Oral history interview with Betsy Umstead, 1989 [text/print transcript]

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UNCG CENTENNIAL ORAL HISTORY PROJECT COLLECTION
INTERVIEWEE: Betsy Umstead
INTERVIEWER: William A. Link
DATE: December 7, 1989
WL: This is William Link and the date is December 7, 1989. I'd like to begin, Professor [Elizabeth "Besty" C.] Umstead, with just asking you to describe a little bit about yourself. Tell me about yourself, when you were born and where you were born, and how you came, ultimately, to Woman's College [of the University of North Carolina] as a student.
BU: Okay. Well, I'm Betsy Umstead, and I was born in 1928 in Durham, grew up in Durham, and thought I never wanted to be a teacher, but thought I might go to Duke [University]. But by the time I got ready to go to college I decided that I was interested in physical education, and the Woman's College was the best place to come for that in North Carolina. So I came in the fall of 1945, right after the end of the war [World War II] and graduated in 1949 and spent four of the happiest years of my life.
WL: What was—when you first arrived here at Woman's College, what sort of initial impressions did you have of the college? How did it strike you?
BU: Well, of course, I knew a good deal about the college, because my sister had graduated six years before, so I had visited her, and I think probably one of the things that made me decide to come is that she invited me up for a weekend, and they were having a Gym Meet, which was, at the time, an annual event that was held on the campus, sponsored by the physical education majors, but everybody participated. And—of course, the only gym we had then was Rosenthal, and I went to that Gym Meet, and there were—the entire gym and the balcony was filled with students, and I saw those physical education majors going down the swinging rings—that's not what you call them, but I can’t—the rings that—and I thought, if I could ever in my life do that, that would be the most wonderful thing in the world. So, that Gym Meet influenced me in many ways, to come. The college was—she loved the college too—so, you know I was quite ready to come and felt like I knew my way around a little bit, but I loved it. The dorm life was wonderful.
WL: Tell me a little bit more about dorm life, then.
BU: Well, it was certainly very different from today. We had—freshmen had closed study from seven to ten, so you had to be in your room—nobody checked to see if you were studying, but you had to be in your room. And from ten to eleven, you took your shower, had a snack, visited with friends, and at eleven o'clock lights were out. This 2
was during the week. And I think on the weekends maybe they let us have lights on till midnight or one. Wherever you went, you had to sign out; even to go to the library you signed out. If you were going away for a weekend you had to have written permission from home—where you were going, with whom you were going, and so forth—but dorm life was great. It was—the freshmen were all together, so everybody in that dorm was brand new. We were all majoring in different things and, of course, we had the—we didn't have a house mother system, because Miss [Katherine] Taylor [Class of 1928, French professor, dean of women, dean of students, and dean of student services] was not interested in that image for the residence halls, the house-mother type thing. She called them residence halls, and we had a counselor in the residence halls. So—but there was a lot of, you know, caring and the residence hall counselors were nice people who sort of were in charge of making sure that everybody was happy, safe, and whatever.
WL: Who were the residence hall counselors? Were they—?
BU: Well, they were often widows—older women who, when their husbands died, were looking for something to do. Some of them were former teachers. I had—Miss [Ethel Haskins] Hunter was my freshman counselor. My sophomore year and junior year I lived in Jamison [Residence Hall]. And Lillian Cunningham who is still living here in Greensboro—and by the way, she'd be a very good one for you to interview. Do you know her?
WL: No.
BU: Because she knows so many alums and kept up so many years with; she would be good. She was my counselor for two years, and she was a former teacher in Wadesboro, I think. Then in my senior year I lived in Winfield [Residence Hall] and had a much younger counselor, who, I think probably was the first professional counselor I had. She had gone to college, and that was her profession—to be a counselor.
WL: She'd studied—?
BU: Yes, student counseling. Yes. But, they were really happy times. It was just a—and most of the students were resident students, about twenty-five, twenty-six hundred, maybe, when I was here. At that time they said we were the largest residence woman's college in the United States. But I knew everybody. I knew everybody on the campus. I was very active, and loved what I was doing, and I was into all kinds of activities—the Student Government [Association].
WL: What was—let me just stop you here. I'm curious about Student Government. Tell me a little more about how that operated.
BU: Well, it certainly was very different from what I perceive happening on the campus today, though I admit I don't know much about what's happening. But we were very proud of our Student Government. As you know, that was started by Miss [Harriet] 3
Elliott [history and political science professor, dean of women, political figure, and public servant], and we felt a great responsibility for governing well. And the Judicial Board, for instance, was made up of, I don't know, eight or nine students with one faculty advisor, and they made all the decisions. I served on the Judicial Board for two years, and there were a number of times when we suspended students from school and expelled them for breach of our honor code. So, the honor policy was also very precious to those women. That had been started only in, you know, the '40s I think. And—but—something that everybody—I would say ninety-nine percent of the people supported—very strong—we had the double-reporting system, which some people don't agree with even if they agree with an honor policy. You've probably been reading about Wake Forest [University] recently and their honor policy, so that it's—would be a breach of the honor policy not to report somebody you saw breaking it.
WL: Sure. So the honor system applied to a variety of—
BU: Everything.
WL: Yes.
BU: Everything. Academic, residence hall, drinking, being in the wrong place, not signing out—all those things were—any breach of the regulations was an honor policy offense. Now, some were minor, you know—forgetting to sign out was certainly not a major offense.
WL: And it was student—policed by students?
BU: Totally student-run.
WL: So that—
BU: With advisors on there—with just a faculty member or somebody—totally student-run.
And no money involved. Nobody was paid to be president of Student Government.
Nobody—
[telephone rings, recording paused]
WL: Okay. We were talking about the honor system before we were interrupted, and I'm wondering what other sorts of implications there were in the system; for example, was there a sliding scale of penalties—did students—how were students sanctioned? Was there a variety of things—ways they could be punished?
