This Week in the Archive

This Week in the Archive: Obscene

Irina Rogova Uncategorized , ,

by Cory Schutter

Cory Schutter is a junior from Midlothian, Virginia. He is double majoring in Rhetoric and Communication Studies and Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies. He is a Bonner Scholar, a Center for Civic Engagement Ambassador, and a Student Coordinator at UR Downtown. He began his involvement with the Race & Racism Project in the summer of 2017, as an A&S Summer Fellow. This post was written as a part of Digital Memory & the Archive, a course offered in Fall 2017.

On February 23, 1984, Collegian staff writer Ginny Yoder broke a story on sexual harassment plaguing the University of Richmond: “Obscene: Women get phone calls.” Residents in the Westhampton College dorms and University Forest Apartments had begun to receive obscene phone calls from unidentified callers. An epidemic of sexual harassment began spread from phone to phone around Westhampton College.

“It’s traumatic for the girls,” Campus Police Chief Robert C. Dillard told the Collegian. This trauma would haunt Westhampton College as obscene phone calls continued into the early 1990s.

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This Week in the Archive: Racist Symbols

Irina Rogova Uncategorized , ,

by Amanda Corbosiero

Amanda Corbosiero is a senior from Roseland, New Jersey, majoring in Journalism and minoring in Rhetoric and Communication Studies and Film Studies. In the process of curating and creating metadata for the project, Amanda feels that the project has opened up her eyes to parts of the school’s history that have gone unseen. This post was written as a part of Digital Memory & the Archive, a course offered in Fall 2017.

“Racist Symbols” is the title of the December 11, 1970 opinion piece in The Collegian. This article explores the racist symbols that members of the University of Richmond flaunted at sporting events by using the Confederate Flag and singing “Dixie.” The author said, “If UR is to erase its all-white ‘Southern’ image it is necessary to promote a cosmopolitan image without using the Confederate Flag or ‘Dixie’.” Though it is not labeled an opinion piece, statements were made by the author calling for the university to make a change, and it was found in the editorial section of the newspaper. It was made clear in this article that the author, as well as other students at UR, took offense in remnants from the old South.

I chose this piece because of the different layers that encompass this 172-word article. First off it is found in The Collegian, the University student newspaper, and it is critiquing the university’s culture. Also, it is from 1970, a couple of years after the Civil Rights Act was passed in 1964 outlawing discrimination based on race, sex, or religion. The person who wrote this article–a university student–recognized the racist symbols that the Confederate Flag and Dixie held, yet the marching band paraded this flag around at games and the spectators sang “Dixie” without any recognition of the implications these symbols had on African Americans.

Richmond is the capital of the Confederacy therefore it is not rare to see monuments of Confederate leaders on Monument Ave, or back in 1970 having the Confederate Flag swaying at games. The question is, does UR reflect the social climate of the city of Richmond even though it is a private institution? The author of this article seemed to believe UR in the 1970s reflected an “all-white ‘Southern’ image.” In John Rueben Alley’s University of Richmond, a letter to President Boatwright who retired in 1946 said, “your record is written deep in the lives of thousands and in the very life of the South and the nation” (66). Therefore, we can extrapolate that UR did represent the social climate of the South at the period this article was written.

It is now 2017, 47 years after these “symbols of racism” were paraded around our campus. But even today symbols are all around this country and still found in the city of Richmond with monuments of Robert E. Lee and other confederate leaders. But this remembrance is different for everybody which is why Monument Avenue has caused mix controversy on whether the monuments are racist symbols or history. “Our understanding of collective or social memory will always hinge upon some recognition of the issue of whose memory.” (Barbie Zelizer, “Reading the Past Against the Grain: The Shape of Memory Studies,” 235). I believe that what it comes down to is that symbols are different for everybody and that is why controversy arises. Of course, racism can be associated with the Confederate Flag and the song “Dixie” for some, but for others historic facts can be associated with these symbols as well. Should the Confederate Monuments Stay of Go? states that we must think logically about what every symbol reflects both symbolically for one person and historically for another before we react off emotions. In 1970 when this Collegian article was released the Confederate Flag may have been seen as the history of Richmond to some and to others racism, however over time the symbol of the Confederate Flag has been accepted by administration as a racist representation of Richmond’s campus.  This was obviously not a widely accepted idea since after UR restrained playing “Dixie” at sporting events a letter by an alum showed his distaste for the decision since he viewed this song as deserving “a place in American music.” He also claimed that “Dixie” and the Confederate flag were not racist symbols “for right-minded people.” We can see how the social and political climate in the 1970s is a mirror of what we are facing now when it comes to the Confederacy and it all comes down to how people view symbols.

This Week in the Archive: A History of Title IX Controversy

Irina Rogova Uncategorized , ,

by Katie Brennan

Kaitlin Brennan is a senior from Fairfield, Connecticut majoring in PPEL and Rhetoric & Communication Studies, contributing to the Race & Racism Project through the Fall 2017 RHCS 412 Digital Memory & the Archive course. The Race & Racism project has helped her think about race not only on the University’s campus but in the city of Richmond in general. She has become especially interested in how the University has talked about race and gender equality to the public, including to its students.

