Summer Fellows is officially over and even though I'm going to be working on this project for the next two semesters I figured I'd include in a post on here the intro and conclusion from my SF paper. The paper is merely the entries from this blog (including comments!), but the intro and conclusion are somewhat personal reflections on how this came to be. No worries though - I plan for my honors paper to be much more academic/formal!
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Earlier this summer I spoke with a prospective student whom I was interviewing in Admissions. I related my own personal experiences at Ursinus and, as I usually do, zeroed in on what is commonly referred to as “the freshman experience.” I explained the way the freshman dorms were set up, the orientation process, and what I believe to be the core of an Ursinus education – the Common Intellectual Experience. As I rattled on about these things and why they are important I began to consider how far I’ve come in the last three years and what exactly brought me to where I am today.
The first week of school freshman year I recall talking with some of my hall mates about various things that concern eighteen year olds. Our discussion mostly revolved around what we knew we all had in common since we’d only been acquainted for a few days. We started with complaining about the summer reading, went on to who was going to go try to find a party that weekend, and then finally to why we all chose Ursinus. One person had turned down Penn, another Harvard, and yet another a full ride at the Ohio State University. Others hadn’t considered other schools and some just came for the bio and pre-med programs. I loved the fact that all of us came from the widest range of backgrounds imaginable and that we were all planning to go into an even more varied range of fields, but what really blew my mind was that a place like Ursinus College could bring us all together that night through something as simple as an ancient Mesopotamian epic. The whole concept of a course like the Common Intellectual Experience is unique in and of itself, but bringing together ten years’ worth of Ursinus students through a common appreciation for the liberal arts has created an unparalleled sense of community.
I’d never really thought too much about Ursinus’ roots beyond the basics that all freshmen learn during the academic convocation at orientation. However, my father is one of those academic types who will read up on anything and everything he encounters in his daily life. Once I decided to attend, Ursinus was no exception. His readings on the German Protestant Reformation shed a lot of light on why things are the way we are here at Ursinus. I learned a good amount of pre-history (everything from who Ulrich Zwingli and Zacharias Baer were to why it is that the College doesn’t have big fancy buildings or any of the other bells and whistles commonly associated with academic institutions) and brushed up a bit on the founding of the school itself. What I was left with was a lot of what my friends refer to as my “fun facts” but, I see now, just as little perspective as I began with.
When I first approached Dr. Nathan Rein about the possibility of doing a Summer Fellows project about the religious history of Ursinus and how our former affiliation with the Reformed Church has impacted the identity of the school he reminded me that I had overlooked something very important. In all of my excitement about finding out what the implications of the Heidelberg Catechism had on the whole concept of a liberal arts education I managed to forget that there was once a time during which Ursinus was affiliated with the German Reformed Church (now the UCC), that we are no longer affiliated with them, and that something happened during the last 140 years that changed that. When I left Dr. Rein’s office that afternoon I had a whole new crop of questions swimming around in my head, but the subject that came to the forefront was that of change. Within that broad subject came such foci as what I began this summer researching – that is, when was compulsory chapel abolished and what repercussions came of it?
When I began working in the Ursinusiana archives in June I sifted through a lot of Ursinus Weeklies, faculty minutes, course catalogues, and other old Ursinus documents. At that point I didn’t really knowing how anything was going to turn out and all I had to guide me was my original question about chapel at Ursinus. At the request of Dr. Rein I began to organize a journal of sorts to organize my research and to keep track of my thoughts about each document I came across. As I gleaned various dates and such from the archives I realized that my project wasn’t going to go anywhere if I didn’t figure out a way to make my research accessible to the rest of the Ursinus community. All we have in the archives is what people send in and all I had was my personal analyses of these documents. What if I were to somehow get my friends, professors, and even alumni involved with the project? Not only would I be able to share my findings with them but they would be able to open new doors to me through their own observations and, in the case of alumni, memories of Ursinus back in the 1960s.
This resolution lead to my beginning a blog entitled “Ursinusiana Project.” While blogs are still new and somewhat untraditional in the academic world, I can’t imagine any tool that would have been more helpful to me and my progress in the archives this summer. Getting feedback from professors, alumni, my peers, and even my parents has taken me on an extremely unpredictable path through my research but, at the same time, has yielded a newer, better, more exciting path as I prepare to begin the next stage of my Fellows project as I pursue honors.