BU: Well, yes. Yes, there were. And it was interesting. During my four years here we—we had a great debate on the campus about uniform penalties that—to streamline the system. They started saying, "Well, for this you get this. You know, if you come in late 4
in Winfield—if you're fifteen minutes late, this happens to you. The same as if you came in another dorm,” because we had hall boards, too—Residence Hall Boards—who heard minor infractions. It had to be a serious offense to go to the Judicial Board. So that we instituted a system of uniform penalties for minor infractions. But that was very interesting and very meaningful to me to be a participant in that. And I really—in the years that I've been here, I've seen the judicial system change so much. As a faculty member I've had to—once or twice I have had students who breached the honor code, and I was amazed at how different things are now. There seems to be a lot more faculty involvement, administrative involvement; students don't seem to take it—didn't seem to me, to be as serious about it or as serious to uphold it. I've talked to my own students a lot about it. I enforce the honor policy as much as I can in my own courses now, and always give my students a history lecture.
WL: What about things like the Dining Halls? What—as a student back in the '40s? What was the food—?
BU: Well, the food was certainly—again, the food was certainly different from today. You had—for breakfast you had cereal, eggs, toast, fruit. For lunch you had very little choice. There were no salad bars, no sandwich-making places, no ice cream machines. Lunch was light, something light. And then dinner was very pleasant, because it was served family style, and you had—you were assigned to a table, which you kept the whole year—with your friends. So you could go with eight of your friends, or nine, up—I think there were tables of eight or ten—and you went to the Dining Hall and signed up for a table, and you had that every night. So, white tablecloths every night on the tables. We were served by our peers, by our classmates who worked in the dining hall, and dinner was very pleasant. Everybody ate at 6:15 and filled up those four big dining halls. And we ate from 6:15 until 7:00 o'clock, and it was very pleasant and brought some refinement to eating, I think.
WL: There was a certain amount of dignity—
BU: Right.
WL: And ceremony, I guess? Kind of [unclear]
BU: Well, we sang a blessing every night before dinner. And then at the end of dinner there would be announcements made and everything, so. Very civilized way to eat, and it made me very sad when we got to big that they could no longer do that. It was nice. Now, the food was not great, but it was enough—and enough variety. You never went hungry.
WL: Was this—am I correct in saying this is the Dining Hall—same Dining Hall?
BU: Same Dining Hall—four areas, North, West, South, and Spencer.
WL: What sorts of life did students have off campus? For example, let's start with The Corner. The Corner existed— 5
BU: The Corner was very popular and that's another thing that interests me. Students don't seem to go to The Corner. I guess it's because we have so much on the campus, you know with the Soda Shop in Elliott Hall, and all that. But The Corner was very important to us. That was a trip. That was a trip to go to The Corner for a Coke, because we had no—the first years I was here, we had no soda shop or anything on the campus. And then the present Faculty Center—during my years here the present Faculty Center was built as a soda shop for students and operated that way for a number of years until Elliott Center—Elliott Hall—was built. And so The Corner was a trip—you know, you had a [unclear]. And we'd go in there and eat supper. We'd just go to the drug store. There was no pizza in those days, either, so we'd go get a sandwich. Most students did not date in the week; and of course we were a woman's college, so there weren't guys around. And most everybody, you know, dated on Friday and Saturday night. We had a lot of things happening on campus; dances. Residence hall parties, and movies—we had free movies in Aycock [Auditorium]—and so there was a lot to do. I went home very little. I stayed here all the time and loved it. And most—you know, there were a lot of students—there was no such thing as talking about a suitcase school then. For one thing, this was right after World War II, nobody had cars. So, gosh, I hardly knew anybody of my peers who owned a car. I don't think anybody did. Their families—some of their families had cars, but, see, there'd been a gasoline shortage and all that, so cars were not very important. When I went home I took the Trailways Bus to Durham or took the train. The train used to run from—especially on Sunday nights we would take the train back from Durham to Greensboro. And you'd have kids on there from Goldsboro and Kinston, and, you know, so all your friends would be on the train.
WL: What about downtown Greensboro? Was there much contact between the college
and—?
BU: Yes—well, I don't know, you know. The town and gown thing, I don't know that, because I think you only know that if you're on faculty. But the students—we walked downtown for shopping or rode the trolley; there were trolleys then.
WL: Where'd the trolley run?
BU: On Spring—let's see.
WL: Spring Garden [Street]?
BU: I think Spring Garden and then kind of went around close to GC [Greensboro College] and then maybe up West Market. I can't recall. But they were overhead trolleys. And, you know, we'd go downtown for normal kinds of shopping, and then, you know, if you had a date, you might go to a restaurant in downtown. There were no shopping centers, no restaurants—very few restaurants anywhere. But we had Meyer's Department store, Belk's [Department Store], and no Thalhimer's [Department Store] then.
WL: So you'd go downtown—the reason to go downtown would be to see a movie, perhaps, or go to the department stores and do shopping there? 6
BU: Yes, that's right, yes. Yes.
WL: Was there a dress code?
BU: Oh, oh. Absolutely! And, as a physical education major, who liked to wear informal clothes and loved my blue jeans and loved my gym suit—I had to live in most of the time, anyway. That was a real problem for us, because you were not allowed to wear any pants on front campus. And you just plain weren't allowed. Now, if you—if you had to go somewhere with pants on, then you had to wear a raincoat over it that hid the pants, and—so, for instance, if you—if you were wearing your gym suit from the dorm to the gym, you could not—you had to wear a raincoat over it. You could not go bare, in your gym suit. [chuckles] Very strict dress code. In those days we wore hats—you always wore a hat to church—and gloves—and there were some occasions on the campus—if we had a really special tea or something, I think people would put on hats and gloves. Dresses on Sunday in the Dining Hall—dress-up for Sunday dinner in the Dining Hall. No, no, no socks or even socks and saddle shoes; on Sunday you had to put on the best dress you had to wear to Sunday dinner. And it was nice, it was nice. People usually went to church, came back, and ate lunch.
