Oral history interview with Margaret Cox Griffin, 1991 [text/print transcript]

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UNCG CENTENNIAL ORAL HISTORY PROJECT COLLECTION
INTERVIEWEE: Margaret Cox Griffin
INTERVIEWER: Missy Foy
DATE: May 7, 1991
MF: If you could start with some general information, like some background information—where
you grew up and when you attended UNCG [The University of North Carolina at
Greensboro] and just some general stuff like that.
MG: Okay. I grew up in Belhaven, North Carolina, which is a small fishing village out on the
coast, right on the Pamlico River.
MF: Oh, okay.
MG: And I attended UNCG from 1974 until—through December of 1977, although I consider
myself to be the Class of '78. I just happened to get out a semester early.
MF: Oh, I see. Okay. How did you manage that?
MG: [laughs] I went to summer school one session at East Carolina [University, Greensville,
North Carolina] and I just took—I graduated with—I think I had to have 123 credits, and I
had 124. So it was just like one over the limit, and there were a couple of semesters where I
took eighteen hours. And the last semester I was there, I did an internship that summer and
then took eighteen hours, so was really credited with like twenty-one hours during that last
semester, so—
MF: Oh, so you ended up getting through in like three and a half years?
MG: Yes.
MF: That's pretty impressive. And you were in Residential College, weren't you?
MG: I lived in the Residential College for three years. The last semester that I was there, I lived
off campus on Mendenhall Street.
MF: At that time, sort of—what was the—what was the whole philosophy of the Residential
College?
MG: I guess it was a living and learning experiment was what it was still kind of called. We had
our own curriculum, of course, and the reason why I chose Residential College was that I
came from a real small town. We only have about 2500 residents in my hometown. And I
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had graduated in a 1-A high school. I had fifty people in my graduating class. And I was
really afraid of getting lost on a big campus. And the idea of taking nine hours’ worth of
classes with the people that I lived in the same dorm with really was intriguing to me. And I
certainly developed some very close friendships and just really liked the whole idea of the
Residential College. We were like a real big family.
MF: Yes, I suppose so. Yes. And were there a lot of activities planned within the dorm?
MG: There were a lot of activities within the dorm. Twice a year the whole dorm went on a retreat
up in the mountains and we would take the faculty. The faculty would bring their family.
And we would go to Valle Crucis [North Carolina] and spend a long weekend up there, and
that was always a big highlight of the year to go once in the fall and once in the spring.
MF: Yes, that's near Boone [North Carolina], isn't it?
MG: It's up near Boone. And we—actually we'd go to a—I think it must have been like an old
Episcopalian summer camp or something like that because it had a dining hall and a big
recreational area and then it had a great big lodge with individual rooms and everything. So
that was always a lot of fun. But we had dinners at the dorm with the faculty and their
family. There was always somebody playing volleyball in the yard next door when the
weather was nice. We were lucky enough that Mary Foust [Residence Hall] had one of those
patios in the front, so that was always a gathering place. The house parents that were there—
we didn't have just one person. We had house parents, and there were always children there
too. There were usually— it was usually a graduate student that was married and had a
family. So we had small children there a lot of times. As a matter of fact, Ted and Eileen
were the counselors one year. If I'm not mistaken, both of their children were born while
they were there, seems like. Maybe they—when they came, they had one small child and
then—but I remember her being pregnant and having a baby while she was our housemother
there. So that was interesting.
MF: See, I had attended UNCG as an undergraduate, and I really don't know anything about
Residential College.
MG: Well, it really was unique. Probably one of the most interesting things was some of the
classes that I took there within the Residential College itself. Everybody had to take the core
course, and one year it was European History and the next year it was American History.
You had to be there at least two years. It was a two-year program. You could stay on after
that as an upperclassman and you didn't have to take the core course, but you were allowed
to take other classes there if you wanted to. The thing that I remember most about the
American History, the year that we studied that, was the fact that we didn't just study dates
and places and events; we studied theories, I guess you could say, behind it, kind of like we
studied the Puritan ethic—the Puritan work ethic—of America and how that came over from
Europe and the people who settled it and how that made such a big impact on America. So
I've always thought that was real interesting. But I took stuff like Moral Dilemmas. I took a
science fiction class, a detective fiction class. I took Sport in American Society. I took Dance
in American Society. We studied—Dr. [Lois] Andreasen [associate professor of dance]
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taught that class in the dance department, and we started out with the gavotte [French folk
dance] and went all the way up to present-day dances, which at that time was the hustle or
something like that, I think.
