Category: Students

On March 4, 1974, one of the more memorable moments in modern Wofford history took place. A group of Wofford students streaked the Converse campus.

Streaking became something of a national fad in the spring of 1974. Someone streaked the Oscars, another streaked the Hawaii state legislature. And Ray Stevens memorialized it all in song. Even today, individuals occasionally try to streak the Super Bowl or other sports events.

As reported in the March 7, 1974 issue of the Old Gold and Black, “streaking, the latest college craze, has made its debut in Spartanburg. On Monday night, 125 Wofford students entertained a crowd of 700 Converse and Wofford spectators by running nude across the Converse campus. The Spartanburg Herald, the city’s morning newspaper, ran two front page stories the next morning with slightly different details. It suggested the number of streakers was around 60. The event took place between about 8:30 and 10 pm, and while Converse security and Spartanburg police were both on hand, no one was arrested or charged. Stories initially celebrated this as the first college to streak another college, and the first all-male college to streak an all-female college. Later stories corrected it to “almost all-male,” since Wofford in 1974 had women day students. (Some of those students were present for the event and were quoted in the Herald’s story.)

Converse students interviewed in the Herald applauded their campus security officers for not overreacting. In fact, one Converse security officer said, “we knew it was going to happen and decided not to interfere as long as it didn’t get out of hand, meaning no injuries and property damage, primarily.” In an Old Gold and Black article a few weeks later, Converse President Robert Coleman laughed off the whole event. “I consider streaking to be just a prank, a way of easing frustration, a lark.” He continued, “It has been my experience that every college generation comes up with some way of thumbing its nose at society.”

The story was front page news in the Old Gold and Black later that week, with a large photo, and got coverage with campus reaction at both college for two more issues. The incident also made the Bohemian that year as well, with some of the same photos in both publications. Mark Olencki ’75, then a student Bohemian editor and photographer, noted that some people accused him of participating in the streak, and he said that was impossible, since he was the one taking the pictures.

Perhaps the more interesting part of the story is the rumors, fueled in the Spartanburg media, that the Converse students would return the favor at Wofford the next night. The Herald even reported it at the end of the article. “Reliable sources report that another first will occur tonight as the Converse gals answer an invitation to streak across the Wofford campus at 8:30, weather permitting.” On Tuesday night, a crowd sometimes estimated at 2,000 people descended on the Wofford campus, anticipating a show. They were sorely disappointed, as the counter-streak did not materialize, and unfortunately took out their frustrations with some acts of vandalism.

The Streak resulted in a number of amusing newspaper stories. The Herald story quoted three Wofford women students’ descriptions of the event. Jo Ann Deakin noted that many of the men wore handkerchiefs over their faces. Pam Mason reported that some of the Converse students were chasing the streakers. Terry Rosenberg noted that some of the guys “were chicken and wore pants, while others wore long shirt tails flapping in the breeze as they ran.” One group of Converse students told the Herald reporter, “Please for goodness sakes please don’t say we were offended or nothing like that. If anyone is embarrassed or easily offended they shouldn’t be out here.”

In a March 21 Old Gold and Black story, an anonymous reporter wrote about several Converse student reactions. “Shouts of ‘I touched one,’ ‘Wow, did you see that?’ and ‘Give us a moon’ rang out among the audience.” The reporter went on to share his own reminiscences of the event. “The mooning on Fairview Avenue was a genuine disappointment. Growing up in a small southern town where mooning was a much more common pastime than going to the movies since there was no theater, I felt rather competent as a critic. The Wofford mooners lacked technique. There were no half-moons, baby moons, or moon faces… Only the basic full moon which is rather dull for spectators after a while. One young man must be commended, however, for shooting a moon across a Wofford decal in the back of a Volkswagen bus.”

The fad passed as quickly as it came. Dean of Students Mike Preston put out a memo on March 6, following the damage to campus, warning students that streaking was against the law and students would be prosecuted. While he knew it was not malicious, he did not want to see campus or student property further endangered. As Wofford campus safety chief Chuck Darnell warned the Wofford students after March 5, “three streaks and you’re out.”

Note: This blogger absolutely does not encourage a semi-centennial commemoration of the event!

The alumni office brought me a gift recently – not for me, of course, but for the collection.

The gift came from the family of Charles G. Furr, who was, as his family noted, a proud 1954 Wofford graduate.  While a student, he was a member of Delta Sigma Phi fraternity, served on the Interfraternity Council, and was on the staffs of all three student publications – the Bohemian, Old Gold and Black, and The Journal.