WL: So Sunday dinner would be the traditional middle of the day? [unclear]
BU: Middle of the day. And awful Sunday night suppers. Like macaroni salad. [laughs]
WL: Leftovers.
BU: Yes, well, I don't know. They just weren't very exciting suppers. Then on Tuesdays we had Chapel, you know, every Tuesday.
WL: What time of day was that?
BU: Ten minutes after twelve, or twelve-thirty. But then on those days they couldn't have cafeteria lunches, because they had to serve everybody at once so they could get to two o'clock classes. So we had family-style lunches on Tuesdays. So, it would be just like the supper.
WL: So you would sit in your assigned seats at assigned tables.
BU: Sitting at your tables. That's right.
WL: It would go a little faster, presumably.
BU: Right. Yes.
WL: Since you've mentioned Chapel, tell me the way Chapel worked.
BU: Well, we called it Chapel, but it wasn't really chapel in that it was not a religious 7
service, although occasionally we might have an outstanding minister to speak, but that was only because he was an outstanding, well-known person. We had—we would have faculty—sometimes we'd have visiting speakers. I recall hearing the black lady—the Palm—from the Palmer [Memorial] Institute [school for African American students founded in 1902 in Sedalia, North Carolina].
WL: Yes.
BU: I can't think of her name. Brown?
WL: Charlotte Hawkins Brown?
BU: Charlotte Hawkins Brown came every year. Dr. [Walter Clinton] Jackson [chancellor from 1934-1950] always had her to speak in chapel. You know, we might have somebody—the president of the university, or we might have a visiting scholar. We would sometimes have—one thing that I thought was kind of neat we would have—when the symphony came—in those days we used to get the Philadelphia, the New York Philharmonic, and on the Chapel—mass meeting, we called those,—by the way. No. I guess we called them Chapel.
On the Tuesday before the concert, [George] “Pinkie” Thompson—Mr. Thompson or Dr. Thompson, in the Music Department, would play excerpts from the symphonies that the symphony was going to play and teach us something about it—say, "Now, you're going to hear the Beethoven's Fifth. Now the first movement is well-known because you hear these notes, and you hear this, and you'll hear"—and you know, he would give us a little lesson in classical music. "And, you know, don't clap between movements." And things like that. Well, how else do you learn those? Kids don't even know them today, unless their families have taught them. They certainly don't learn it in college. But all twenty-five hundred of us learned things like that in Chapel. Then they would have student programs occasionally.
Every year the Student Government put on one Chapel Day. Every year the Recreation Association was responsible for one session and, you know, to advertise their programs. There was a variety. And I never found it a terrible thing to have to go to.
WL: Always interesting and different. Was there a sense of—well, having assigned seats—I guess you had a sense of where you were in your class in terms of your freshman, sophomore, and juniors—
BU: Absolutely. Freshmen were way up in the crow's nest, and you could hardly wait till you got to the sophomore to move dawn. And we had a little ceremony for that at the end of the year where we'd—they would have a something that had to do with seniors graduating. I can't remember. The seniors would all march out, and then the freshmen—the sophomores would rush down from the balcony, and the freshmen would move down. So you looked forward to the time when you were a senior; you could see and hear a little better in Aycock. Well, we did have assigned seats. We had chapel checkers. These students were appointed, so you had—you might have two rows that 8
you had to check, and you turned in your little slips saying who was absent from Chapel.
WL: Was it an honor to be a checker?
BU: Yes. Well, they chose responsible people. Yes.
WL: So they'd come out of the student leadership?
BU: Yes, yes, yes.
WL: Since you mentioned it, what about commencement? What was—?
BU: Commencement was—the only one I went to when I was a student was my own, but it was a very special occasion. We had Class Day, and we had Class Day right in front of Foust [Building]. They set up a little podium, a little platform out there, and each—I can't remember—[coughs] I think each program—each major had a representative speaker. Maybe—I don't know if math and English and history and all had one, but maybe there was somebody from social sciences or somebody from the arts. I know I was the speaker for my major department and thought it was a very big honor, and I worked very hard on my speech, and that was the Class Day. And that was focused on the class and so forth.
Then the commencement was held in Aycock, and it was just kind of like all other commencements—very crowded, because we had to limit the number of tickets you could give to family because of the limited seating. Then, of course we had the Daisy Chain. The Daisy Chain was a very important part of commencement. That was—the Daisy Chain was used on Class Day and at Commencement Day, and the seniors—the sophomores—see, we had sister classes—freshmen and juniors, sophomores and seniors—so the sophomores always made the Daisy Chain. And that was also a very special honor to be picked on the Daisy Chain Committee. And the fun was that for the first time you could wear pants to the dining room, because you got up at like six o'clock in the morning, and the college truck, a big panel truck, would take thirty or forty of us out to the country where there were daisies. And we would pick all morning—I mean, for an hour—until we got enough daisies. Then we came back, and we had breakfast, and so they would let us into the Dining Hall that morning with our blue jeans on. And then we would, after breakfast, we would make the Daisy Chain. And that meant, you know, tying bunches of daisies together and then tying them on this big rope. And the Daisy Chain, then, was held for the seniors to march between as they went to commencement and as they went through the Class Day. And that was quite a tradition. Yes.
WL: I bet. And the chain would be held be marshals?
BU: By the Daisy Chain Committee, probably thirty to forty sophomores, and they would—you know, it was a big thick rope, and by the time you got the daisies on it, it was quite heavy. So they would stand, holding this, like a like a rope, and the seniors marched 9
through.
