Introduction by David J. Whittaker

The following reminiscence was written by Helen Candland Stark at the request of President Ernest L. Wilkinson as he was preparing the four volume Brigham Young University: The First One Hundred Years. Several years later, the essay was shared with Virginia Riggs of the BYU Alumni Association, and in 1984 copies were distributed to members of the Class of 1924 on the occasion of their fiftieth year reunion.

Helen Candland was born on 18 September 1901 to Arthur Charles Candland and Lydia Hasler. She grew up spending her summers in Mount Pleasant, Utah, and her winters in Provo. After graduating as a member of the first class of speech majors under T. Earl Pardoe in 1924, she taught high school, first at Kanab, then at Jordan, and then at Bingham Canyon. In 1934, she returned to BYU to work on a master’s degree and as an instructor in Freshman English. She married Henry M. Stark in 1936 and thereafter moved to Wilmington, Delaware, where Henry worked as a research chemist for DuPont. They adopted three children. During their thirty years in Delaware, the Starks’ home was often a center for LDS church activities. In 1966, Helen was asked to write a history of the Church in Delaware. She taught English courses for the University of Delaware Extension Division and composed many poems and essays. Following Henry’s retirement in 1965, the Starks moved back to Utah, settling first in Salem then moving to Provo. Henry passed away in January 1988. Helen continues to write and show great interest in life. Both Henry and Helen have shown great love for the university over the years. They helped to establish the Alice Louise Reynolds Lectureship in the Lee Library and also supported the Women in Science programs.

Because Helen was the editor of the Banyan in 1923 and vice president of the student body in 1924, and because she writes that her college years were joyous, she is in a unique position to describe student life at BYU in the 1920s.

BYU Student Life in the Twenties

Those students of the twenties, what particularly characterized them? For one thing, they were pretty much locally grown. In 1922–23, for example, 31 percent originated in Provo; another 28 percent came from surrounding Utah County, while a mere 20 percent represented the remainder of the state. Idaho provided a surprising 7 percent. Six other states supplied from one to seven persons each. Enrollment stood at 864, a total that included a number of unclassified, unmatriculated, or special students. Even by 1928, this ratio had not changed too drastically. Enrollment had reached 1,457. Provo still provided about a third of the students, actually the same 31 percent. Utah County had dropped a few points to 23.5 percent. However, the number from the rest of the state showed a rise to 33.8 percent, or nearer to a third than to a fifth of the enrollment. All other states, now numbering eighteen, contributed 15.2 percent of the students. Idaho still led with 92 of the 221 non-Utahns, while Arizona, with 35, was not a very close second. There were also 20 students from outside the United States. Still, more than half of those on campus originated within a radius of fifty miles.

Moreover, the student body was essentially rural in background. Provo still clung to its country roots. Many families continued to milk a cow that pastured on “ward” meadows just out of town. Families traditionally grew their own vegetables and fruits, sewed their own clothing, and shopped in the neighborhood market. Smaller towns differed from Provo more in degree than in kind. Some were isolated by poor roads, by mountains or desert, by inadequate vehicles. Without easy access to urban centers, they lacked many modern conveniences. Newspapers were delivered late. Radio was in its infancy. The big trek to “conference” often provided the adventure of the year.

Nevertheless, many persons today look back upon that period as almost utopian. They enjoyed a sturdy sense of family, church, and community interdependence. A pioneer tradition, sometimes remote, sometimes recent, sustained the entire culture. Too often, however, progress ground to a halt. A predominantly livestock economy could run out of water, grazing land, or markets. Unless a steel plant or a turkey farm, a mine or a railroad sparked business, expansion hit a dead end. Then the small town faced exporting its most precious natural resource—its young people. For many responsible and ambitious parents, this meant educating their children for nonrural careers. Often such a decision entailed sacrifice in both dollars and farm labor. Students often enrolled late or had to leave school early. Their hands bore marks left from thinning beets, pitching hay, or cleaning irrigation ditches.¹

So here they came, mostly by rail at the new one-and-one-half cents per mile fare, neither the overly rich nor the really poor, bright and eager though relatively naive. Combined with the local youth, they became the raw material for Franklin S. Harris’s experiment in embryonic growth.

Student life necessarily begins with a place to stay. At BYU the home away from home was literally that. The 1923–24 catalog states:

The university emphasizes the value of home life, and the people of Provo have shown great educational patriotism by providing for the comfort and convenience of students. If patrons will make their wants known, no one need fear a lack of accommodations within easy access of the University.²

Committees stood by with lists. As numbers increased, procedures were elaborated to decree separate housing for boys and girls, and inspection teams were formed to approve facilities.

