Those sweeping changes were the focus of a Sept. 15 panel discussion on "Emory and the War: How Did It Change During and After World War II?," part of the annual Alumni Reunion Weekend celebration. The event brought together alumni, faculty and administrators from the war era to reflect on how the war indelibly altered Emory's campus culture.
A perfect example of how Emory changed during that period, said Dean of Alumni and former Emory College Dean Jake Ward, is Emory's shift toward becoming a more secular University. "With the huge influx of GIs we had right after the war, the student body became too big for us to have required chapel attendance," Ward said. "At first we changed the requirement to apply only to freshmen and sophomores, but we eventually abolished the requirement and just had voluntary chapel. The problem was that we couldn't get very many volunteers to come."
Ward said the presence of GIs, many of whom were married and expected to be able to "drink whiskey" if they chose, presented new challenges for faculty and administrators. "These were mature men who didn't expect to be controlled by the older leaders of the University," he said.
Post-war Emory was quite different from the institution that during the 1930s had sufficient clout to keep beer from being sold with a five-mile radius of the campus, as one alumnus recalled.
As both panelists and alumni recalled, Emory's survival through the Depression and World War II are due largely to the efforts of Presidents Harvey W. Cox and Goodrich C. White. "President Cox virtually worked himself to death keeping Emory afloat during those years," said Robert Rohrer, professor of physics emeritus, who served on the Alumni Weekend panel. "He led Emory's efforts in improving the undergraduate curriculum, planning the launching of the first doctoral programs, increasing the size of the faculty and adopting a better faculty salary scale, and putting a greater emphasis on research with the launching of the University Center in Georgia."
The improvement of Emory's academic infrastructure, as well as the fading perception of Emory as a religion-centered university quite possibly paved the way for a phenomenon that began to appear a decade later: social activism among students. "Emory began to attract students who were more interested in social issues than their predecessors," said panelist Sam Laird '33C-'44T, who retired in the late 1970s as director of religious life at Emory. "This was particularly true after the war, when these students had seen first hand that death affects everyone equally."
The day after the panel discussion, Emory continued its remembrance of World War II with the presentation of three Emory Medals at the annual Alumni Luncheon. Emory Medals were presented to Atlanta attorney and Emory trustee Felker W. Ward Jr. '71L, and nursing education consultant Em Olivia Bevis '55N. A third Emory Medal was presented to "The Generation of World War II" in recognition of their collective "courage, responsibility, compassion and a sense of common purpose--qualities that ennobled us all without ennobling war itself."
Alumni Weekend concluded with a rollicking USO-style dance on the Tull Energy Plaza the evening of Sept. 16. Bob Carpenter, director of the Association of Emory Alumni, said that about 1,000 people participated in Alumni Weekend this year.
--Dan Treadaway