Today is Labor Day, which at Wofford means that the school year starts today.
The library is already full of students. You can feel the very abrupt change in the atmosphere on campus and in the building. Last week, the freshmen arrived on Wednesday, the pre-session faculty and staff meetings were Thursday, so there have been people around for the past week. We had students back earlier than that, actually, with at least three teams, the resident assistants, orientation staff members, and all sorts of other people getting ready for the start of the academic year. But they weren't in the building. Today, with the start of classes, the students have returned to the library.
Why do we start on Labor Day? You might think the archivist's short answer would be, "we've always done it that way." And there's some truth to that. The more correct answer is that our fall semester, counting exams, usually runs fifteen calendar weeks. If you count back from the week in December when fall semester exams are given, you usually wind up starting on the week of Labor Day.
Throughout the 1990s, classes typically started on Tuesday after Labor Day, though in a few years, we actually started the week before Labor Day. Monday, Labor Day, would be move-in day for upperclassmen. I always thought that made sense, since so many of our parents help their children move back to campus, they didn't have to take a day off of work to help with moving. The Monday of the first week of each semester was reserved for registration, for fixing scheduling problems, and (for faculty) for hurriedly completing their syllabi. With the advent of computerized registration, that day suddenly became un-necessary, so the first Monday of the semester became a class day.
Here are a few examples of the start of the fall semester from old college catalogues:
1966 - before the college established the Interim - classes started on Saturday, Sept. 17. Yes, a Saturday. The freshmen had reported for orientation on Sunday, Sept. 11 and the upperclassmen had returned on Thursday, Sept. 15. Fall semester exams didn't happen until January 19-26.
1967 - the first year of the Interim - classes started on Thursday, Sept. 7. Freshmen had reported on Sept. 3, and final exams ended on December 20.
1970 - classes started on Thursday, Sept. 3, with exams ending on Dec. 17.
1980 - classes started on Wednesday, Sept. 10, with exams ending on Dec. 19.
1990 - classes began Tuesday, Sept. 4, with exams ending on Dec. 14.
1998 - classes began on Tuesday, Sept. 1
1999 - classes began on Monday, Sept. 6, and ever since then, have started on Monday.
In any event, everyone is here. Over the next few weeks, I hope to get back to twice-weekly blog posts. It's been a busy summer in the archives, and thanks to my ever-helpful student assistants, we've got a lot of photographs scanned and ready to share in one place or another. I hope to send a trivia question your way over on the Facebook page every now and then, to write about some important historical figures on campus - both alumni and faculty - and anything else you want me to talk about.
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