WL: What about social life—a little bit more about social life. During the week there were a lot of activities were going on. Was it during the weekends that the boys came in—?
BU: Yes, right. Yes.
WL: And what kind of procedures did they have? Checking in—
BU: Well, I think, yes. If you—you know, if you had a date, you would sign out for eight o'clock and who you were going with, Bill Smith, and where he is from, and who was his grandfather [laughs]—not quite that bad—and where were you going and when you would return. And when you would return you had to sign in. There weren't a whole lot of places on campus—well, the parlors of the residence hall. A lot of students would date and to the library to study, you know. Or go to the movies, or—that's about it, unless there was something dance or a special occasion.
WL: There were dances?
BU: Oh, yes. We had formal dances and informal dances.
WL: How did the—did the dances follow a certain procedure—or did you have to have different types of dances?
BU: Sometimes we had—I think these kind of—must have gone out right after we graduated, but we had card dances. So the formal dances—like if you had a class there, like the junior formal, were card dances. And you had a card, and the guys signed up for dances one through ten. And of course, you'd just exchange dances with your friends. But that was a nice—than was a good was to meet a lot of people, And I thought that was kind of fun.
WL: Where would they be held, physically?
BU: In the gym.
WL: In the gym?
BU: Rosenthal.
WL: Rosenthal.
BU: Yes. And we'd decorate—oh, we'd spend hours and hours decorating and making it beautiful. As beautiful as you could. [laughs]
WL: This—who would sponsor the dances?
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BU: The classes.
WL: The classes.
BU: Yes. Now, early on we had four societies [Adelphian, Alethian, Cornelian, and Dikean]—and you probably know about those—and everybody belonged to a society. That was our answer to sororities.
WL: Right.
BU: But it was quite democratic, in that you were assigned to one when you entered.
WL: By ran—randomly assigned?
BU: I think so, yes. And they had about petered out by the time I came. I recall going to maybe one formal dance in my society and maybe a dinner—they used to have dinners, too. They would have maybe a weekend where you'd have a dinner and maybe a dance. And we met in the old Students' Building, which is—you know where that was—right out—sort of across from Forney [Building]—the cornerstone. But those had about gone out, and I think they were pretty much abolished pretty soon after I was here. They no longer served a purpose, and then they were too large—you didn't—participation wasn't good. I mean, there were so many people in them and only a few participated.
WL: I see. So out of a lack of student interest and a sort of feeling that they weren't serving their purpose anymore, they kind of died out?
BU: That's right. Yes. But you see, in the '20s—in the teens the '20s and '30s, that was a big thing, and in the Students' Building each society had its own room.
WL: Yes.
BU: And that's where they met—and that's where they, you know—we didn't do that much.
WL: Yes. What about the curriculum? As an entering freshman you took a—along with everyone else—kind of set courses, is it?
BU: Yes, not unlike today, to tell you the truth. I—just a little anecdote about Miss—my family knew Miss Nettie Sue Tillett. I don't know if that name means anything to you—she taught English here for many, many years. And she was born in Durham and I did not know her, but my family knew her, and my sister had had her, and so, I guess she knew I was coming. So the first registration, I went up and introduced myself to her, and we did it in the gym, and all the faculty sat around the tables so you just went and signed up and—not too unlike today when you have the departments there. So I went to Miss Tillett and introduced myself. "Oh, well!" she said. "Let me have your card." And she said, "Now, now you're go—you know, you're going to take Spanish under Miss Laura Schell, and you're going to take English under me, and you're going to have 11
history under Dr.—" Can't remember that year whether I had Dr. [Richard] Bardolph [history professor]—but she, she picked my teachers. "You're going to have—" whatever it was—she picked all my faculty, and she took my card and had them sign it. And it was the easiest thing I've ever done, and she also picked the hardest teachers for me. But I thanked her for that later, also. But that was a pretty nice thing to happen to a freshman, because a lot of them were in tears, because they couldn't get this and they couldn't get that, but she helped me, and it was wonderful.
WL: Is that sort of how advising would work?
BU: No, we had advisors.
WL: You had advisors.
BU: Yes. But she kind of took charge of me. [laughs]
WL: But during the first two years you had a common kind of core that—
BU: Yes, well, in the professional programs—in physical education, for instance, we had to take the same liberal arts core that everybody else did: two years of English and history and two years of foreign language and biology and chemistry and—not unlike today, to tell you the truth. You hear all this rigmarole that we carry on about the curriculum, and it hasn't changed a whole lot.
WL: Where were the classes?
BU: McIver [Building].
WL: Old McIver?
BU: Old McIver. Much nicer than new McIver. But old and kind of dreary—let's see, McIver. The Science Building was here then. I had classes in the Science [Building], because I took biology, chemistry, and McIver was where the same things now—history and language, and English, and you didn't go to Curry [Building] for classes until, much later when—you know, we—if you took education classes, that's the only reason. And then of course I had a lot of classes in the gym, and I guess that's—oh, Foust [Building]! Oh, language was in Foust. I took Spanish in Foust. That's about it, I guess—[unclear]
WL: Tell me a little bit more about the faculty back then. We've been talking a little about them already, but tell me more about them.
BU: Well, it's hard to—it's hard to recollect what you, you know—how you felt about faculty as a student. I always liked my faculty, and I always respected them and looked up to them and enjoyed them. As I said, I got a good start with sort of hard teachers, and, you know, I was a good student, and I was interested in studying and learning, so that wasn't a problem for me, and so for me I just don't know from any other perspective. It seemed 12
to me that they were all old. [laughs] And in the Physical Education Department, we had a lot of young faculty, and they were very lively and outgoing, personable people, so we enjoyed them very much. Miss [Mary Channing] Coleman of course was the oldest one there, and she was near retirement age.