Obviously, at $12.50 a month for board and room, homeowners did not “take in students” as a financial venture. They hoped to break even or perhaps to underwrite the cost of food for their own families. Most of those who shared their residences opened doors for the sheer joy of having young people share their family life. Their own children helped to change the weekly sheets, and they helped cheerfully, says one informant, with the cooking and the dishes for tables set for twelve or more three times a day. In many homes, students shared in family prayers; hence it was a matter of concern when the scheduling of additional classes precluded kneeling together before breakfast. Small niceties in behavior were encouraged. One doesn’t get into a clean bed with dirty feet. Each person attends to his own bathtub ring. A now-distinguished scientist, then fresh from the wilds, remembers his chagrin when he dropped the uncut roast on the floor. His landlady’s understanding graciousness silenced the jeering laughter. It was a lesson in values he never forgot.

Often some room in the house became a joint study hall. Even the housemother was often taking a course. And there always seemed to be time to talk over a problem with the resident father-figure. Many a lifelong friendship flourished between families in Provo and their counterparts in the boondocks. Sometimes, if money were tight, a parent brought in a dressed lamb or a bushel of pears.³

While it is true that in some parts of America the Roaring Twenties really roared, exuberance on the BYU campus was tempered by awareness that families had worked hard to provide this opportunity, and no child wanted to muff it. Says the 1923–24 catalog, “The standards of honor, Christian integrity, and Latter-day Saint ideals are required. Within these limits the students are given the fullest freedom.”⁴ In a devotional welcoming students, President Harris admonished, “We pride ourselves in being an institution practically without rules; we simply expect every student to be a gentleman or lady, and leave largely to each individual responsibility for doing this as best he can.”⁵ But this did not imply that there were no rules. The Committee on Attendance and Scholarship included the most prestigious faculty members. To be called before them for scholastic failure or for moral laxity was a sobering experience. In addition, they carried with them not only the weight of the administration, but the sense of the student body: these things just aren’t done at the “Y.”

On the other hand, the spirit of the twenties was full of play. It was a zesty time. As one informant put it, “You opened the door a crack and they were through it.” This enthusiasm partly explains the hang-up on freshman hazing. It was a big thing on other campuses. Many a high school student had been regaled by charismatic young teachers with tales of fraternity goings-on. Moreover, upperclassmen, outnumbered by newly arrived “big wheels” from Kanosh or Escalante, felt moved to teach respect for and obedience to their betters, to say nothing of initiation into the “Y” mystique. Regulations varied from year to year but usually included injunctions to wear the prescribed green beanie and to use only the rear and side doors of the Maeser and Education buildings. Freshmen were to memorize the college song and half a dozen college yells to sing or to say back on request. In particular, they were to be at the beck and call of any upperclassman to run errands, carry books, or otherwise demonstrate subservience. Penalties ran the gamut from being hauled before a senior court, through wearing a sign announcing “Freshman Law Breaker,” to rare cases of paddlings. The 1929 Banyan put it thus:

The Freshmen this year were a typical crop of newcomers, with more pep than sense, and not too much of either one. With the aid of the Sophomores they soon began to realize their place in college and settle down to their rightful duties. Although there were a few sporadic outbreaks, they brought nothing but trouble and the lesson was soon learned. . . . This may be counted as a successful year . . . for the Freshmen emerged as well-behaved a bunch of youngsters as could be found anywhere.

Except for minor adjustments, the student body governmental structure remained relatively unchanged during the Harris period. The 1924 constitution called for the election of a president, first vice-president, second vice-president, secretary-historian, editors of the Y News and Banyan, and cheermaster. Together with a representative from each class, a representative from the secondary training school, and one faculty member, these officers made up the student council. President Harris was an ex officio member. Editors of the literary magazine, White and Blue, and the humor magazine, Y’s Guys, were appointed by the council. Managers of athletics, forensics, dramatics, and music were recommended by the departments for council approval.

Election of officers each spring was no hit-and-miss affair. Feelings ran high. Slogans, songs, skits, and posters channeled assorted skills into campaigns that participants considered to be deathless.⁶ Publications editors were selected with special care. Some of the outstanding students of the twenties cut their wisdom teeth in the old College Building offices. The perceptive coverage of the many facets of university life provided a unifying body of shared experience.