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If being an Ursinus student has taught me anything it’s that if the final product of a research project answers the same question you started out with then you’ve done something wrong, and I certainly take comfort in the fact that as I write this I’m totally off base from the research topic I started with. As interesting as the implications of the abolition of compulsory chapel at Ursinus are to me, the similarities between compulsory chapel and CIE have caught my attention and throughout the summer really taken over as a primary concern in my project. What I have found is that when Ursinus College opted to slowly phase out the chapel program the sense of community dwindled. For thirty years Ursinus students who came in as biology and pre-med majors had little reason to mingle with the philosophy and English majors in any sort of organized or academic setting. As I reflected on those discussions I had during my first week of freshman year that revolved around the Epic of Gilgamesh and tried to make them fit into the feedback I’d gotten on my blog about the old chapel program, it became very clear to me; as I mentioned in the blog, CIE has filled the community void left behind by chapel. I have yet to go into much more detail since this is a recent revelation, but I look forward to pursuing this hypothesis of mine as I continue my research for honors this coming year.
Right now my plans for the continuation of this project include gaining an even better understanding of the chapel program by tracking down such documents as minutes from the meetings of the Men’s Student Government Association, the Board of Directors, and faculty committees on chapel. I also hope to find former President Donald Helfferich’s personal letters, papers, and other documents that we are missing in the Ursinusiana archives as well as conduct interviews with alumni, former professors, and other people affiliated with the College during the 1960s. I feel that having gone through two semesters of CIE I have a fairly detailed understanding of how it works, but I am also hoping to review documents concerning the program (such as Middle States reports) and speak with some of the faculty who assisted in implementing the program. At this point, though, I’m open to any new direction or approach that comes my way.
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Saturday, July 25, 2009
Tuesday, July 21, 2009
"Swallow it son, it's good for you!"
The summer is winding down and this will be the last of the new and exciting Ursinusiana discoveries for awhile...and this sure is an exciting one! This editorial cartoon was published in the Weekly at the end of the 1963-63 academic year and I don't think it needs much more of an introduction than that.
(Ursinus Weekly, Vol LXIII, No 23, May 11, 1964, page 2)
It's interesting to me that this was published when it was because it was at the very end of the first semester during which the school began to trim the chapel schedule. The student who drew it (and I wish I knew who the student was - I haven't been able to decipher the name well enough to locate the artist in any directories) must have had some sort of personal issue with the tradition as s/he would only have been required to attend chapel twice a week. The only possibility that I can fathom is that a student (or group of students) were beginning a campaign of sorts in order to sway the Board of Directors and the faculty committee appointed to review the tradition because the announcement about the beginning of the end of compulsory chapel did include a bit about how "The faculty committee on Chapel is still meeting so further changes may be forthcoming”(Chapel Changes Announced, page 1, Ursinus Weekly, Vol. LXIII, No. 11, January 13, 1964).
The identity of the cartoonist and what their angle was shall remain a mystery for now as I conclude this last of the summer posts with the same sort of wishful thinking I have for the past 8 weeks...
Perhaps I'll figure it out and have more perspective as I get further into my research.
(Ursinus Weekly, Vol LXIII, No 23, May 11, 1964, page 2)
It's interesting to me that this was published when it was because it was at the very end of the first semester during which the school began to trim the chapel schedule. The student who drew it (and I wish I knew who the student was - I haven't been able to decipher the name well enough to locate the artist in any directories) must have had some sort of personal issue with the tradition as s/he would only have been required to attend chapel twice a week. The only possibility that I can fathom is that a student (or group of students) were beginning a campaign of sorts in order to sway the Board of Directors and the faculty committee appointed to review the tradition because the announcement about the beginning of the end of compulsory chapel did include a bit about how "The faculty committee on Chapel is still meeting so further changes may be forthcoming”(Chapel Changes Announced, page 1, Ursinus Weekly, Vol. LXIII, No. 11, January 13, 1964).
The identity of the cartoonist and what their angle was shall remain a mystery for now as I conclude this last of the summer posts with the same sort of wishful thinking I have for the past 8 weeks...