In this post, I will focus on the December 3, 1981 article titled “Title IX Controversy Sparks Mortar  Board Forum,” found in the University of Richmond newspaper, The Collegian. Written by staff writer Pat Everett, the article described a Mortar Board sponsored forum held to discuss gender equality in University athletics. Everett indicated that, as a result of a pending court decision on whether the University’s athletic programs violated the sex equality law, students received few concrete answers from administrators. William Leftwich, Vice President for student affairs and Title IX coordinator, as well as Elaine Yeates, chairman of the Board of Trustees’ Athletic Committee, hesitated to answer questions from female athletes. Additionally, the athletic director, Chuck Boone, and the women’s athletic director, Ruth Goehring, gave few explicit answers due to additional pending litigation between the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) and Association of Intercollegiate Athletics for Women.

Despite this, administrators still maintained that progress had been made in the women’s athletic department since 1979, citing examples such as an increase in scholarships available to women and athletic success of female teams, particularly the women’s basketball team. Female athletes at the forum pressed administrators on issues of inequalities in athletic budgets, treatment of athletes with respect to travel, hotels, transportation, restaurants, and recruiting, as well as the number of available scholarships. Peg Hogan, coach of the women’s swim team, suggested that everyday issues, such as lack of heating in the Keller Hall locker room and availability of practice times, depicted obvious gender inequalities. However, Goering suggested that women were not always worse off than men and, in some ways, might even have been better off: “We have a law that says we must be treated fairly, the men don’t.”

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This Week in the Archive: Against the Norm–T. Eugene West and His Neighbor, The Nisei

Irina Rogova Uncategorized , ,

by Joshua Kim

(A Nisei is a person of Japanese descent born in the U.S. with immigrant parents. Nisei directly translates to “second generation” in Japanese.)

“At the outbreak of the war, 112,000 of these good people were taken from their homes, businesses, farms, schools, and churches and put into ten relocation camps throughout the midwest. Of these there were 70,000 American citizens by birth.” T. Eugene West, University of Richmond Class of 1927.

In his piece for the Richmond Alumni Bulletin, alum T. Eugene West passionately spoke on behalf of the Japanese American community and the horrors they faced during WWII, specifically the repercussions of Executive Order 9066.

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This Week in the Archive: 1964-1965 President’s Report

Irina Rogova Uncategorized , ,

By Jennifer Munnings

The 1964-1965 President’s Report highlights the first year of the Junior College’s establishment under University College. University College was formed in 1961, and the intention to develop the Junior College was expressed the same year by the Board of Trustees. Given that the Board of Trustees minutes are sealed indefinitely, the true intention behind the formation of University College and the Junior College is based on educated guesses, and published documents. The President’s Report report says on the formation of the Junior College: “This division was established to provide a two-year daytime liberal arts program for Richmond-area students who could not enroll in Richmond and Westhampton Colleges.”  Historical context suggests that part of the reason University College and subsequently the Junior College were instituted was as a means to continue to receive federal funding without integrating the main campus.

Although the 1954 Supreme Court case Brown v. Board of Education was targeted at public institutions, private universities, like University of Richmond, that resisted integration were in danger of losing funding and being penalized. The University’s failure to desegregate resulted in the centering of the T. C. Williams School of Law by the Association of American Law Schools. On June 8th 1964 Walter Carpenter became the first black man to graduate from University College although University of Richmond had not announced that it would integrate until that same semester. There were also twelve black students whose names are unknown that were enrolled in night courses. So, what prompted the public announcement of its integration? And, who are the populations that Richmond and Westhampton College cannot serve?

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This Week in the Archive: SOBA and Progress

Irina Rogova Uncategorized , ,

by Dominique Harrington

When I’ve attempted to explain to people what I’ve been doing this summer, I’ve gotten a few typical responses.  First, I get the generic, “That’s so cool! Good luck!”  The next one provokes more of a conversation, “That’s interesting, but what’s the point?”  However, the response I’ve received most frequently is, “Wow, that must be pretty depressing!”  When I explain that I am grappling with the University of Richmond’s racial history, I think they probably thought that I would be faced with more violent instances of racism during the Jim Crow era.  However, I’ve mostly gone through letters to President Modlin and Academic Departmental Reports; I haven’t witnessed anything as egregious as one might expect in the former capital of the Confederacy from 1946-1971.  Still, I’ve found myself quite disheartened more times than I anticipated — not because of what I saw, but because of what I didn’t see: progress.

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This Week in the Archive: Diversity & Brochures

Irina Rogova Uncategorized , ,

By Maryam Tahseen

“UR Welcomes Class of 2000 – Diversity Increases” stated the front page article of the 5th September 1996 issue of the Collegian. This article discussed the great strides our university admissions department made in accepting a diverse student body, specifically African American students. From what one could gauge from this article, it seemed that campus diversity and minority student representation was increasing at the university.

