Amherst college

In 1921 the Alumni Council of Amherst College instituted the sending of New Year greeting cards to alumni. The cards often contain artistic scenes from the campus or reproductions from the collection of the Mead Art Museum.

The Amherst College Fire Department was organized in the fall of 1941 by Theodore S. Bacon, Jr. (AC Class of 1942) and Assistant Dean Richard MacMeekin as part of the College Civilian Defense Program. The original group of 24 men were trained in fire fighting techniques by the Chief of the Amherst Fire Department. Later the brigade was reorganized into two student companies and a permanent company of six men from the College's Buildings and Grounds Department.

Dr. L. Sauveur started the Normal School of Languages at Amherst College in 1875. In 1878, the School was first held at Amherst College. Its objective was "to familiarize instructors with the 'Natural Method' of teaching ancient and modern languages." By 1894, the Sauveur College of Languages (also known as Sauveur Summer School or Normal School of Languages) joined with the Amherst Summer School. The Summer School offered, in addition to language courses, courses in "library economy," geology, physical education, and other subjects. A 1901 brochure describes the Summer School of Library Economy (also known as Fletcher Library School) as a distinct program developed by William I. Fletcher. By 1906, the program was defunct. Most of the documents in this small collection are from Fletcher's summer library program. The program was for "beginners in library work, or the librarians of small libraries who have not been brought in contact with modern improved methods, [providing] enough instruction in such methods to answer their immediate demands." W.I. Fletcher taught the five-week program in the Amherst College Library. Typically there were two-hour lectures each morning followed by two-hour "laboratory work" sessions in the afternoon.

Amherst College is currently one of the few American colleges to have an open curriculum, without distribution requirements. However, this curriculum was only put in place beginning in the 1960s. Before that, Amherst had a traditional curriculum, with various requirements for graduation. The reports in this collection map the evolution of Amherst's curriculum from the 1930s to the present and also highlight some of the issues and controversies involved in its development.

The Reunion Trophy of Amherst College was presented annually to the alumni class having the largest percentage of living members present at Commencement.

Alexander Meiklejohn, educator and innovator, philosopher, social reformer, was president of Amherst College from 1912 to 1924. As he tried in the course of his administration to implement his innovative ideas, relations between many members of the faculty and the administration became strained. By 1923 he had lost the confidence of a large majority of the faculty, the entire Board of Trustees and many alumni, so that the Board, after thorough investigations by several special committees, demanded his withdrawal. Professor George D. Olds was appointed acting President for 1923-1924 and became President on July 1, 1924.

The Ford Foundation (1960-1963) funded a series of public affairs seminars at Amherst College, and on other American college campuses, devoted to major public issues of the time. Each year at Amherst College four students worked on major papers under the direction of faculty members for public presentation.

Alexander Meiklejohn, educator and innovator, philosopher, social reformer, was president of Amherst College, 1912-1924. As he tried in the course of his administration to implement his innovative ideas, relations between many members of the faculty and the administration became strained. By 1923 he had lost the confidence of a large majority of the faculty, the entire Board of Trustees and many alumni, so that the Board, after thorough investigations by several special committees, demanded his withdrawal. Professor George D. Olds was appointed acting President for 1923-1924 and became President on July 1, 1924.

In spring 1969, student grievances over the Vietnam War, race relations, College governance and coeducation led to plans to take over a College building. Advance warning allowed an ad hoc committee of students and faculty to request a two-day suspension of classes (April 28 and 29), called the Moratorium, to allow for College-wide discussion of these campus and national concerns.

On Friday, April 25, 1969 the Amherst College Faculty in a closed meeting decided to suspend classes for two days, April 28 and 29. The Moratorium was declared to provide a campus-wide discussion to evaluate the College's problems in response to a proposal made by the English 98 Seminar, "English and Education." Out of these two days the College community voted on the Ad Hoc Committee's proposals dealing with reforms to the college and the drafting of a letter addressed to President Nixon informing him of "our concern as a committed institution for the existing relationship between the crisis on the university campus today and the larger ills of society." (Amherst Student, April 30, 1969)

On May 14, 1969, at the instigation of the College's Afro-American Society, Amherst held a Black Moratorium, in which seminars were held to address issues of race relations and black dissatisfaction. (This event contributed to the College's decision to found the Black Studies Department in 1970.)