WL: But you had a lot of young faculty coming in and composing [unclear].
BU: Well, there was always a fresh group coming in, and they were young when I was there. They—Marjorie Leonard, Ellen Griffin, and Eleanor Wolfe—were the younger group. And then there was Dorothy Davis and Ethel Martus, who were next under Miss Coleman. And then there was Miss Coleman. I don't even remember the faculty we had then, but they were all really good—were very—we liked them, and enjoyed them.
WL: What kinds of contacts did faculty have with students? There was, presumably, a very close relationship between teaching relationships—
BU: Yes, well, I think it—we had—will, the classes were always small, and you know—probably I never had more than twenty-five in a class—in any class I had—maybe thirty.
WL: Even your freshman class?
BU: Even in my freshman class. Freshman English, just a normal class, you know, we had thirty, thirty-five—I don't know. And I never was in any of these big, huge lab sections there; we just didn't have those. And even, you know, in biology, you had your own biology section. I had, Miss [Inez] Coldwell taught me—oh, that was the other one, Miss Tillett gave me, Miss Coldwell. And we had thirty-five people. She taught us a lecture twice a week, and she taught our lab three hours a week, and we never had any of this big lecture hall business. There were a lot of social events in which you got to see—that was particularly true in physical education. We had a lot of parties. The freshmen would have a party, and the sophomores would give the seniors a party, and the juniors would give the freshmen, and the faculty always came to those. So—and then we played games together, too.
Now, Miss Tillett who, by the way, was my faculty advisor my first two years, because you had a general—yes, you had advising in your department, but it seems to me you had a—you could have anybody for a faculty advisor until you were a junior. I don't recall that exactly. But I know Miss Tillett was mine, and every semester she had all of her advisees to her apartment; she lived in these stucco apartments down on Tate Street, nice-looking apartments about the middle of the block there; I forget the name of them. So she had a lovely apartment, and she would have us every semester—like on a Sunday afternoon—and we'd put on our best clothes, and she would—you know, it'd be like six or eight, or ten—very nice food, and very—like for tea; she wouldn't have us for a meal, but for tea—very, very enjoyable—very important thing for us to do. And faculty would often have social events in their homes and invite special groups of students of one kind or another.
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WL: Was the administration really visible to students?
BU: Very visible, I would think. I probably have—you know, I have a positive view of that, because I was very active as a student in Student Government—in doing things, so I had an opportunity to talk with the administrators. We loved Dr. Jackson, he was just a nice teddy bear fellow, from the standpoint of the students. Of course, some students, I guess, had him for maybe a history course or something, but I just knew him because I was in Student Government and, or something like that. And, but—
WL: A lot of contact there, though?
BU: More—certainly more than now.
WL: How about Dean [Katherine] Taylor [Class of 1928, French professor, Dean of Women, Dean of Students, and Dean of Student Services]—she, was she—?
BU: Oh, absolutely, yes. Miss Elliott—I was trying to think when Miss Taylor—do you know the year that Miss Taylor took over from Miss Elliott. When did Miss Elliott die?
WL: I don't know for sure.
BU: I believe Miss Elliott was here, maybe, in my freshman year. I just can't recall, and I haven't looked it up. And then I knew Miss Taylor much better later on when I came back, because I was a residence hall counselor under her. So I really—as a student I don't remember much about Miss Taylor. I think she was a counselor in Weil [Residence] Hall, and I know she was my sister's counselor and my sister's French teacher, and she adored her. Everybody looked up to Miss Taylor; she was very revered and respected as a scholar, and a very competent person on the campus. You know, I mean, she was—first of all, she was a very handsome woman, and rather aloof, however, from students, not buddy-buddy with students. There were a few special students who probably got to know her well, but as a student I did not feel friendly with her; I just thought she was something wonderful. But I got to know her much better when I came back as a faculty member.
WL: Did you graduate in 1949?
BU: Yes.
WL: And what were your—what did you—what came after graduation?
BU: Well, I was very fortunate. At that time there were lots of jobs in physical education, and this program here was nationally recognized as an excellent program. So my first job was teaching at Goucher College [Towson, Maryland] with a bachelor's degree. [cough] And Miss Coleman and Miss Martus had lots of contacts, nationally, and so when these people needed a teacher, they called them up [cough] and said, "You got somebody you can send me?" So I was very fortunate to go to Goucher College, which 14
is a very fine women's college. And I learned so much those two years that I spent there.
WL: So you were at Goucher for two years.
BU: Two years—and then I went back to [University of North Carolina at] Chapel Hill and got my master's—and got a master's in—Master of Arts—Then I went to Lawrenceville College [New Jersey] as department head, and—a very small department and taught there for three years and—I think that chronology’s right—1955, 1954—but those were my jobs, then I came back here. They invited me back to teach, and to—I was a residence hall counselor, and I was getting—salary supplement, because you got your room and board free. I think it was free. So that was good, and it was pleasant, and I enjoyed it.
WL: Were you happy to be back?
BU: Oh, I love—of course, it was wonderful. My house president that year—you may be interested in this—was Lou Stevenson. Who, I don't know—if you have heard that name, but her—she is married to the gentleman—the Austrian diplomat who the FBI [Federal Bureau of Investigation] has been trailing.
WL: Oh, yes. Right.
BU: I don’t know his name.
WL: Yes. He was on the news last spring.
BU: Oh, yes. And the, you know, they kept—they're probably still trailing him, but they—he's—
WL: Yes.
BU: And she's married to him. She was my house president that year, and she was—she wasn't president of Student Government. I think she was president of the senior class—very outstanding girl.
WL: So you came back—this was '57, and you—in '56?
BU: Seems like—no, I think it was 1956.
WL: Fifty-six.
