Entries

16 Apr: Zoo

Zoo

The university had an often contentious relationship with Jesse Helms that extended long before he was first elected to the U.S. Senate in 1972. As a commentator for Raleigh TV station WRAL, Helms often criticized Carolina students who were involved in protests and was a frequent opponent of the Daily Tar Heel. In the late 1960s, when the state of North Carolina was discussing the creation of a state zoo, Helms is reported to have said that instead of building a zoo they could just put a fence around Chapel Hill. However, there is no evidence that he ever made the comment. It does not appear in the transcripts of his WRAL editorials, and Helms later denied making it.

16 Apr: Yackety Yack

Yackety Yack

The university's first yearbook, The Hellenian, was published in 1890. As reflected in the name, the yearbook was published by the campus fraternities. It included photos of students, engravings, and information about the classes. In 1901 the Dialectic and Philanthropic Societies joined as copublishers and the name was changed to Yackety Yack, drawing from a popular school cheer. The yearbook grew with the university. In addition to photos of students and groups, it was also a source of creativity, with some early issues including poetry and humorous class histories and always serving as a showcase for student photographers.

The 1920s marked an especially creative series of yearbooks, perhaps inspired in part by future novelist Thomas Wolfe, editor of the 1920 Yackety Yack. Many of the yearbooks from that era included a great deal of information about members of the senior class, including short biographies, caricatures, and their height and weight. The yearbook editors in those days also showed a cruel sense of humor as the page of senior superlatives included not just positive ones (like Best Orator and Best Athlete) but negative ones as well, including Ugliest and Laziest.

The period of robust and creative yearbooks continued through the mid-twentieth century, with the 1972 Yackety Yack named the best in the country by the Printing Industry of America. By the 1990s and 2000s it became harder to represent a much larger and more diverse student body in a single yearbook. Fewer students had their pictures taken for the Yackety Yack or purchased the yearbook. In the 2010s the Yackety Yack finally ended its run of annual publication, with no yearbooks appearing in 2013 and 2014 before resuming publication in 2015.

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16 Apr: WXYC

WXYC

Student-run FM radio station WXYC began broadcasting in March 1977 at 89.3 FM. WXYC was preceded by WCAR and other smaller stations, many of them based in dorms. Beginning in the early 1970s, Carolina students began the process of applying for an FM license, which would enable them to broadcast over the air (earlier efforts were "carrier current" stations, which used low-power signals transmitted through electric wires and were typically available only in small areas). The university initially supported the application but then later withdrew its support over concerns about assuming liability for student media. The students then helped establish a nonprofit organization, Student Educational Broadcasting, to apply for an FCC license and oversee the station. They were ultimately successful in early 1977. WXYC has always presented an eclectic musical selection in a wide variety of styles. In 1994, by working with the university's SunSITE (a predecessor of the iBiblio digital library at UNC), WXYC became the first radio station in the world to stream its live signal over the internet.

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WUNC-91.5

16 Apr: WUNC 91.5

WUNC 91.5

WUNC 91.5 is a National Public Radio (NPR) affiliate station at UNC—Chapel Hill. The station made its first broadcast in the early 1940s on AM and in 1952 began broadcasting on FM. Charles Kuralt and Carl Kasell, both of whom would have long and prominent careers in broadcasting, were involved with the station as students in the early 1950s. Staffed by students and volunteers, the station lasted until the early 1970s, when equipment problems forced it off the air.

WUNC returned to the air in 1976 as an NPR affiliate. The station operated from Swain Hall, which housed the university's Communication Center, a centralized location for all of the radio and television projects. In 1999 the radio station moved into a new facility, the James F. Goodmon Building, near the Friday Center. The Goodmon Building is named for James Fletcher Goodmon, president and CEO of Capitol Broadcasting Company and president of his family's foundation, the A. J. Fletcher Foundation. In addition to the Goodmon Building, WUNC has a broadcast facility on the American Tobacco Campus in Durham, North Carolina. One of WUNC's most popular local programs is Back Porch Music, showcasing folk and acoustic music for more than forty years. Another longtime popular program is The People's Pharmacy, which focuses on health education.

Date Established: 1940

Date Range: 1940 –
1970

Students Charles Kuralt (left) and Kent Jackson read at a performance during the dedication ceremony for WUNC radio, March 1953. UNC Photo Lab Collection, North Carolina Collection Photo Archives, Wilson Library.