On October 15, 1969, Amherst College again interrupted its normal academic activities by observing "Vietnam Moratorium Day." Millions of Americans throughout the United States participated in anti-war demonstrations, rallies, parades, teach-ins, forums, prayers and the reading of the roll of Vietnam dead.

On May 3, 1970, area college students organized a strike to coincide with a national student strike to protest "the U.S. entry into Cambodia, political repression at home, and campus complicity in the form of ROTC and war-related research" (Amherst Student, June 4, 1970, p. 18). On May 4, the faculty joined with the student body in proposing a temporary cancellation of classes and the initiation of Departmental Committees to discuss the issues and act on them. On May 5 the faculty passed another resolution to make each student "free to decide individually where he will put his energy during the days ahead"; classes were allowed to continue if the student and teacher were so amenable. Then, on May 7, after a proposal by the Ad Hoc Student Assembly Steering Committee, the faculty voted to suspend classes for the remainder of the semester.

The Music at Amherst Collection documents the evolution of musical instruction, performance, and composition at the "Singing College," as Amherst has been called. Music has been a part of Amherst College life almost from its beginning, when the Trustees in 1833 appropriated $50.00 annually for the improvement of sacred music during Chapel and other devotional occasions. These monies went toward purchases of music and the salary of a director/part-time instructor. Amherst was also an early (if limited) advocate for the inclusion of music in the academic course, offering a Fine Arts course beginning in 1865 that included lectures on important composers by Professor Edward Hitchcock, Jr.

Extracurricular music also came early to Amherst. An instrumental band (the "Paean Band") formed in 1824, only a few years after the founding of the college in 1821, and remained an important part of student life for over a decade, including among its members such notable early Amherstians as Henry Ward Beecher. Organized secular vocal music made its first appearance as early as 1855, when the "Cinyrea" Glee Club was likely founded. Its success inspired a proliferation of such groups, perhaps the most notable of which was the five-member "Donizetti Glee Club," which spent the summer of 1862 on a singing foot-tour of the White Mountains, the first tour outside of the college made by any Amherst musical group. Organizations such as these directly led to the creation of the Amherst College Glee Club in 1865, an institution that is still in existence today. It achieved such popularity that, in 1877, students of the college hired Springfield music instructor Friderich Zuchtmann to direct its rehearsals, and incorporated the Amherst College Musical Association to better oversee the musical spirit of the college.

The Musical Association had a membership of roughly a third of the College, according to the Amherst Student in 1877. Its members sang in the Glee Club, played in the banjo and mandolin clubs, or simply attended a variety of rehearsals and lectures on voice culture. In 1894, under the direction of Edward Sumner, the Musical Association became one of the first American collegiate musical groups to take its music abroad, touring England for four and a half weeks before enthusiastic audiences. Also in 1894, President Gates appointed William P. Bigelow (AC 1889) as the first Professor of Music at Amherst College.

Among Bigelow's most significant contributions to music instruction at Amherst, in addition to pioneering the college's music curriculum, was the creation of a large-scale, hands-on workshop Oratorio Chorus of students, faculty, and professionals, chosen to perform selected masterworks that were studied in class. His influence was perhaps the single largest factor in the development of Amherst's now long-standing reputation as the "Singing College."

Around the turn of the century, the College Songs which eventually became an estalished part of Amherst's heritage proliferated to a great degree. An annual college-song contest hosted by the class of 1887 inspired such student composers as Draper C. Bartlett (AC 1903), James S. Hamilton (AC 1906), and Jason Noble Pierce (AC 1902), as well as Professors Bigelow and John Genung, to produce the bulk of the college songs still sung on campus today.

