Let’s take a look at the Class of ’10.
“Our class is not a wonderful one! …We mean it. We are quite average, y’know. But we love the college just as much as any class that ever went out.”
So reads the “Senior History” page of the University’s 1910 yearbook. 100 years ago today, 106 students were waiting to begin their time at the University as the Class of ’10.
The class included 96 males and 10 females. Forty of those students would drop out before the graduation commencement on June 29, 1910, leaving a final graduating class of 56 males and 10 females.
Students paid $104 for annual tuition. The overwhelming majority lived in private houses off campus. Only five students lived in college buildings, while 18 men lived in society houses. The faculty included 32 professors and President William Arnold Shanklin. North College had recently been renovated, and Judd Hall, now the site for the Department of Psychology, was known as “Judd Hall of Natural Science.” It housed the Museum of Natural History and Ethnography on the top floor.
Rather than having a long list of majors from which to choose, class of ’10 students could choose from three four-year-long curriculums under which each department was categorized: the Classical Course, the Scientific Course, or the Latin-Scientific Course. Classical and Latin classes included: New English Literature, Old English, Rapid Reading of Latin, and Public Speaking, which was a department itself. Scientific classes included Industrial Chemistry, Botany, and Zoology. Mathematics and Astronomy composed a single department, as did Ethics and Religion, and Economics and Social Science. All Psychology classes were categorized under the Department of Philosophy.
During their free time, Class of ’10 students played baseball, basketball, football, tennis, and ran track. They participated in clubs such as the Classical Club, the Dramatic Club, the Music Association, and the Republican Club. The YMCA held weekly meetings. Male students were able to join one of eight fraternities on campus.
At the end of its four years, the Class of ’10 left the university with a sense of accomplishment and words of encouragement.
“We know that some of our men have been very good in their lives, and further we know that our men have entered a great many forms of activity,” reads the yearbook. “But it was no more than they should have done, and we hope and expect that all of you that follow will excel us.”
The majority of students received a degree in Bachelor of Arts. Fifteen males received a degree in Bachelor of Science. Four students received High Honors in General Scholarship, all of them women. Eighteen students received Honors in General Scholarship.
The graduates would go on to pursue careers ranging from a researcher for the U.S. Department of Agriculture, to a librarian, to a volunteer in the French Army. In fact, the majority of men paused their careers at some point to serve temporarily in the U.S. Army. The most popular careers were ministry, law, and prep school administration. Only one student went on to become a doctor, while another became a musician. All 10 female graduates became teachers, predominantly in high schools, but some in colleges as well.
The Class of ’10 developed a reputation through class reunions as “a rollicking bunch of rowdies,” according to an alumni bulletin of 1925. At the 20th anniversary in 1930, “from three o’clock Friday morning, when the arrival of ‘Rajah’ and his gang in mass awoke the campus, until Monday morning, with the conferring of an honorary degree upon our ‘Andy,’ 1910 had one grand and glorious reunion.”
Amongst class slogans such as “We are hard to beat” and class songs such as “Hail to Wesleyan 1910,” these students also possessed – as expressed in their yearbook – a true reverence for their alma mater.
“And when in the long spring evenings you lie on the grass and sing the ‘Twilight Song,’ the chords will be vibrating in our hearts.”
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