Burritt College Centennial Celebration, August 13-15, 1948: Address by Charles Lee Lewis — John Shaqi
Burritt College Centennial Celebration, August 13-15, 1948: Address by Charles Lee LewisLewis, Charles Lee
History
Burritt College Centennial Celebration, August 13-15, 1948: Address by Charles Lee Lewis
Lewis, Charles Lee
Burritt College -- History
As president a total of fourteen years of the first twenty-three years of
Burritt College’s history. Carnes was largely responsible for setting its
standards, intellectual, moral, and religious. The school day was a long
one, extending from five in the morning to nine in the evening. The
schedule required the students to awake and leave their beds at the
ringing of the bell at that early hour during all seasons. There was no
daylight saving in those days. An hour of study was required before
breakfast. The students marched into the chapel at eight o’clock for a
short religious service. This was followed by recitations interspersed
with study periods until about four o’clock in the afternoon, except for
an intermission of an hour and a half for the noon meal and two brief
periods for exercise during the morning and afternoon. Two hours of study
were required in the evening. All lights were to be extinguished at the
ringing of the bell at nine o’clock. There were strict rules and
regulations against fighting and carrying deadly weapons; against
swearing and the use of obscene language; against gambling, card playing,
and other behavior “calculated to corrupt the morals of youth”; against
using tobacco and drinking intoxicating liquor. There were many other
rules regulating the relationship between the male and female students,
behavior on Sunday, the care of College property, and the avoidance of
indebtedness.
Life at Burritt was somewhat austere and simple but it was on a very high
intellectual and religious plane,—a good example of the ideal of “the
Attic soul in a Spartan mould,” a combination of what was best in the two
somewhat contrasting Spartan and Athenian cultures of ancient Greece. The
most important extracurricular activity centered around the two literary
societies, Philomatheian and Calliopean, founded early in the history of
the College. They afforded the students opportunities for development in
written and oral expression. Many later eloquent and effective public
speakers thus secured their first experience and training. The programs
of these societies were composed of recitations, orations, and debates.
Girls were admitted to membership in 1884, and it then became apparent
that they were a healthful factor in the social as well as intellectual
development of these organizations. Later in the new college building
each society was given a special room for its meetings and for housing
its library, each having as many as 800 volumes by 1895. The College
curriculum also provided for weekly exercises in public speaking on
Friday afternoons, and in later years introduced a department of
elocution, or expression as it was also called.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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