Foundations were thus laid for a musical life intrinsic to the Amherst experience today. The original tiny and experimental department has grown to a full-size academic field, with seven dedicated faculty, a building with full musical facilities, and an average of twelve graduating majors per year. Student singing groups have continued to proliferate, from the academically supported Choral Society (made up of the Concert Choir, Women's Chorus, Glee Club, and Madrigals Singers) to the many student-directed a cappella groups, which include the Double Quartet (DQ), the Zumbyes, the Sabrinas, the Bluestockings, Route 9, and Terras Irradient. Instrumental music has also flourished, with a large professionally directed Symphony Orchestra, Jazz ensembles, and various chamber groups. Concert seasons in College Hall and in Buckley draw well-known professionals for the enrichment of the entire community.

Timothy J. Dickey (AC 1989), Fall 1989

Revised by Walker Boyle (AC 2013), Summer 2013

U.S. President John F. Kennedy visited Amherst College on October 26, 1963 for the ground¬breaking of the Robert Frost Library. The groundbreaking was part of a special alumni weekend that also included a convocation at which President Kennedy and poet Archibald MacLeish were awarded honorary doctor of laws degrees. Both Kennedy and MacLeish spoke at the convocation and Kennedy also spoke later that afternoon at the groundbreaking. On both occasions his remarks were addressed to the significance of Robert Frost and of the arts for the United States and for the world.

The event turned out to be one of President Kennedy's last public appearances before he was assassinated in November. An estimated 10,000 people were on campus that day to witness the events.

The Robert Frost Library was formally dedicated on October 24, 1965.

Amherst College was one of the first educational institutions in the country to recognize the benefits of systematic exercise of the body as a complement to the education of the mind. The College established the Department of Physical Education and Hygiene in 1861 and appointed Edward "Doc" Hitchcock, M.D. (AC 1849) to be its head. It was the first department of its kind in the country. For many decades, the "Amherst System" called for mandatory supervised exercise in the gymnasium, half an hour a day for four days a week. Class rivalries developed (and were encouraged) through annual events like the fall "cider meet" and spring prize exhibition. These events naturally inspired athletic competitions with nearby colleges and universities. Prior to the 1860s and 1870s, very little intercollegiate competition was known in the United States; the two earliest areas of competition were boating and baseball. (Amherst and Williams, in fact, hold the distinction of playing the first intercollegiate baseball game on July 1, 1859.) From 1880 to 1900, Amherst's athletic contests were chiefly in baseball, track (also known as relay) and football, playing against all of the New England colleges, including Harvard and Yale. During this period, intercollegiate athletics became a more formalized part of the institution with the creation of the Athletic Board and Fund in 1890; previously, athletics had been primarily organized by student initiative. A boom of athletic competition came around 1900 with the addition of tennis, track, basketball, fencing, swimming, squash and hockey. Amherst College has continued to be recognized for its athletic programs throughout the 20th century and to the present day. Its modern-day philosophy is characterized by an emphasis on the all-round development of the student-athlete, and intercollegiate competition that is a vibrant part of campus life and tradition.

Dr. Sauveur started the Normal School of Languages at Amherst College in 1875. In 1878, the School was first held at Amherst College. Its objective was "to familiarize instructors with the 'Natural Method' of teaching ancient and modern languages." By 1894, the Sauveur College of Languages (also known as Sauveur Summer School or Normal School of Languages) joined with the Amherst Summer School. The Summer School offered, in addition to language courses, courses in "library economy," geology, physical education, and other subjects. A 1901 brochure describes the Summer School of Library Economy (also known as Fletcher Library School) as a distinct program developed by William I. Fletcher. By 1906, the program was defunct.

Most of the documents in this small collection are from Fletcher's summer library program. The program was for "beginners in library work, or the librarians of small libraries who have not been brought in contact with modern improved methods, [providing] enough instruction in such methods to answer their immediate demands." W.I. Fletcher taught the five-week program in the Amherst College Library. Typically there were two-hour lectures each morning followed by two-hour "laboratory work" sessions in the afternoon.

The posters, placards and broadsides in this collection provide a lens to view the public life of the college, particularly in the latter part of the 19th century. The material in this collection covers the range of student, academic and social concerns, from public lecture courses, musical performances, sporting events and public notices.