Perhaps I'll figure it out and have more perspective as I get further into my research.
Tuesday, July 14, 2009
By the way...
By the way, the official title for my summer project is "Examining Our Roots: How Over 100 Years of Religion Yielded a Secular Liberal Arts Program at Ursinus College." It's long but I think it effectively conveys what I'm focusing on in my project.
Right now I'm tentatively scheduled to present my project at the Summer Fellows Symposium on July 24 at 11am here at Ursinus.
Right now I'm tentatively scheduled to present my project at the Summer Fellows Symposium on July 24 at 11am here at Ursinus.
I'm famous!
Check out this article about the rising popularity of undergraduate research in Philadelphia area colleges and universities. Kelly, Roger, and I are featured in it along with comments from President Strassburger, Dr. Weight, and my advisor Nathan Rein.
Thursday, July 9, 2009
"Chapel...has passed into oblivion."
I've already written about this piece that was published in the Weekly, but I feel that it's necessary to revisit it now.
Interestingly, this editorial about how chapel would not be continued the following academic year reads like an obituary despite the underlying “good riddance” message:
“ Next year there will be no more assembly. Chapel, as it was called up until this year, has passed into oblivion. Its fate has been marked, however, for years. Two years ago chapel was bi-weekly; last year, it diminished to once a week; this year, the name chapel was dropped.
Until this year, the service was a quasi-religious, seldom inspiring service. Assembly dropped the religious format, but the degree of inspiration and dullness remained about the same. In general, chapel’s passing is not mourned. But one feature of this chapel-assembly program will have no replacement. Notably on at least one occasion this year, a student has had an opinion to express, and the assembly proved to be his excellent airing ground.
The case in point occurred first semester when Janet Houska spoke in favor of changes women’s rules. It must be noted that after her excellent plea, no student was permitted to arrange with a professor to speak during his chapel time. Such a restriction again proves the futility of assembly. As a result of this talk, actual changes have been made in women’s rules, i.e. smoking is now permitted in the reception rooms, Wilkinson Lounge is now open at specified hours, and next year, girls will be permitted to wear slacks in the reception rooms. For those of us who favor having open men’s dorms, this change may not seem so revolutionary. But, we must admit that a change for the better has taken place.
No matter how few of these student-oriented programs were possible under the framework of chapel, this feature is one of the few losses we will feel.
A natural replacement for such expression (it shouldn’t be considered only as a replacement!) is of course, the Weekly. Our aim is far from presenting only the news. This has never been the only goal we have; student and faculty opinion is always welcomed…”
(Editorial, by Judy Schneider, page 2, Ursinus Weekly, Vol LXVII, No. 14, May 23, 1968)
Perhaps it’s the contrast between the tone of the article and the actual message that’s throwing me off, but I haven’t really been able to figure this one out. As I mentioned above, it has a semi-mournful tone even though it simultaneously slams the “quasi-religious, seldom inspiring service” and the conclusion is that “chapel’s passing is not mourned.”
Obviously Judy Schneider’s opinion couldn’t have been relevant to the entire student body (although I have no doubt in my mind that it represented a large portion of the student’s opinions on the matter), but what really comes through in the end of the editorial is the need for Ursinus to have an outlet for students to express themselves and grapple with community issues together. The suggested replacement for the forum that chapel provided is the Weekly, but somewhere along the line that mode of expression fell out of favor with the student body. Not only do students overlook the newer incarnation of the Weekly (the Grizzly) but the paper generally doesn’t draw many contributors and rarely addressed the goings-on on campus. Essentially, there was a void left behind when chapel was abolished and the Weekly/Grizzly wasn’t enough to fill it.
I know I’m jumping the gun here – this has more to do with my honors project than my Summer Fellows topic – but I’m going to go for it anyways:
CIE eventually became the successful replacement for the chapel program.
I invite all of you who are remotely familiar with the CIE or chapel programs to share your input with me on this. So…thoughts?
Interestingly, this editorial about how chapel would not be continued the following academic year reads like an obituary despite the underlying “good riddance” message:
“ Next year there will be no more assembly. Chapel, as it was called up until this year, has passed into oblivion. Its fate has been marked, however, for years. Two years ago chapel was bi-weekly; last year, it diminished to once a week; this year, the name chapel was dropped.