MF: Oh, yes.
MG: And that was real interesting. So we studied the Olympics [Olympic Games, international
event featuring summer and winter sports]. One class I took was on the Olympics, and we
went back to when the Olympics actually started up through the present so that was real
interesting.
MF: Yes, so there were always really kind unique courses offered each semester?
MG: Yes, very unique courses.
MF: And so it is really a true coed dorm?
MG: Oh well, yes, it was a very coed dorm. The first floor was half men and half women. Of
course, their—the wings were separated by the classrooms and the offices and the parlor.
The second floor was all female. The third floor was half and half, but didn't have anything
to divide it except fire doors. And after probably—after about the first three or four weeks of
somebody invariably going through those in the middle of the night and setting off the alarm,
we just pretty much decided we'd just leave them open and let everybody be responsible for
their own actions. So it was very—well, it wasn't bad for me. I enjoyed the coed part of it
because I was the only girl with two brothers and was raised in that kind of a situation, so it
didn't bother me. But we did have one girl on our floor whose father came up and installed
deadbolt locks on her door, so— [laughs] Of course, she didn't stay very long. She left
after—she may have left after the first semester. I know she didn't stay any longer than one
year, but—so it really was a very close-knit, very, very close group.
MF: And there were several black students in the Residential College at that time?
MG: Yes. There was at that time.
MF: And did they seem to mix right in with the rest of the group?
MG: I felt like they did, yes. I didn't see any differences. They were just part of the group just like
all the rest of us.
MF: Because I think around the rest of the campus about that time, the mid to late '70s, there
seemed to be a little bit of—well, with the Neo-Black Society and some of the controversy
surrounding that, I think—
MG: Well, now, the Neo-Black Society was very active, and I believe there were a couple of the
black students in our dorm who were involved with that.
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MF: What kinds of things were going on—do you remember going on with the Neo-Black
Society at that time?
MG: I don't really remember anything specific. I just knew that they were an active group and had
meetings and programs and that sort of thing, but I don't remember anything specific about
it.
MF: Because I know—I think some of the black students felt like the Student Council was trying
to squeeze the Neo-Black Society out of existence. Well, I guess they were, really. Couldn't
see the need for it. Did they—was Shaw [Residence Hall] the International House already at
that time? Was I-House—?
MG: Yes. Because two of my close friends moved from—I guess one of my close friends—after
our sophomore year, she moved into I-House and lived there.
MF: And I guess that was kind of a—well, I know when I was there it was kind of an interesting
dorm. What do you remember about it?
MG: Well, I remember that there were different floors based on languages, I believe, or countries.
And this particular friend of mine, I believe, lived on the German floor. I think she had
taken—had been taking German since she had been at UNCG even though she was
originally from Chapel Hill and had—. She had spent one year—that's what it was—she had
spent her senior year in high school as an exchange student in Germany.
MF: Oh, okay.
MG: With a family over there, so—and she had continued to study German as a language at
UNCG so—and she had one of those real unique kind of majors—a type three major where
you could design your own major.
MF: Oh, sure, yes.
MG: And she was pre-law and early childhood development and ended up going on and getting
her law degree and worked a lot with children and legal aid and that sort of thing.
MF: Did there seem to be a certain type student that lived in Residential College, like particular
majors or—?
MG: Well, I'm sure the largest majority of them were just liberal arts majors. We had a lot of
artists, and we had—well, we had nursing students; we had home ec[onomics] students. I
was a home ec major. But I guess if you had to give a label to the overall type of person that
lived there is that they were pretty earthy.
MF: Yes.
MG: They were. Or at least I think that's what everybody else's impression was of us.
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MF: Yes, I think so. I think I've heard people say, "Oh, that's a bunch of art majors." Or
something.
MG: Right. Yes, yes. But there were a few normal folks like me that were in there as well.
[laughs]
MF: With the Residential College, one thing—just for my own curiosity—is that the same faculty
like—I can't talk today, I guess. The regular faculty from each department also would go
over and teach in the Residential College. Do they rotate or is it usually the same faculty that
teaches classes there each year?