BU: And I came back and taught one year—two years—and then one afternoon I'm in the faculty lounge, and we had a student from India—a master’s student from India, and she said—it was like early spring or maybe January. She said, "Betsy, why don't you come and go home with me next year?" And I said "What, to India?" She said, "Well, I just saw a notice on the bulletin board, there's a Fulbright [Lectureship]. They want 15
somebody to come." And I said, “No way!” and I got—you know, it was the last thing on my mind. And then I went over to the bulletin board, and I said, "I believe I will apply."
So, I applied and waited from January all through that summer and heard in the summer sometime that I didn't get it. Well, you have never known anybody being so relieved in your life. I said what in the world did I want to go to India for a year for, you know—Well, another whole year went by, and I was at a convention in Asheville, and—I came back from a meeting and had a note on my door with a note saying for me to call the Office of the International Education in Washington. And I called and they said, "Do you want to—We would like to offer you a Fulbright to go to Baghdad, Iraq.”
And I said, "Where is Baghdad, Iraq?" So I said, "Well, I'm interested. I'd like to think about it." And I said, "When do I need to let you know something?"And they said, "Tomorrow." So I went and had a Fulbright to Baghdad, Iraq, and taught in a woman's college there and set up a professional preparation program for physical education there.
Then I came back after my Fulbright—I came back here for one year, then I left and taught for six years at Sargent College and at Boston University and while I was there I got another master’s degree at Harvard, and then came back to Chapel Hill and got my doctorate. And then I taught one year at Radford College [Radford, Virginia], which was not a very happy experience, and Miss Martus rescued me by calling and saying—that was ten years later, she said, "We have an opening, would you like to come?" And so I was very happy to be back here. And I've been here since.
WL: So your second stint was '68 onward?
BU: Sixty-eight, yes.
WL: Back in the mid-50's the—one of the major concerns on everybody's mind around here was the conflict between the Chancellor Edward [Kidder] Graham, [Jr.], chancellor from 1950 to 1956] and the faculty. I am interested to know what kind of perspective you can add on that—what you think the sources of the conflict were and—
BU: I was a young faculty member, brand new, young faculty member. I thought Ed Graham was wonderful. I enjoyed him, he seemed to be forward-looking, energetic, had ideas. I thought that he was wonderful. There were two camps, I was in the Ed Graham camp, even against my old professors like Miss Nettie Sue Tillett, and a lot of them who were the old guard, very much against him. I think, in general the problem was that Ed Graham was ahead of his time, and also he was—had a Napoleon complex. He wasn't but about 5'5" or so—I don't know, he wasn't tall, and like many little men, he was feisty. And he was ahead of his time for this campus. Whether he was from—as an academician in a national sense, I don't know.
He appealed to the young people, the young faculty, and there was a large group of us; Barbara Parrish [Class of 1948, alumni secretary] had just come to be alumni secretary. Fran Wolf [Class of 1947] who graduated the year before me—two years before me. She was his administrative assistant. Fran Wolf lived with a physical education major that was also on the faculty and graduated two years ahead of me. There were other young people around. 16
We rallied around Ed Graham and agreed with the things he was saying and disagreed with the other things. But the other people were very conservative. He—they had run the campus for a long time. We used to have a thing that was called the Academic Policies Committee made up of about five or six people—they ran the campus. But it was run by the faculty. That's the difference.
WL: The Academic Policies Committee pretty much ran everything?
BU: Ran everything.
WL: All the academic—
BU: All the academics things, yes And you know, we had semi-democratic procedures in the faculty, I mean, we voted on major things. But the agenda was prepared by the Academic Policies Committee. Well, when Ed Graham came in, he was ready to tell the faculty they should do this or they should so that, or we should change the liberal education requirements and he was talking about something—general education [unclear]. I don’t, you know—They, you know—very entrenched in what we did here. He was just hired. "We didn't need you to come and tell us how to do it." So those things grew.
Of course Katherine Taylor was also in the Graham camp—and many of the residence hall counselors that she had brought in, like myself, were young. And so, many of the residence hall people—the student activities staff—was also in his camp. He was not smart about a lot of things that he did. He had antagonized, but not because I think he really enjoyed going around antagonizing, though as it got worse and worse—as the conflict got worse and worse, he probably did enjoy it, because—and it was bad. It was an unhealthy situation, because you just absolutely had these two camps, most—old guard versus young.
And then it became a personal thing—You know personal accusations make that weren't true about people. And you could hardly wait to get the Greensboro Record every afternoon to see what the story was today. And there was some guy, I'm trying to remember his name—can't remember his name, but he wrote all the articles. And you know, we'd say, "Did you see him on the campus today? Did you see—?”
BU: [unclear] Well, we can hardly wait to see what he says about that tonight. And—well, it made life interesting.
WL: How was the—was the newspaper coverage unfair, do you think?
BU: Sometimes I think it was. And, you know, probably if I looked back at it now I wouldn't think that, but being very partisan myself, I probably thought that—what he said—if I didn't agree with it, it was not fair. I don't really know, and it just got to the point where there—and it just got to the point where there was no way that Dr. Graham could stay here and be successful, so. And it was interesting because he went to Boston University and—[unclear]
17
[End Side A—Begin Side B]
WL: —opposition to Graham and the controversy over his administration [unclear] substantial issues or more of style and personality—
BU: I really think personality and style played a large part, because his style was very informal. He would smoke a pipe at faculty meetings, sit with his feet on the desk while he was listening—or walk up and down, and that made everybody very nervous. And he was very informal and assertive and opinionated, and I don't even remember anything about the substance of the arguments—I just remember the personality and style aspects, and it seemed to me that's a lot of what we were fussing about.
WL: Yes. Were you there when he resigned?
BU: No.
WL: You had left at that point?