 

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16 Apr: Woollen Gym

Woollen Gym

Woollen Gym opened in March 1938 to serve as a replacement for Bynum Gymnasium, which the university had long outgrown. In addition to more space for games and exercises, the most exciting feature of the new gym was the Bowman Gray Memorial Pool, which was said to be the largest pool in the South when it opened. In December 1938 the gym hosted a speech by President Franklin D. Roosevelt. The men's basketball team began playing its home games in Woollen in 1939; their first game there was a victory over Atlantic Christian College.

Basketball games moved to the larger Carmichael Auditorium after it opened in 1965, but Woollen remained a center for student activities. The gym celebrated its fiftieth anniversary in 1988 with a series of events, including a mass aerobics class that drew approximately 300 people.

The building is named for Charles Woollen, an administrator at UNC for several decades. Woollen began working on campus as an assistant to the university president in the early 1900s. He held a series of jobs, including registrar, business manager, and comptroller. He was an early advocate for the new gym and helped oversee its construction. Woollen was also the first director of the UNC band. Under his leadership the band became a regular feature at home football games.

Date Established: 1936

Date Range: 1936 – Present

16 Apr: Women's Rules

Women's Rules

Soon after the first women students entered the university in the 1890s, administrators began to devise separate rules to manage their behavior. Inez Koonce Stacy was the first adviser for women students. Largely due to her lobbying efforts, the first women's dormitory, Spencer Residence Hall, opened in 1925. She was succeeded by Katherine Kennedy Carmichael, who became the first dean of women at UNC. With a separate honor system and student council and different admission standards, housing regulations, and rules, women generally operated as a separate college within the university until the late 1960s.

Women's rules, detailed in the Women's Handbook, required that dormitories have a housemother, a sign-out system, and curfews. Visits to fraternity houses were at first banned, but the rules were later amended to permit them with a chaperone. Any parties in women's dorms had to be chaperoned and approved in advance by the dean of women. Women students had to wear skirts or dresses for everyday wear, and suits for football games. The rules applied off campus as well. Women students could spend the night in town only with parents. They had to register a full itinerary with the university before traveling and were expected to adhere to all of the university rules wherever they visited. Except for the overall Honor Code, no similar additional rules applied to male students.

In the middle of the century women began to push back against the rules. In 1963 the Women's Council declared it would no longer enforce the "apartment rule," which banned women students from visiting a man's apartment unless another couple was present. Dean Carmichael vetoed the council's vote but eventually eased the rule in the face of massive opposition. Perhaps the most notorious example of the double standard occurred in 1965. The student body president and his girlfriend were sanctioned for spending the night together in his fraternity room. The male student received an official reprimand through the men's honor court, while the female student was expelled through the separate women's honor court.

The uproar against this wildly uneven standard eventually led to changes. The dress code was eliminated in 1967, as were curfews and dorm visitation regulations a year later. Still, it took the passage of Title IX in 1972, one outcome of the women's movement, to completely do away with separate systems and regulations. The honors courts were combined in 1974, as well as the student government.

16 Apr: Women Students

Women Students

The University of North Carolina was for white men only for the first 100 years of the institution's existence. In 1877 the university allowed women to enroll in its summer school for teachers. This annual program soon had nearly as many female students as men. Not until 1896 did the trustees vote to admit white women as regular students, and then only under tightly controlled circumstances. Full acceptance as students, faculty and staff took nearly the next 100 years, until the passage of Title IX of the federal Education Amendments Act in 1972 banned any restrictions on enrollment or hiring in institutions receiving federal funds.

When the first women registered In 1897, they had to be juniors, seniors, or graduate students. An average of 25 women out of a total student body of 800 were enrolled in the first decades of their admission at Carolina. Women were not widely welcomed on campus, often sitting alone in class and barred from public commencement ceremonies. They were also barred from most student organizations and had a separate honors committee and student council.

Mary MacRae, the daughter of a law school professor, was the first full-time student. A graduate of St. Mary's College in Raleigh, MacRae did well at the university and became literary editor of the Tar Heel. Joining McRae in the first group of official students were four others —Lulie Watkins, Cecye Roanne Dodd, Dixie Lee Bryant, and Sallie Walker Stockard, who became the first woman to graduate in 1898. Stockard came to Chapel Hill in 1897 from Guilford College, went on to receive a master's degree in 1900, and then pursued graduate study at Columbia University.

In graduate programs, Margaret Berry was the first woman to graduate from the law school, in 1915. That same year, Cora Zeta Corpening became the first woman student in the medical school. The male students voted not to admit her, but she came to classes anyway.