MG: Well, we kind of had a core group of faculty there. Of course, [Dr.] Warren Ashby [head of
the philosophy department] was the founder and was kind of like the "father" of Residential
College. And to be perfectly honest, I don't know what he did in the university and what
department he was in, but he was the head honcho there and really kind of kept things going.
[Dr.] Murray Arndt [English department faculty] sort of took over after Dr. Ashby retired,
and I'm not sure what department he was in either. Maybe English or history. I don't really
remember where he was from. But we had people from the PE [physical education
department]. That was my instructor from—for Sport in American Society and that sort of
thing. We had instructors from the English department. It really kind of—I guess maybe the
core faculty would get together and decide—well, we had some input too—we would decide
what kind of courses we would like to see offered and then I guess maybe they kind of went
out into the university system and asked folks would they be willing to come in and teach a
class or something like that. Betty Carpenter, who's the secretary there now, probably would
have more insight as to how that kind of stuff was handled than I do.
MF: Do you think having been in Residential College that that sort of makes you feel a little more
tied to the university than say—well, for instance, on the extreme—a commuting student?
MG: Very much so. I went back for—we had a ten year reunion a few years ago and went back
and I think—I don't know. We just had a really good crowd of people that came back
graduation weekend who had lived there in Mary Foust. And I talked to other friends that I
had in the School of Home Economics, and they haven't ever been back for anything. And I
send money to support Residential College. Yes, it definitely gives me a closer tie. I've kept
up with friends because I feel like I developed friendships that were much closer because of
the fact that we lived together and studied together and it just—yes, I think it gives me much
more sense of belonging to UNCG than if I had just lived in the regular dorms.
MF: Now I keep finding myself thinking, "I wish I had understood what Residential College was
like."
MG: [laughs] I really thought I was very lucky. I just simply received a brochure in the mail the
summer before I was—I guess it was the summer before you decide where you are going to
live or put in for whatever dorm you want to be in and that sort of thing. And so I made a
special trip up there to visit the Residential College. Maybe—I believe I had a—I was up
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there—I was in Greensboro for a convention or something, a high school and Future
Homemakers of America or something like that and we went by the college and I had a
chance to tour Mary Foust and put in an application and was accepted so—and you do have
to apply and they have—just like you have to apply to the university and be accepted there,
you do have to make an application to the Residential College.
MF: What kinds of things—is it based on academics or academics and extracurricular—?
MG: I think it's based on both academics and extracurricular because they want people in there
who are going to be involved.
MF: Oh, sure.
MG: And who want to be part of the family. And who can give something back as well. As a
matter of fact, in order to be an upperclassman, you have to agree to do certain things to
continue to be a part since you are not involved in that core study group. You have to kind of
have a contract with them that you're going to participate in a certain way or you're going to
contribute somehow to the community.
MF: Like what kinds of—?
MG: Well, I think I was the dorm representative on maybe the student council or student
government or the—something like that. I helped organize a softball team for the intramural
group, a women's softball team. You just had to agree to do something to be a part of the
community. Still, by the time you get to your junior year, you're really starting to concentrate
in your major. And since I was a home ec major, I was really starting to spend more of my
time over in that—with that group of folks and in the building over there, rather than
spending so much of my time there at Residential College.
MF: Sounds like a neat experience.
MG: It really was. It was great.
MF: Also about that same time on campus, I know a lot of people were pushing to bring the Greek
system—fraternities and sororities—to the campus. Do you remember anything about that?
MG: I don't remember anything about that at all. I was never exposed to the Greek societies, and I
don't remember that being a big push back then when I was there.
MF: Yes.
MG: As a matter of fact, the president of the student government—I believe it was my junior
year—was from our dorm. He was a friend of mine, Alan Pike [Class of 1978]. And we
helped him get elected. We kind of worked on his campaign and that sort of thing. Did some
little fun pep-rally kind of things in the dining halls right before elections and stuff like that.
And that was—but I don't remember that being an issue. Alan might—could remember
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more of what was actually going on politically. I just remember that he got elected and it was
kind of unheard of for a junior to be student government president—
MF: Yes.
MG: —back then. Most of the time, they were seniors.
MF: Well, still now I think, they're usually seniors. Yes. That is kind of a little unusual.