Until this year, the service was a quasi-religious, seldom inspiring service. Assembly dropped the religious format, but the degree of inspiration and dullness remained about the same. In general, chapel’s passing is not mourned. But one feature of this chapel-assembly program will have no replacement. Notably on at least one occasion this year, a student has had an opinion to express, and the assembly proved to be his excellent airing ground.
The case in point occurred first semester when Janet Houska spoke in favor of changes women’s rules. It must be noted that after her excellent plea, no student was permitted to arrange with a professor to speak during his chapel time. Such a restriction again proves the futility of assembly. As a result of this talk, actual changes have been made in women’s rules, i.e. smoking is now permitted in the reception rooms, Wilkinson Lounge is now open at specified hours, and next year, girls will be permitted to wear slacks in the reception rooms. For those of us who favor having open men’s dorms, this change may not seem so revolutionary. But, we must admit that a change for the better has taken place.
No matter how few of these student-oriented programs were possible under the framework of chapel, this feature is one of the few losses we will feel.
A natural replacement for such expression (it shouldn’t be considered only as a replacement!) is of course, the Weekly. Our aim is far from presenting only the news. This has never been the only goal we have; student and faculty opinion is always welcomed…”
(Editorial, by Judy Schneider, page 2, Ursinus Weekly, Vol LXVII, No. 14, May 23, 1968)
Perhaps it’s the contrast between the tone of the article and the actual message that’s throwing me off, but I haven’t really been able to figure this one out. As I mentioned above, it has a semi-mournful tone even though it simultaneously slams the “quasi-religious, seldom inspiring service” and the conclusion is that “chapel’s passing is not mourned.”
Obviously Judy Schneider’s opinion couldn’t have been relevant to the entire student body (although I have no doubt in my mind that it represented a large portion of the student’s opinions on the matter), but what really comes through in the end of the editorial is the need for Ursinus to have an outlet for students to express themselves and grapple with community issues together. The suggested replacement for the forum that chapel provided is the Weekly, but somewhere along the line that mode of expression fell out of favor with the student body. Not only do students overlook the newer incarnation of the Weekly (the Grizzly) but the paper generally doesn’t draw many contributors and rarely addressed the goings-on on campus. Essentially, there was a void left behind when chapel was abolished and the Weekly/Grizzly wasn’t enough to fill it.
I know I’m jumping the gun here – this has more to do with my honors project than my Summer Fellows topic – but I’m going to go for it anyways:
CIE eventually became the successful replacement for the chapel program.
I invite all of you who are remotely familiar with the CIE or chapel programs to share your input with me on this. So…thoughts?
Wednesday, July 8, 2009
Bad Reporting
I know there hasn't been much here this past week or so, but those faculty minutes are EXTREMELY boring and have very little to do with my project. As consolation I am posting here for you a quick anecdote about chapel that I heard from Dr. Donald Zucker, Professor of Political Science, Emeritus. Dr. Zucker volunteers on a weekly basis in the archives and although he is away for the summer I look forward to speaking with him further about the chapel program and how it was perceived by faculty of the College.
Dr. Creager, the chaplain of Ursinus, would regularly call on the faculty of Ursinus to lead chapel each morning. Although he continuously "stressed the opportunity Chapel offers to members to give utterance to whatever is on their minds" (Ursinus College Faculty Meeting, Regular Meeting, October 6, 1965), Dr. Zucker didn't often feel compelled to get up in front of the school to share his thoughts. However, there was one semester (he couldn't recall which during our conversation) when his interactions with a few students moved him to do so. At the time class sizes were beginning to grow and political and social tensions throughout the country (as well as on campus) were increasing exponentially. Dr. Zucker, wanting to make sure that none of the students at Ursinus "fell through the cracks," volunteered to lead chapel in order to communicate this message:
"I don't have much to say up here this morning, but just know that we [the faculty and staff of the College] are here for you. If you ever need anything - extra attention in your class or just someone to talk to - then please come and take advantage of this. Your classmates won't think you're a brownie and we want to help anyone who needs it."
Well, Dr. Zucker's words were very well received by the student body - so much so that his address was written up in the Weekly (again, he doesn't remember when so I haven't been able to find it) by a particularly inspired student. The one problem with the write up was that this student took the liberty of changing "brownie" to "brown-noser."