BU: Wait, I don't know, I can't remember—Yes, I think must have been, because he went to Boston, as I had told you, and I came a year later, so I must have been here when he resigned. Yes, that's right. I was here one year under Dr. [William Whatley] Pierson [acting chancellor from 1956 to 1957 and 1960 to 1961]
WL: W.W. Pierson. What was the aftermath? Were the divisions still there—pretty much?
BU: Well, yes, I think it colored people's reaction for many years—I think Miss Taylor was certainly hurt by it and prevented her for all of the rest of the years that she was here, for my thinking, making the contribution the kind of contribution that she should of could have made, because people were not kind, and there were, you know, accusations of one kind or another—that begin to, you know, talk about personalities and that sort of thing.
Yes, I think it took the campus a while to get over that, and some people never did, you know, before their retirement. The rest of us did, because it was—you know, you go on and you're young, and you go on, and somebody else comes along and you like them. Then when Gordon Blackwell [chancellor from 1957 to 1960] came, well, we loved him, he was the greatest. I guess we had Dr. Pierson, and then I went away for a year, and then when I came back, Dr. Blackwell was here. And then—well, that's funny—no, I haven't got the chronology right, because then that would have made Ed Graham—Graham came before Blackwell, right?
WL: Right.
BU: Well, it doesn't matter, I haven't got it quite right. But, I do know that I was here with Pierson, I was here with Ed Graham, and then when I came back, Dr. Blackwell was here—I'm not sure— 18
WL: Graham brought in Mereb Mossman [sociology professor, dean of instruction, dean of the college, dean of faculty, and vice chancellor for academic affairs] as administrator—I think that was correct—how did—?
BU: Well, she was head of the Sociology Department—
WL: Yes.
BU: He probably brought—I don't know.
WL: I mean, he brought her in as a dean of whatever the term was then—
BU: Administrative dean, I think, or something like that. Yes, I don't know much about that, and I really didn't—and I don't know the chronology on it. I know she was—I think—I've pretty sure she—when I came to teach, she interviewed me for the—you know, she was the person that interviewed—but I had had her as a sociology teacher. And—but I don't know much about the politics of that.
WL: Yes. When you returned for your second stint in 1968, it was no longer a woman's college—
BU: That’s right.
WL: University of North Carolina at Greensboro. Did the place seem all that different in
1968?
BU: Well, no, not very different, because we didn't have many men, and no, it really didn't—but with the slow changes—the change has not been cataclysmic at any point, but when you put '68 against '88, there are tremendous changes, because of the growth. One anecdote you might be interested in, from a historical point of view—I don't remember—do you remember when the first two black students came to the Woman's College? [Editor’s note: JoAnne Smart and Bettye Tillman came in the fall of 1956.]
WL: Well, I have been trying to find that out. Yes, I know [Richard] "Dick" Bardolph knows—
BU: Yes, well, Barbara Parrish would know, too—matter of fact, one of those young women is very active in the Alumni Association—a gal from Raleigh.
WL: Right.
BU: And I think that I am right on this, because I've told it a lot of times, so I think I'm accurate—it was at the time when I was first here teaching. And when they took their first physical education class—or the first year—I don't know whether they planned it that way or not, or whether the girls just freely chose what they wanted to take. But I had them in a folk dance class. Now, it would be hard for you and me to realize today 19
what it meant to have black students on the campus for the first time, in the South. Well you understand it, but unless you went through it, it's hard to—
WL: Yes, right.
BU: There was a great deal of concern and nervousness about whether we would treat them right and whether they would be happy, and all of those things. Well, they ended up in my folk dance class, and I had about thirty-five people in there, and, believe me, I was petrified, because, I said, "What am I going to do if the other girls won't dance with them." So—and I went to that first class really worried, because I didn't know what I would do. And so, the first dance I taught them, the first thing I did was a mixer, in which you to around and everybody dances with everybody else. No trouble from then on because we just broke the ice in that way—and that was—I remember how very nervous I was, and I said, "What am I going to do if some white girl backs off and says, I'm not going to dance with you." Didn't happen and so that was okay.
WL: Was that the kind of—were those the sorts of adjustments that had to be made when black students came for the first time?
BU: Oh, yes. And swimming in the pool, you know, you didn't know who was going to object to swimming in the same pool. I mean, incredible as that sounds today that was a real concern. And—
WL: This would have been—what you've just described—would have been in the '50s, actually?
BU: Yes, right. That was in the '50s.
WL: In the first stint.
BU: Yes.
WL: Equally traumatic would be the advent of men.
BU: And I wasn't here for that. See, they came in '62 [Editor’s note: the university became coeducational 1963 and men arrived in the fall of 1964.], when I was away, and didn't come back until 1968. By then that was an old, old thing.
WL: But still predominantly women.
BU: Oh, yes. Yes.
WL: Did it have the feel of a woman's college, still, in 1968?
BU: I think so, because—yes, I think it did to a large extent, because there weren't that many men, and probably we had to make more adjustments in physical education than 20
anywhere else. There is an apocryphal story that Miss Martus said—when you know, they were preparing for the men, and she said, you know, "We've got to get the gym suits, we've got to get new gym suits, and we've got to get this, and we have to do that." And she said, "The first thing we'll need in this building is a men's toilet," because they didn't have a urinal in the place. [laughs] So that—you know, be practical about what we need—but, you see, we did the problem—you didn't have to buy different history books for men, but you did have to buy different gym suits and different swim suits, and some of the equipment that men use is different, so that was an interesting adjustment.
But—we—it was interesting in physical education, I think, much to the credit of Ethel Martus. We never went through—we never had to go through this awful thing that many schools had to go through of a men's department, and a women's department. We were a women's department—as the minute she knew that men were coming, she hired two or three men on the staff, and we never had a men's staff and a woman's staff. We were the Department of Physical Education integrated with faculty and students, and it never was a problem.