MG: He might be somebody you want to interview too. He lives in Greensboro.
MF: Oh, does he?
MG: Alan Pike. A-L-A-N.
MF: A-L-A-N.
MG: Yes.
MF: I'd put A-L-L-E-N. Also, let's see, I think it was '68 or '69 that they started letting students
have beer in their room if they were eighteen or older. And I'm sure it didn't take ten years
for that to really blow up into a popular thing.
MG: Right.
MF: Well, I remember when I was there too. And when I was there, it seemed that the—that Mary
Foust, the Residential College, you would have expected it to have a very "party" reputation,
being coed and all, but I don't remember it really having that kind of reputation.
MG: Well, we had our share of parties.
MF: Oh, sure.
MG: But the—I think the folks that lived at Mary Foust were just really serious about their
studies. I mean, they were very much more on the intellectual side and tended to be
concerned about what was going on in the world and in the political scenes and in the
environment and I—. Seems like those were the things that were more important—to be
together as a family and as a group and to nurture each other and to develop those lasting
friendships that we did and to be like a little college within a big university system. But we
liked to throw our parties too. One of the first memories I have—we probably hadn't been in
school more than two or three weeks—we decided to have a big party. And we called it
"Come to the Casbah." So it had kind of a Casablanca theme to it. We went out around town
and scavenged carpet spools, I guess you would call them. Real tall. We made—in other
words, we made construction paper palm trees.
MF: Oh, yes.
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MG: We really decorated the hall. We went all out. We had it up on the third floor hall. And it
was a semi-formal affair. The girls had to dress up, and the guys had to at least wear a coat
and a tie. Of course, a lot of them came with shorts on and with a coat and a tie on. And but
that really was a lot of fun. And we'd do theme parties like that a lot. We had a lot of creative
people there in the dorm.
MF: Oh, sure, yes.
MG: And somebody was always coming up with something like that so—that was a lot of fun too.
We had a big—I remember having a big water fight when I was a freshman. Was I a
freshman? I was a sophomore, I think, when we had the big water fight. One year, anyway, I
remember there being enough water on the hallways that it was literally gushing down the
stairwells with water balloons. [both laugh] And we tended to—Guilford—the Residential
College started out in two dorms, Guilford and Mary Foust.
MF: Oh, okay. Now I didn't realize that.
MG: And after—I don't know exactly how many years it took for it to—for them to decide that
the cohesiveness wasn't there if you had the two dorms like that, even though they were right
across the street from each other. But it eventually ended up being only the one dorm
situation. I was in a real unique situation because my older brother was on campus. He had
been out of high school for about three years and had kind of decided—he had not gone to
college—and decided that he would give college a try. And I convinced him to go to UNCG
because that's where I was going to be because we were real close. And he lived in Guilford
right across the street, so he—I spent a lot of time over there and he spent a lot of time in
Mary Foust and so that was kind of an interesting situation too, to have my brother right
across the street like that.
MF: Yes, Guilford's had this longstanding reputation as kind of the wild dorm on campus.
MG: The wild hippie dorm, kind of. Yes. It definitely was back then. [laughs]
MF: I don't think it will ever shake that reputation.
MG: I don't think it will either.
MF: And a lot of stuff going on throughout the nation and in the world with Vietnam, civil rights
and all. How did that seem to affect life on campus? I know Greensboro—in Greensboro—
well, in this whole area there didn't seem to be the same sort of student involvement that the
news led you to believe was happening elsewhere.
MG: Yes, I don't remember a whole lot of that. Of course, [Richard M.] Nixon [37th president of
the United States] resigned the summer that I graduated, the summer before I went off to
college, the summer of '74. So I don't remember being politically active and don't remember
what the feeling was on campus at that time. I guess that was maybe the one disadvantage to
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being in the Residential College is that we did kind of live in our own little world and
probably didn't participate in as much of the university activities. I did a lot of participation
in the arts things that they had, the dance concerts, and I remember seeing Marcel Marceau
[French actor and mime].
MF: Oh, really?
