President Robert H. Wright's Chapel Talks: History of ECTC
The following are excerpts from Robert H. Wright’s “Chapel Talks” given to students every morning from 9:30 to 10:25 six days a week. Chapel Talks typically consisted of a reading from the Bible followed by Wright's thoughts regarding the Bible passage or some other moral instruction for the students, along with any news, schedule changes, or other announcements.
This and other speeches may be found in the records of the Chancellor's Office, Record Group CH1050, Series 2, Subseries 1, Box 1, Folder 6, in the University Archives.
By Robert H. Wright
July 2, 1927
Nineteen years ago today this picture was made, and it represents Governor T.J. Jarvis breaking ground for the first building that was to be on our campus.It was the front of the dormitory to the east of this building, and I am told that he did not use the shovel that he used when he had the picture made, but that he actually used this spade. That was 19 years ago, 1908 July2, and on the following October 5, one year; that is, October 5, 1909, the doors of the institution were open for the acceptance of students. Miss Pattie Dowell was the name of the first student on our records, and she is still teaching school.
We had managed to assemble a faculty and to get together a few students.We did not have an electric light plant ready to operate, and we were not connected with the town power plant. We opened up the college with just a small number of folks--just a small bunch of homesick boys and girls (We had a few boys. We have a boy yet.), but the teachers and officers were just as homesick as the students. We did not have electric lights in the rooms, but we had a bunch of oil lamps. You people would hardly know what to do with an oil lamp, but back yonder at that time they did know what to do with them. We did not have any lawn. The girls had a great deal more trouble in that time getting down Fifth Street than they do know. They did not have any nice lawn to sit on and watch the world go by, and they could not take that promenade that they now take up and down on this side of the hedge. The hedge was not there, and the lawn was not there.We did have some boardwalks, but they have gone.
We enrolled during that first year in the regular term 174 students. During the summer term we enrolled 330 students, making a total enrollment of 504. Forty-two of these names were counted twice, giving a net enrollment of 462.During the eighteen years of our existence we have taught in the regular college years a total of 6171 people, and during the summer terms we have taught 7306, or a total of 14,582, 879 of these students having been counted twice, giving a total net enrollment of 13,705, and practically 13,500 of these people have taught school in North Carolina. Of course, some of those enrolled have not yet taught.
This institution was established by the state for the sole purpose of training teachers for the public schools of North Carolina. It started out as a normal school, and in order that it might be enacted into law they had to put it down as a normal school because my own Alma Mater opposed allowing us to even have a course of study any more advanced than that required for admission to the State University. I wish you would just think about that provision in the bill that our course of study should not be any higher really than a high school, and the president of the University of North Carolina, a good friend of man . . . is the man that put that in, so I have been told . . . At the next meeting of the legislature we had the law repealed, and a professor of the University of North Carolina struck that law in again.A few years ago we had the law changed.
I am telling you this to give you an idea of how the larger colleges in this country look upon a teacher training school. Well, I think we have that out of the law now.But they put a name to the institution longer than the president they selected, “East Carolina Teachers Training School,” and after a long discussion with our Board of Trustees we managed to get it cut down to East Carolina Teachers College, and now people are talking about naming it something else.I hope they will not, but if they do I hope the name will be just State Teachers College.
At first this was simply a two-year normal school, doing two years of teacher training beyond the standard high school, but giving two years of high school also because there were not standard high schools all about over North Carolina then.We would take students for two years of high school and give them training, getting them ready to enter the normal course.We have gone beyond that just as we have gone beyond the boardwalk, just as we have added about one-half million dollars worth of buildings, until the requirements of admission here are about the same as for any other standard college. The largest teacher training school in the world has taken our catalog and used it as a textbook for their graduate students, studying our course of study.
The institution has moved from what it was to what it is without ever changing one particle from its original purpose- to train teachers for the public schools in North Carolina.There have been quite a number of changes, I am going to have this picture put on the bulletin board and I want you to look at the women.We men love to look at women, and you women will be interested too. Just as dresses have changed, just so everything else has changed. Just as we see more of each other as they did in 1908, just so we know more about the things of life than they knew in 1908. The Old World has changed a great deal and our college is keeping apace with it and just a little ahead of the procession, just enough so that you can meet the advancing civilization and still be tied to the things of today, with our purpose constantly held in view, never wavering one iota from the purpose for which the state of North Carolina established this institution and for which the state of North Carolina spent about 2 1/4 millions of dollars for building. The state is spending this year $165,000 to maintain this institution so that the children of North Carolina may have better trained and efficient teachers, that we may have a better civilization, a more intelligent people, a more prosperous state, and a better North Carolina for you and for me to live in.
This is the anniversary of the breaking of ground for the building of this institution and it is state-owned.The town of Greenville and the County of Pitt voted jointly for $100,000 worth of bonds to go to the state towards building this institution.When they first put up the six buildings that were here at the end of the second year I told Governor Jarvis that we would have to go to the legislature and ask for more money to enlarge the institution and he said, “Mr. Wright, we thought we had built it large enough for twenty years.” “Well,” I said, “Governor Jarvis, you are really not mad with me because we filled it up in two years, are you?”He answered, “No, we are glad to see that the people of North Carolina are anxious for a place to take training to teach the children of our state. We will go to the legislature and ask for more money.”And we have been doing that regularly since 1911, and the state has been giving to us, taking it as the state gives to other institutions, very liberally. We have no just complaint or fault to find with our state, but he has not given it to us anything like as rapidly as the needs of the state call for. But we have grown a little over 280 percent in the eighteen years of our existence.I hope you individually will not grow that much physically, but I do hope that you will grow more than that mentally and spiritually, and we owe it all, young women, to the Old State.