His family sent us a Wofford letter sweater that he received as a cheerleader, as well as one of his Delta Sigma Phi t-shirts.  Since I haven’t posted much lately, it seemed like a nice gift to celebrate on the 65th anniversary of his graduation from Wofford.

 

Now, I’m not sharing this bit of Wofford’s history to encourage anyone, especially today’s students, to do anything in particular.  In fact, let me say this at the outset: please don’t start a food fight in Burwell or anywhere else if you read this.  Or as they say on TV, don’t try this at home.

So, with that disclaimer, we begin.  I came across an article in the files today about a food fight in Burwell from 1970.  There’s a lot of legends about food fights in the cafeteria in the 1960s – but this article helps untangle some of them.  It’s from the Old Gold and Black of Feb. 27, 1970.

It began at 5:25 pm Wednesday [February 25] with the harsh clank of knife against tray in the dining hall as an unusually large group of students sat down to enjoy steak night.

Suddenly a piece of bread flew through the air, then it was joined by grapefruit, potatoes, and then by glasses, plates, and trays

It was over as quickly as it had begun, but not before nearly $1,000 worth of damage had been done and a tremendous mess had been made.  One student had a minor injury but was treated and released at General Hospital [now Spartanburg Medical Center].

And as of Wednesday night, the administration was out looking for the instigators of the fracas, the first real dining hall difficulty at Wofford since the Great Food Riot of 1965.

At that time, Wofford students made national news by a spectacular food throwing exhibition and later proceeded to Converse only to be turned back by police dogs.

Unlike that riot, which appeared to be a spontaneous reaction to a bad meal, this one was obviously preplanned and seemed to merely reflect the desire for students to let off steam.  It also ended very quickly when the crackle of broken glass was heard.

“There didn’t seem to be as much an attitude of anger as there was of just plain horseplay,” one student said.  “It started out as just a way to end boredom but it got out of hand.  Nobody will condone the vandalism that came right at the end of the food-throwing.”

The story made the local paper as well, with much the same description, and comparisons to the 1965 food riot, which the paper noted had “made Walter Cronkite” before it was turned back by the police dogs of the SPD.  And it concluded with the line “They just don’t make food riots like they used to.”

After a vote by the Board of Trustees in October 1975, the college admitted its first women resident students in the fall of 1976. Sometimes that gets shortened, somewhat inaccurately, to a statement that Wofford only began to admit women students in 1976.

While it’s true that those first resident women students experienced Wofford in a different way, it is not true that they were the first women to attend Wofford. On several occasions before 1976, Wofford had women students. Here are the phases that led to full residential coeducation at Wofford.

First, from the spring of 1971 to the spring of 1976, several dozen women attended as day students. Beginning in February 1971 with four women, three of whom were daughters of professors, the numbers increased to about 25 in the fall of 1971. One of those first four women day students graduated in the spring of 1972, and the number of graduates grew each year.

But the story of Wofford women doesn’t start in the spring of 1971. Throughout the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s, women occasionally attended and completed degrees. In particular, a number of women attended summer school and often participated in summer graduation. From records in college catalogues, almost every class from 1947 to 1959 had at least one woman graduate. Beyond that, women were regular enrollees in the college’s graduate programs, which existed from the early 1900s to around 1951. These afternoon and summer courses frequently drew area teachers, and perhaps half of the Master of Arts degrees awarded by the college in this era went to women. The nursing program at Spartanburg General Hospital had women taking certain courses in the 1950s and early 1960s on campus as well.

Before that, Dean A. Mason DuPre’s daughter, Caroline DuPre Wells, attended and graduated with the class of 1934. Her attendance was fairly unusual in that era in that she did attend during the regular semester and graduated at a regular, as opposed to a summer commencement.

But even earlier than that, Wofford had a short experiment with coeducation between 1897 and 1904. Two women enrolled in each class beginning in September 1897, so by the fall of 1900, eight women were taking courses alongside the 200 or so men. Each of these eight women graduated between 1901 and 1904, though the college ended the experiment after the last of these women graduated. At one point, one of those eight women was actually the college’s oldest living alum. In other words, a college that was supposedly a “men’s college” had an alumna as its oldest living alumnus!

So, since 1897, we’ve moved from an initial experiment with coeducation, through a period of irregular and occasional women students, through graduate and summer school coeducation, to day student coeducation, and finally to full residential coeducation.