MG: Yes, he was there. And we hadn't even gotten tickets to that, and at the last minute we just
decided to drop our books and see if we could go and get some tickets. And we were on the
very back row, but it was really one of the most wonderful performances I've ever seen. But
having been born and raised in a real small town where we didn't have cultural events, I
made a special effort to at least take in some of the symphonies and the dances and dance
companies and plays—to see some of the plays that the group would do. I did see some of
the musical things that they had. But the first two years—maybe even the first three years
that I was there—Aycock Auditorium was under renovation. So all of our concerts and
things that we attended were—all the university concerts—were held at War Memorial
Auditorium. And the city would provide buses. We would load up on the buses, and they
would take us over to War Memorial. So it wasn't like just being able to walk down to
Aycock Auditorium.
MF: Yes. So you had to make a little more of an effort.
MG: Had to make more of an effort to go. Yes, but it was—I believe I saw Marcel Marceau at
Aycock. So they must have opened it back up either my junior or—my junior year, maybe.
MF: And then you moved off campus and lived over on Mendenhall?
MG: Yes, lived in an apartment over there with a girl and a guy that had been—that had lived in
Mary Foust also.
MF: Yes. It seems that there are quite a few students who live in housing right around campus, but
they don't consider themselves town students.
MG: Yes, they don't. And we had quite a few people who would go from the Residential College
into that type of housing situation. We always had a group of four or six living in a house,
and so that would also be one of the party places.
MF: Oh, sure.
MG: Yes. [both laugh]
MF: Of course.
MG: Probably more often than not, though, they were over at the dorm with us.
MF: Yes. And since you had lived on campus for three years, I'm sure you didn't feel
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disconnected at all living in—well, at least not very much—living on Mendenhall.
MG: Not very much. It was still real close to Mary Foust and, of course, that last semester I was
taking eighteen hours’ worth of classes and then started a part-time job in November. So a
little bit more than I would have liked it, I think. The one thing that I found so very, very
different was the fact that you had to have money in your pocket when you lived off campus.
When I lived in Mary Foust—at that time if you lived in a dorm you had to be on the dining
hall plan.
MF: Oh, right. Yes. I think it's still that way.
MG: And well, I thought that was a real—a really good way to support the cafeteria system.
MF: It is, yes.
MG: And we had a real unique situation. You got a little plastic card and you had however many
weeks, twenty-four weeks or whatever it was that you were there in school, and you could
either be on the fourteen-meal plan or the twenty-one-meal plan, which was either two a day
or three a day. And all it was was however many rows there were for however many weeks
you were there and then it had numbers one through fourteen. So I was on the fourteen
day—fourteen-week meal plan—and what they would do is if I wanted to go in there on the
very first day of the week and eat all fourteen meals, I could do that. Or if I wanted to—it
was kind of unusual. I had a good friend of mine, a black girl from my home town that was
in school at A&T [North Carolina Agricultural & Technical State University, Greensboro,
North Carolina] and she would come over and actually go eat with me in the dining hall
because, if I wasn't there on a Saturday or a Sunday, that gave me four extra meals during the
week to eat. So they didn't assign them—you had to eat two a day and only I could use them.
It wasn't that way. It was very flexible, and I thought that was absolutely one of the best meal
plans I've ever seen. I have heard that they've made some changes and it's not exactly the
same way, but that was really convenient.
MF: It was sort of like that when I was there, but yes, I believe they have made quite a few
changes. I don't know how it works now.
MG: And I thought the food was good, and they also renovated the dining halls, I think, towards
the end of the time that I was there. We really enjoyed study break. You know, at nine
o'clock [pm] every night, you could go over for milk and cookies and chips and soft drinks
and—.
MF: Every now and then, pizza.
MG: Yes, they'd have something special every now and then—ice cream sundaes sometimes, and
we looked forward to study break. We'd always take a big gang over there for that and have
a good time. And so that was always a lot of fun too.
MF: Yes, I don't know if they do that now. I don't know—being in graduate school, I don't know
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what's going on really with the residential stuff.
MG: Of course, now the year—while I was there, they—the [North Carolina] General Assembly
voted that we could no longer use student activity fee money to buy alcoholic beverages
with.
MF: Oh, really?
MG: Yes. So I was at the last big beer bash, and I believe it was held down in—what is the dorm?
Was it Spencer [Residence Hall] was the big dorm across the street that looked kind of like it
used to be two buildings and they had connected it and the dining hall was down
underneath?