The first dormitory for women, Spencer Residence Hall, was built in 1925, due largely to the determined lobbying of Inez Koonce Stacey, the first adviser for women students. She faced stiff opposition from male students. Weekly articles in the student newspaper appeared against the residence hall with titles like "Women Not Wanted Here" and "Shaves and Shines, but No Rats and Rouge." Katherine Kennedy Carmichael followed Stacey and became the first dean of women. She carried on the fight for more dormitories as enrollment grew. In 1946 the number of women students topped 1,000 for the first time. A coeducational residence hall named for Carmichael opened in 1986.

In 1974 the separate honor courts for men and women merged into a single body. The student government organizations also consolidated and wrote a single standard of conduct for both sexes. In 1979 women outnumbered men in UNC's first-year undergraduate class for the first time. In 1985 the student body elected the first woman, Patricia Wallace, as its president.

16 Apr: Winston Residence Hall

Winston Residence Hall

Winston Residence Hall opened in 1948 as a dormitory for men students, along with Connor and Joyner. It is named in honor of UNC president George Tayloe Winston. In the late 1960s the hall was renovated for women students. In 1973 the dorm became the first room-by-room coed residence hall at UNC, and it was the location for a sleepover by then chancellor Nelson Ferebee Taylor and other administrators who wanted to bring attention to overcrowded conditions in student housing.

George Tayloe Winston attended UNC from 1866 to 1868, completing his education at the U.S. Naval Academy and Columbia University. When the university reopened in 1875, Winston returned to teach Latin and German. He became UNC president in 1891 and became known for expanding enrollment and programs and fiercely defending the need for state support for the university. He left in 1896 to be president of the University of Texas, returning to North Carolina in 1899 to assume the presidency of the North Carolina College of Agriculture and Mechanic Arts (now North Carolina State University) —that campus has a building named in his honor as well, originally built in 1910 for the engineering program. While a proponent for public education and other progressive ideas, Winston was also an avowed white supremacist. His 1901 article, "The Relation of the Whites to the Negroes," argued for a hierarchical view of society, with whites inherently superior to African Americans.

Date Established: 1948

Date Range: 1948 – Present

16 Apr: Winston House

Winston House

The location of the Honors Carolina Center for European Study in London, Winston House is an eighteenth-century townhouse located on Bedford Square, near the British Museum, the University of London, and London School of Economics. Purchased with private donations, Winston House is a hub for UNC's study abroad programs and research initiatives across Europe. It is available to University of North Carolina students, faculty, staff, and alumni and is used by other educational institutions in London and the United States.

James Horner Winston, class of 1955, contributed the lead gift. He was an involved alumnus who served at various times on the UNC Board of Visitors, the General Alumni Association board, and the board of the Arts and Sciences Foundation. At his request, the name on Winston House reflects the family's involvement with the university, which goes back six generations to the 1840s.

Date Established: 2007

Date Range: 2007 – Present

16 Apr: Wilson Library

Wilson Library

The Carnegie Library (now Hill Hall) had been in use for only a couple of decades before university officials began talking about the need for a new library building. University president Harry Woodburn Chase described the Carnegie Library as built to serve the needs of a small college. As the university continued on a path of ambitious growth and transformation into a major research university, it would need a new library. The new building would be not just a home for the library collections but a symbol of the university's aspirations. The building was designed by architect Arthur Nash, who had worked on other campus buildings. The library was completed in 1929 and dedicated on October 19, 1929, just a few days before the stock market crash. At the dedication ceremony, Governor O. Max Gardner said, "The heart of a true university is its library."

In addition to housing the library collections and reading rooms, the new library was also the home of the School of Library Science and for many years housed the Bull's Head Bookshop on the ground floor. Even with the much larger space available, the library collections eventually outgrew its stack space. New stack additions were added in 1952 and 1977. Once Davis Library opened as the main university library in 1984, the building was renovated to serve as the home for Wilson Library's Special Collections: the North Carolina Collection, Rare Book Collection, Southern Historical Collection, Southern Folklife Collection, and University Archives.

Originally known simply as the University Library, it was renamed Wilson Library in 1956 after librarian Louis Round Wilson. Wilson graduated from UNC in 1899 and was hired soon after as university librarian. Under his direction the library greatly expanded its collections, staff, and services. Wilson was also instrumental in founding the School of Information and Library Science. His work on campus extended beyond the library: he was involved in establishing the university's Extension Division and the University of North Carolina Press and wrote about university history. In 1932 Wilson left to lead the library school at the University of Chicago. He returned to Chapel Hill in the 1940s and remained active as a library consultant, author, and special assistant to university leaders.

Date Established: 1928

Date Range: 1928 – Present