Since the Weekly was regularly distributed to the campus community as well as alumni, friends of the College, etc., it wasn't just this aspiring journalist's peers (who had been present at the original chapel service) that were reading the summary of Dr. Zucker's address and, as the story goes, some of the Weeklie's more seasoned clientele were not pleased with a professor using phrases such as "brown-noser" during chapel. The Dean, William Pettit (he later became president of the college before he was ousted by what has been described to me as a faculty coup), was enraged by the situation and called Dr. Zucker in to speak with him.
The way Dr. Zucker tells it I imagine the poor professor walking into the Dean's office to find an angry, red faced man wielding a copy of the latest Weekly. Ragardless, Dean Pettit demanded to know what Dr. Zucker was getting at by using such "foul, army lingo" in chapel. Dr. Zucker told me that he tried to calm down the Dean as he explained that he was misquoted in the paper and that it happened all the time with student publications. Supposedly Dean Pettit wasn't having any of it and Dr. Zucker decided to simply lay low for awhile and stay off of the chapel schedule.
Although it's difficult for me to determine how much of this really happened, how much was exaggerated, etc., it does explain why some faculty members were scheduled to lead chapel more often than others, like Dr. Zucker. Here's a question though...wasn't the Dean at chapel that morning that Dr. Zucker spoke? If he was then there wouldn't really have been a problem and he would have understood that there was an error in the reporting. If he wasn't there then where was he? I understand that not all of the College's personnel would have been present every morning but I would assume that an administrator with such a high profile on campus would have made it a point to set an example for the students. Hmmm...
Dr. Creager, the chaplain of Ursinus, would regularly call on the faculty of Ursinus to lead chapel each morning. Although he continuously "stressed the opportunity Chapel offers to members to give utterance to whatever is on their minds" (Ursinus College Faculty Meeting, Regular Meeting, October 6, 1965), Dr. Zucker didn't often feel compelled to get up in front of the school to share his thoughts. However, there was one semester (he couldn't recall which during our conversation) when his interactions with a few students moved him to do so. At the time class sizes were beginning to grow and political and social tensions throughout the country (as well as on campus) were increasing exponentially. Dr. Zucker, wanting to make sure that none of the students at Ursinus "fell through the cracks," volunteered to lead chapel in order to communicate this message:
"I don't have much to say up here this morning, but just know that we [the faculty and staff of the College] are here for you. If you ever need anything - extra attention in your class or just someone to talk to - then please come and take advantage of this. Your classmates won't think you're a brownie and we want to help anyone who needs it."
Well, Dr. Zucker's words were very well received by the student body - so much so that his address was written up in the Weekly (again, he doesn't remember when so I haven't been able to find it) by a particularly inspired student. The one problem with the write up was that this student took the liberty of changing "brownie" to "brown-noser."
Since the Weekly was regularly distributed to the campus community as well as alumni, friends of the College, etc., it wasn't just this aspiring journalist's peers (who had been present at the original chapel service) that were reading the summary of Dr. Zucker's address and, as the story goes, some of the Weeklie's more seasoned clientele were not pleased with a professor using phrases such as "brown-noser" during chapel. The Dean, William Pettit (he later became president of the college before he was ousted by what has been described to me as a faculty coup), was enraged by the situation and called Dr. Zucker in to speak with him.
The way Dr. Zucker tells it I imagine the poor professor walking into the Dean's office to find an angry, red faced man wielding a copy of the latest Weekly. Ragardless, Dean Pettit demanded to know what Dr. Zucker was getting at by using such "foul, army lingo" in chapel. Dr. Zucker told me that he tried to calm down the Dean as he explained that he was misquoted in the paper and that it happened all the time with student publications. Supposedly Dean Pettit wasn't having any of it and Dr. Zucker decided to simply lay low for awhile and stay off of the chapel schedule.
Although it's difficult for me to determine how much of this really happened, how much was exaggerated, etc., it does explain why some faculty members were scheduled to lead chapel more often than others, like Dr. Zucker. Here's a question though...wasn't the Dean at chapel that morning that Dr. Zucker spoke? If he was then there wouldn't really have been a problem and he would have understood that there was an error in the reporting. If he wasn't there then where was he? I understand that not all of the College's personnel would have been present every morning but I would assume that an administrator with such a high profile on campus would have made it a point to set an example for the students. Hmmm...