MF: Yes. North and South Spencer.
MG: South Spencer, that's right. We actually had a big beer bash down in the dining hall area of
that dorm.
MF: There are all kinds of little shops, dining hall shops and post office and everything down
there now.
MG: Oh, neat. I'll have to check that out this weekend when I go back.
MF: Yes. And a big fountain in front. They've done a lot of renovation on the cafeteria. You can't
find your way around there anymore.
MG: I always liked the way they had the different rooms in the cafeteria. Where you could go get
fast food if you wanted it, or you could get the hot-cooked meals.
MF: Yes. Well, it's—I haven't gone there enough to figure out how they've changed it around,
so—but it's a lot different. I know that. I just don't know exactly how it's different.
MG: Yes. But that was probably the major difference from living on campus and living off
campus. I mean, if you lived on campus, you had food to eat, you had a place over your
head, you didn't have to worry about paying rent every month and utilities and that sort of
thing. And probably, if I had it to do all over again, I just would have stayed in the dorm.
MF: Yes. It wasn't much like living in a regular dorm in Residential College.
MG: No.
MF: Almost like being at boarding school, I guess.
MG: Yes.
MF: Have you stayed very connected with the Alumni Association?
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MG: No. I have attended just a couple of functions, mainly through the School of Home
Economics. We lost—. Of course, Dean [Naomi] Albanese retired probably five or six—let's
see, sometime after '82 because when the new dean came in to the School of Home
Economics, Dean [Jacqueline] Voss, she kind of went around and they had little meetings,
alumni meetings, so that we could all meet her. And I went to one of those in Durham [North
Carolina]. And it seems like to me, it had to have been sometime after '82 because that's
when I came to Chapel Hill [North Carolina] and I've been here in this area since '82. So it
seems like it must have been sometime after that. So I haven't really stayed very close with
the Alumni Association. I have continued to keep up—I am a member of the Home
Economics Honor Society at UNCG, which is the—used to be the Omicron Nu. Now I think
they call it Alpha Kappa chapter of the Omicron Nu, and it's changed names or something,
but it's something different, but I do maintain my membership in the honor society for that.
And I have not been a regular contributor to the university or the School of Home
Economics.
MF: But you've kept close ties with Residential College as well?
MG: Yes. It was interesting. When I went back for that ten-year reunion, my mother-in-law
[Elizabeth Uzzell Griffin] was also there for her—was that her thirtieth, fortieth reunion?
Because she was the Class of '38 and I was the Class of '78, so she was there too. And we
went into the Alumni building [Alumni House] and they let us go down in the files and let us
look at our own—I was able to look at my own personal file and look at my mother-in-law's
file, which was kind of neat. And it appeared to me that they certainly do a fabulous job at
keeping up with the alumni. I mean, there were things in my file that I had no idea that that
anybody had even bothered to clip out of the newspaper and stick in there and stuff like that.
So that was real interesting.
MF: Now they had that over at the Alumni Office?
MG: Yes.
MF: Yes, okay. Yes, that is neat. Yes, the people in the Alumni Office they—God, they were
always so busy. I don't know how they do it.
MG: I don't know how they do it all either. It's really amazing. But I understand that they were
having some problems.
MF: Yes.
MG: Between the alumni and the university. Was it through Dr. [Chancellor William] Moran's
relationship with the Alumni Association?
MF: It was dealing with the Alumni Association's idea of what their relationship with the
university was and Chancellor Moran's idea of what their relationship was. And I think it had
a lot to do with finances. And—as do a lot of arguments that start.
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MG: Right. Right.
MF: I never was exactly clear on what the controversy involved, although now that it's been
solved, so to say, I have a better understanding of what it involved. So—but I guess I was
going to ask you if you knew anything about it.
MG: I just know that there was some kind of a conflict going on there, and then I read—I guess
I've begun to get the Alumni News, and I think I read where they had resolved it, so to say.
MF: Yes. They had third-party arbitration.
MG: Right.
MF: I'm sure that there's probably something that I'm forgetting, but I can't think. [unclear]. I
really appreciate your time.
MG: Sure.
MF: I learned a lot about Residential College tonight [inaudible] through more people I've
interviewed from Residential College.
MG: Yes. Yes.
MF: Thank you very much.
MG: Sure.
[End of Interview]