WL: And that's how—is that how other institutions did it, that they actually would have separate—?
BU: Oh, most institutions have separate men's and women's departments, yes. And they had to go through the awful thing of integrating those. And, oh, I mean, all over the United States, in the '60s and '70s—right on into the '70s it was painful, fights and horrible things happening, because the women ran their departments rather differently than men.
WL: Yes, they both would be entrenched.
BU: That’s right.
WL In the past twenty years, what do you think have been the most significant changes coming to UNCG?
BU: I think the growth, the size—and that has made the difference in all the other aspects of the college. I think it's made the difference in student living, student government, student activities, faculty participation—so—and that's been hard for me. That's been hard for me to accept, because I felt so positive about the earlier things, and felt they were so good, and wanted always to see those kept up and duplicated. And it has been difficult for me to realize that it can't happen in a school this big, you know. So, that has been hard for me in many ways. The other thing that was very dramatic to me—and I was on the committee that wrote the instrument of government that was accepted in the '71—and that was the first time—now, we are talking what fifteen years ago, no—ten, twelve years ago—all of a sudden we realized in working on that faculty governments instrument—that we now—where we used to have students and faculty, we now had this other thing rearing its head called the administration, and we had to deal in that instrument with three things: administration, faculty, and students. That had not been a reality on this campus before. There was not anything called "The Administration" that 21
was different. We talked about faculty and students, and the administration was a part of the faculty. But that's been a big change.
WL: When would you date the key changes in the growth of administration here—was it about the time that you were drawing up that document?
BU: Yes, I think so—a little bit after that, a little bit after, in mid '70s, probably. Of course, when Dr. [William E.] Moran [chancellor from 1979 to 1994] came, things changed dramatically. But, growth was dramatic at that time, too.
WL: Right.
BU: So, you know, you can't pinpoint what caused what. But, certainly that is a change. And I think Dr. Moran came in here not understanding the difference.
WL: This size question—this growth of—the bigness and perhaps a little bit more alienation and less personal contact that you had back when this was Woman's College. Maybe back even in the '60s—how has that affected faculty—for example, faculty meetings and faculty committees, are they—
BU: Had a tremendous effect—I mean, I think—I don't know if you go to faculty meetings, but we're lucky if we have a hundred. In the Ed Graham days, believe you me there was no seat to be found in the faculty meeting, but that was because of the controversy. You went go to see who would fight today, and who was going to win what, and who was going to get elected—Oh, elections were very close—and academic issues were very close. Well, now we haven't had a controversy over there in years. We haven't had a full thing in years—except, as I recall, two full houses over there. One of them I was in the exact middle of, because I was proposing to do away with the physical education requirement and give credit, and I was coordinating the undergraduate program, so I had to make that presentation. And there was no standing room in there, and it passed by four votes. That was a biggy—and then the other time was when we had this liberal arts thing. That's the only time anybody gets excited about anything. No, the faculty has lost interest. The instrument of government needs to be changed and it doesn't work for today. I thought it was a good one at the time and served us well for about ten years, I think, but no good for us now. People aren't interested—people have too much to do. You—what are—are you an associate professor?
WL: Yes.
BU: You got your promotion here?
WL: Yes.
BU: You know what you had to do when you were an assistant.
WL: Yes. 22
BU: They laid it on the line—you're not going to waste your time serving on the faculty government and doing this, that, and the other. It's too much at stake. So, I think the demands on faculty are very different now. I guess I'm really glad that I didn't have that—that I didn't come up at the assistant level. Maybe it would have been okay, and I suppose that it would have and maybe—I'm sure my professional development would have been different, had I done that. But I look at my colleagues, my young colleagues now, and I think, you couldn't be having a whole lot of fun, and I had a lot of fun as a young faculty member. [laughs] But I had no pressures to publish—no pressures to pay for the university by getting grants. There was none of that. And so, it was fun. I loved teaching. I loved my interaction with students. I loved my interaction with my colleagues, and those were very happy days.
WL: What about students? The—for example, one of the big changes of composition is students since 1968 would be the increased numbers of commuter students, the—?
BU: Yes, I have seen the student body change here, although I always tell my colleagues students haven't—the basic nature of students hasn't changed. They still respond to the same things, for the most part. They like attention, and they like to be praised, and they like good teaching, and, you know, I don't see a whole lot of change in that. I do see this change, however—the academic ability of our students is much lower now than it was at the time when I was a student, and in the early '60s. We got a much more cosmopolitan group of students. We didn't have these quotas for out-of-state people, so we got—you see, being a woman's college, we were pretty unique in the United States, and there were people all over the United States that wanted their daughter to go to an inexpensive but very good woman's college. So, there weren't many of them. There was Texas, and this, and a few more. So they came—they sought us out, and they came here. And they were excellent students, and they came from fine cultured families who, you know, had some urban background.
So, my friends in college—I learned so much from them—and I had such a diverse—then I think as we have gone more provincial in the students [that] we attract, and as we have—I think we've had to lower standards, so the academic ability of students today is, I think, far below than what it was in those days. Now—maybe a little bit of change is coming in, a little bit better now. I don't know. Now I'm, you know, I'm looking at SAT scores and also in physical education, we do not attract scholars. We attract active people who are doers and so we have some excellent students who have high SAT's and high scores, but that's not the norm. If you took the physics majors and put them against ours, there would be quite a diversity, because it attracts a different kind of person. If they were attracted to high academic, somebody would tell them, "You've got no business going in to physical education. There's no future in that." So, yes, I think the student body has changed, and of course, the diversity—the heterogeneity of the student body is just unbelievable now, and that's why I think the honor policy doesn't work too well, among a lot of other things now.
[End of Interview]