History of East Texas State Teachers College
The ETSTC era also included the Great Depression, which witnessed a steep drop in enrollment and federal student aid principally from the Federal Emergency Relief Administration (FERA) and the National Youth Administration (NYA), and World War II, which saw the campus host the Women's Army Auxiliary Corps (WAAC), the Army Specialized Training Program (ASTP), and the Civilian Pilot Training Program, while 63 former students were killed in the conflict.
The post-World War II era at ETSTC was marked by a return to growth, in terms of the faculty, student enrollment, and physical plant alike.
Gee's tenure as president, which began in 1947, included two major controversies: his feud with Sam Rayburn, the congressman representing Hunt County and an alumnus of the college, and his support of a doctrinaire general studies program that angered and alienated numerous faculty and resulted in the demotion of two "dissident" department heads.
[3] In 1925, the college became a true four-year institution when its "sub-college" program was transferred to its training school; however, it was slow in gaining respect from the University of Texas at Austin, which refused to accept ETSTC credits beyond the sophomore level at face value until 1922.
[7] Furthermore, in 1925 ETSTC was granted membership in the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools (SACS), "the South's major accrediting agency for institutions of higher learning".
Whitley was the Dean of the Faculty at ETSTC and a professor of mathematics at the time of his selection, prior to which he had been a high school principal in Corsicana and, briefly, Assistant State Superintendent.
[24] That year also marked the hiring of Rural Education department head Albert S. Blankenship, the school's first member of the faculty to have earned a doctorate.
Although Whitely did not resort to mass layoffs, he did drastically reduce salaries (faculty saw a 25% reduction in their compensation in fall 1934), while he himself lost his life's saving in failed banks.
[48] After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, at a December 10, 1941 assembly President Whitley advised ETSTC students to continue "getting an education until duty calls to something else".
[49] Students and faculty did everything from joining the military (including the WAVES for women) and coordinating Red Cross drives and morale committees to teaching courses on subjects such as first aid, maximizing food production, and Morse code.
Academic buildings were also needed, and during the end of his tenure Whitley had plans for new dormitories, a new women's gymnasium, a 10,000-seat stadium, and a swimming pool.
[61] A drive to fund the new stadium, which was conceived as a memorial for the ETSTC students who died in World War II, was organized by local businessman and Ex-Students Association president Noble Arthur, who asked each faculty member to donate $75 to the effort.
[62] President Whitley, within three years of the mandatory retirement age of 70, died suddenly of a heart attack while on a hunting trip on October 2, 1946, sending "a shocked campus and community into mourning".
Regarded by Reynolds as, with the possible exception of Mayo, "unquestionably the most individualistic president" in school history, Gee's style was one of involvement, engagement, and impulsiveness.
[67] By the end of the academic year another new building, journalism and speech's Dealey Hall, joined them, more than doubling the value of ETSTC's physical plant (to $4,140,000, from $1,800,000).
[72] Gee implemented a policy of only hiring professors who already held doctorate degrees or who promised to him that they would work toward them, and he even threatened currently employed faculty who did not make progress toward a Ph.D. with demotion.
[75][76][77] Gee was known for taking a hard line with his faculty, holding them to a dress code, requiring them to attend mandatory meetings, and preventing them from owning a business in addition to working for the college, which was a common previous practice.
[78] One of the great controversies of his tenure as president was his feud with Sam Rayburn, the congressman representing Hunt County and an alumnus of the college; the feud apparently began with the conservative and segregationist Gee's opposition to the changes in the Democratic Party and Rayburn's apparent support for them, especially the New Deal and the President's Committee on Civil Rights, appointed by Harry S. Truman in 1946.
[81] Although he declared "I didn't want anything to do with Gee", Rayburn developed a relationship with Frank Young, the Dean of the College, and in 1949 and 1950 helped ETSTC obtain an Air Force Reserve Officer Training Corps unit and funding for a new vocational agriculture program.
[88] After sharp criticism of the program was published in Greenville's Herald-Banner and The Dallas Morning News (which lampooned it as a "sort of tossed salad with sociology as a Thousand Islands dressing"[89]) and an anti-general studies demonstration was organized by students in fall 1957, the controversy reached fever pitch in spring 1958 when Gee, supported by the Board of Regents, removed Tilley and Parsons from their positions as department heads.
However, the administration then quickly retreated from Arnspiger's doctrinaire approach to the framework, and after 1958 it made no substantive effort to force faculty to abide by it.
[94] As framed by historian Amilcar Shabazz, the key question facing university, system, and state officials at the time was "how long should they trample the constitutional rights of blacks to appease white supremacists".
The school's baseball team won several Texas Intercollegiate Athletic Association titles in the 1920s before the program was dropped in 1930 for financial reasons.
[96] In 1931, ETSTC joined the Lone Star Conference (LSC) as a founding member,[96][98] in which it competed in men's basketball, football, tennis, and track.
[109] General social conservatism persisted into Ferguson's presidency, as a June 1947 poll of female students revealed that less than 1% of them believed that they should be permitted to wear shorts "anywhere [they] wanted to".
[110] Although a 1935 survey revealed that 94% of the student body had $5 or less in spending money a month,[46][111] local attractions such as theaters, cafés, hamburger stands, and soda fountains proved popular.
[116] During the 1920s and 1930s, ETSTC also provided its students with a wide range of cultural opportunities, both in the form of performing artists such as John Philip Sousa, the United States Marine Band, and the Boston English Opera Company, as well as noted speakers such as Frances Perkins, Emily Post, and Carl Sandburg.
[117][118][119] Public figures such as Governor James V. Allred and Senator A. M. Aikin Jr. also spoke at "chapel", which had significantly changed since the Mayo days: it was only held twice weekly (instead of daily), was voluntary, and "had long since lost any spiritual connotation".
[120] Student activities evolved after World War II, with a lackluster effort to revive Sadie Hawkins Day in 1945 preceding the more successful "Western Week" and "Orphan's Christmas", which debuted in 1947 and 1948, respectively.
[121] Homecoming, which had traditionally been celebrated in the spring as "May Fete", was moved to the fall in 1949 to correspond with a football game, which increased student participation.