Thursday, July 2, 2009
Where I am right now.
So the faculty minutes aren't quite what I had hoped they would be. After a few days of looking through them I'm pretty frustrated with how terribly boring it all is compared to, say, the Weeklies. I suppose that I was bound to come upon some less than thrilling documents sooner or later though, right? For now I'm just going to keep working through the relevant years and hope that something pertinent comes up. I'm also hoping to re-visit some of the articles I found in the Weeklies and have not yet written about on here sometime in the near future, but perhaps I'll wait until the holiday weekend is over...
Fun fact: the original proposed site for the new library (Myrin) was in between Wismer and the tennis courts. I like the current location better - it's much more central to the rest of campus.
Fun fact: the original proposed site for the new library (Myrin) was in between Wismer and the tennis courts. I like the current location better - it's much more central to the rest of campus.
Wednesday, July 1, 2009
"Chapel services will be discontinued on Fridays."
This notice isn’t terribly exciting to me and I can’t tell if it’s just a boring announcement or if it will become more interesting as I get deeper into my research.
“ Certain changes in Chapel procedure will become effective in the 1964 Spring semester. Chapel services will be discontinued on Fridays. Freshmen and Sophomores will attend Chapel services on Monday and Wednesday at the usual time. Juniors and Seniors will attend on Tuesday and Thursday. Four cuts and four make-ups will be allowed per semester, an addition of one each.
This action has come about as a result of the MSGA Report submitted to the Faculty, Administration, and Board of Directors of the College last spring. The report asked that some change be made in the procedures used in the compulsory Chapel program.
These changes are the first results of the Report and although they may be viewed with some hesitation by a few members of the student body, particularly juniors and seniors, they are reportedly only the first steps in renovating the Chapel system.
The faculty committee on Chapel is still meeting so further changes may be forthcoming.”
(Chapel Changes Announced, page 1, Ursinus Weekly, Vol. LXIII, No. 11, January 13, 1964)
What we have here is just an author-less announcement that was published in the Weekly. If I had to guess I would say that not many people got the news from the announcement itself but rather through word of mouth on campus. In fact, it sort of reminds me of one of those all-campus e-mails that we usually just delete without even skimming. So what’s the point of putting this up if it’s so terribly mundane? Well, I could say that it marks the beginning of the end of the chapel program, or I could try to speculate about the smallest of details…but really I’m just interested in holding onto this as a sort of place marker so that I can try to dig up more on the Men’s Student Government Association Report and their involvement in the decision to alter one of Ursinus’ oldest traditions.
“ Certain changes in Chapel procedure will become effective in the 1964 Spring semester. Chapel services will be discontinued on Fridays. Freshmen and Sophomores will attend Chapel services on Monday and Wednesday at the usual time. Juniors and Seniors will attend on Tuesday and Thursday. Four cuts and four make-ups will be allowed per semester, an addition of one each.
This action has come about as a result of the MSGA Report submitted to the Faculty, Administration, and Board of Directors of the College last spring. The report asked that some change be made in the procedures used in the compulsory Chapel program.
These changes are the first results of the Report and although they may be viewed with some hesitation by a few members of the student body, particularly juniors and seniors, they are reportedly only the first steps in renovating the Chapel system.
The faculty committee on Chapel is still meeting so further changes may be forthcoming.”
(Chapel Changes Announced, page 1, Ursinus Weekly, Vol. LXIII, No. 11, January 13, 1964)
What we have here is just an author-less announcement that was published in the Weekly. If I had to guess I would say that not many people got the news from the announcement itself but rather through word of mouth on campus. In fact, it sort of reminds me of one of those all-campus e-mails that we usually just delete without even skimming. So what’s the point of putting this up if it’s so terribly mundane? Well, I could say that it marks the beginning of the end of the chapel program, or I could try to speculate about the smallest of details…but really I’m just interested in holding onto this as a sort of place marker so that I can try to dig up more on the Men’s Student Government Association Report and their involvement in the decision to alter one of Ursinus’ oldest traditions.
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