
BS: So you’re going to be heading for—. I don’t know why we have to have a doctorate in every field. I think—I don’t know what are the parts of the university can’t separate some of the things that they are going to be emphasizing. I don’t know why everyone has got to have everything.
MF: Yes.
BS: I know there’s just been a recent to do about State College and the liberal arts school there as against the engineering school. I mean, why do they have to emphasize liberal arts there? Let them come here. This is where I think that we would have more of an integrated male/female ratio over here. I understand now that Chapel Hill is what, 66% female?
MF: Is it that high? Really?
BS: That’s what I was thinking where as we are just the reverse. 12
MF: Yes.
BS: I don’t know if we are that high now. Right now I think we’re that high with males over here.
MF: Yes, yes.
BS: Well, anyway, I did hear recently that Chapel Hill is now predominately female.
MF: I vaguely remember hearing something about that, yes. I thank you very much.
BS: You’re very welcome. Thank you.
[End of Interview]
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