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Seun Hi Kim: How Her Story Helps Shape Mine

Irina Rogova Uncategorized , ,

by Joshua Kim

The beginning of my research was definitely very forward and shallow in terms of what I was looking for. When you join a project called “The Race & Racism Project” it’s easy to lose yourself in the obvious.

RACIST WORD RACIST WORD RACIST WORD RACIST WORD RACIST WORD RACIST WORD RACIST WO–

My initial search terms were all obvious. It was every racist term you could imagine: the N word, Chink, Gook, Injun, Redmen, etc. And these all led me to very obvious articles, pictures, columns, so and so forth. What it didn’t lead me to; however, were people. Real people.

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This Week in the Archive: A Reflection for the Change Conformers, Absurd Plastic Hippies, and System Dissenters

Irina Rogova Uncategorized , ,

by Dominique Harrington

I’ve read, Jarett Drake’s, “Documenting Dissent in the Contemporary College Archive: Finding our Function within the Liberal Arts”, a few times, as I worked with the University of Richmond’s Race & Racism Project this past fall. I’m more and more convinced as to the inherent liberatory and reconciliatory nature of archives each time I read it.  Towards the end of this piece, Drake discussed having an Ida B. Wells quote printed on a t-shirt, “Those who commit murders write the reports…”  However, it wasn’t until my third time reading this piece that I was inspired to looked up the context of the quote.  It is an excerpt from an anti-lynching speech that Wells gave on February 13, 1893, which was later published in Our Day magazine in May of that same year.  Many folks are familiar with the popular phrase, “History is told by those who win.”  However, with this quote, Wells offered a slightly different manifestation of this notion. Rather than looking at history through a lens of triumph or defeat, she astutely points out that we must also look at historical figures as those actively perpetuating systems of oppression, whether it be as intentional and explicit as lynching, or whether it is an instance where the Dean of a conservative women’s college submitted a report sharing her appraisal of the untraditional direction she felt that her students were drifting.

Dean Keith and Westhampton College Students
Dean Keith and Westhampton College Students

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This Week in the Archives: What’s in a Mascot Name?

Nicole Maurantonio Uncategorized , , ,

By Cassidy Lowther

On November 28, 1934, The Collegian released an article entitled, “Frosh to Hold Indian Trial at Cheer Rally.” The article discusses the rally presented at the car loop above the stadium in celebration of the rivalry between the University of Richmond and the College of William and Mary. Some of the plans for this Thanksgiving Day gridiron classic included widely-known speakers who were expected to delve into football history and spur Richmond toward a victory. Most notably, however, the article details an “important feature of the program” — the mock trial of the Indian chieftain, “Legrandesadebryantspackbridgers.” If found guilty by vote of the jury, the accused would be hanged, and then hoisted above the huge bonfire structure.

Tracing its origins back to 1896, the William and Mary football team was first nicknamed “The Orange and White” after their team colors (WM). It wasn’t until 20 years later, in 1916, the nickname “Indians” was first referenced in the 1916 edition of the Colonial Echo; referring to the basketball team. Between 1916 and the 1930s, the college logo and nickname continued to change and evolve with W&M earning the title of “Fighting Virginians” in 1923, changing their colors to green, gold, and silver in 1924, and adopting a 17-foot alligator named “Cal” as their mascot in 1927 (WM). However by the late 1930s, the W&M mascot was yet again changed; taking the place of “Cal,” the 17-foot alligator was an Indian pony named WAMPO (WM). Deriving its name from “William and Mary POny,” WAMPO often carried a rider in full Indian attire (WM).

The mock trial of the Indian chieftain originated as a way to rally against William & Mary, rather than against Indian people as a whole; yet, it begs the question: What were the state of relations between Richmond, Virginia and indigenous people at the time? The students of Richmond at the time remained unfazed by such a violent act; this in and of itself, the very action of inaction, speaks to the prevalence of racism. In June 18, 1934, the Indian Reorganization Act, also called the Wheeler-Howard Act, was enacted by the U.S. Congress (Britannica). “Aimed at decreasing federal control of American Indian affairs and increasing Indian self government and responsibility,” the Indian Reorganization Act was a way the United States government attempted to show its gratitude for service to the country in World War I (Britannica). While this act was a step in the right direction, ultimately it was just one small measure towards the ultimate aim of establishing a more equal footing for Native Americans. In spite of the fact that Native Americans were granted citizenship in 1924, many states barred Native Americans from the right to vote until 1957 (America’s Library).

 

Cassidy Lowther graduated from the University of Richmond in May 2017, with a major in Rhetoric & Communication Studies. She is originally from Riverside, Connecticut. She worked on the Race & Racism at UR Project twice throughout her time at the University — first, in Digital Memory & the Archive (Fall 2016), and in an independent study (Spring 2017). Her biggest takeaway from working on the project has been the significance of the initiative’s mission in bringing about the untold history of race and racism at the University.