Student Employment

 

The earliest call for aid occurred on December 4, 1929, before Sutherland’s appointment to president, between Kiern and the superintendent of Union County public schools. In his letter, the superintendent stated 

 

 

"Several of our Senior Girls desire to attend college next session but are without funds. They desire some kind of work to pay all or a part of their expenses." [1]

 

During this time, campus employment was a common tool students used to pay part or all of their tuition.[2] Similar requests were made by junior college students so that they might afford summer school at MSCW. [3] Whether Kiern’s replies went unarchived or misplaced, her responses remain unknown. Student unemployment became an issue within just over a year of the in initial stock market crash. [4] However, once the Depression began to reall take a foothold on Campus, the issues were addressed in the student publication, The Spectator. The newspaper addressed the issue of students losing a valuable means to pay their tuition and compared the current situation to pre-Depression statistics. It states:

 

“The once ‘Cloistered’ college is today getting the experience of trade depression and unemployment at first hand.” [5]

 

 

Student Life

 

The idea of campus housing that came at reduced costs was first recommended by MSCW president R.E.L. Sutherland. His idea was to take an older building and turn it into housing for students. Unlike the students who lived in the dorms, these students would be in charge of their own cleaning, cooking, and laundry.[6] There is no official documentation of this plan going into full implementation, but The Spectator, addressed it in January of 1931 under the name of the Industrial Home Act. The article explained,

 

“The third plan, the Industrial Home plan devised by President Sutherland, arranges to have one of the cottages on the campus fitted up with a kitchen, and a number of girls live there who are able to obtain free supplies from their homes, and do their own cooking and housekeeping.”[7]

 

The article later says that the plan will only go into action if enough qualifying students are interested in these living arrangements. For a student to be qualified, they must have access to free supplies, as “…the cost of buying supplies would off-set the economy of the plan.”[8] In other words, if a student had to pay for supplies, this arrangement would not actually save her any money.

 

Another accommodation for students occurred when students were allowed to pay just half of the tuition if they were attending only one semester. Before this time, the full payment was expected regardless of whether a student chose to stay one semester or two. The problem of students affording even the most basic supplies seemed to also be worth briefly mentioning at a MSCW faculty meeting in 1931.[9] While the issues students faced were significant and, because of the difficulties students faced with even purchases basic supplies, we see hints that their families were caught up in similar hardships.  Their stories do not seem to have much representation in publications and stored documents. This was understandable considering the problems the university itself was so deep in problems. With there being a depression crippling the country, the Bilbo Controversy and SACS expulsion was enough to dominate all of the attention.