For the entire decade of the 1920s, a ten dollar per student activity fee covered operational expenses. In 1924, an income of ten thousand dollars was allocated as follows:

Athletics	$4,600
Debate	650
Banyan	500
Y News	850
Honors	500
Lyceum	1,500
General	900

This administration also paid off a previous student body debt and transferred fifteen-hundred dollars in bonds to the university toward the purchase of a stadium site.

Whatever its physical limitations, College Hall became a focus for the abundant life. Three times a week students poured in for devotionals of surprising variety and interest. Often there was a face to face meeting with a General Authority. Some Churchmen, such as Adam S. Bennion, became campus favorites. For example, in March 1924 he began a series of mind-broadening lectures entitled “Literature and Life.”⁷ Nearly every student during this period remembers one of the short talks by President Emeritus George H. Brimhall that particularly struck home. One informant still recalls the warning about over-busyness. Too much hurry, he told the students, and one loses the precious moment that should have been savored. President Brimhall had just been driving through Orem’s flowering pear orchards, and he said, “When you drive through heaven, stop and look.” The memory of this talk has an added poignancy for this former student now that she is almost blind.

Student-sponsored programs were especially popular, often centering upon some up-coming athletic contest. BYU often exchanged programs with sister institutions. If somebody won an essay, short story, reading, or extemporaneous speaking contest, everyone knew and applauded, for the claimant to fame performed in devotional. So also for musical accomplishments. Almost every conceivable endeavor found a community or school sponsor eager to give a medal or a prize.

College Hall was always crowded for the Lyceum numbers. Students who had never traveled outside the state heard lectures on India or South America. They were introduced to distinguished poets such as William Butler Yeats, or to artists such as sculptor Gutson Borglum. They heard the Minneapolis Symphony, the Kansas City Orchestra, the Chicago Opera Company, and Hans Kindler, the cellist. They saw the Portia Mansfield Dancers and the Tony Sarg Marionettes.

Debates were popular and well attended. They addressed such topics as “Resolved, that the best interest of the State of Utah would be served by grouping the Central Pacific Railroad with the Union Pacific rather than with the Southern Pacific,”⁸or “Resolved, that the United States should immediately grant independence to the Philippine Islands under substantially the same basis as that enjoyed by Cuba.”⁹ Coaches were history, sociology, and speech professors. Participants opposed teams from other colleges within the state and also took on the universities of Nevada, Wyoming, and Southern California. If they did not always win, they usually returned less parochial. And at home, the 1922 Banyan reported, “College Hall has been filled for every debate held here.”

Dramatic productions were high on the priority list. Somehow between choir and chorus, band and orchestra, rehearsals had to be sandwiched in and the stage repeatedly set and dismantled to coordinate with complex scheduling. A close-knit fellowship of widely divergent men established a sanctuary under the stairs from which to operate. These stagehands, known as the “lion tamers,” miraculously changed the face of College Hall as occasion demanded. There were, of course, the favorites current in that period: Peg O’ My Heart, Clarence, The Country Boy, The Great Divide, The Thirteenth Chair. But each season also rejoiced in more ambitious productions that drew on the resources of nearly every university department. Memorable were The Taming of the Shrew, Twelfth Night, and Cyrano de Bergerac with Professor Pardoe playing the name role.

All of these cultural endeavors had the unqualified support of President Harris. As one student said, “I never ceased to be astonished by his willingness to find time to support University activities—not simply athletic events, but concerts, lyceums, plays, operas, recitals, exhibits, etc. As a participant in numerous plays and musical events, I learned to expect that President and Mrs. Harris would be present.”

If College Hall were the “head” of the school, the center of extracurricular intellectual and cultural life, surely the Ladies’ Gym was the hands and feet. It was here that the dances were held and many basketball games played. In the early twenties, it was possible to enjoy an opening handshake party where, by means of serpentining lines, everyone could literally shake hands with everyone else. So having been introduced, one naturally continued to say hello. The ten-minute dash from upper to lower campus or the reverse chimed with greetings. Mixers at no-date matinee dances further broke down restraints. Partners were in order, however, at evening parties. A girl’s popularity could be gauged by how rapidly her program was filled. Orchestras were, of course, live, playing such tunes as “I’m Forever Blowing Bubbles,” “The Sheik of Araby,” “Dardenella” and “A Perfect Day.” Evening dresses for girls carefully covered arms and shoulders. Cheek-to-cheek dancing was strictly prohibited. At a second warning from Coach E. L. Roberts, an offending couple was whisked off the floor.

The athletic story has been detailed elsewhere. However, the intense feeling about basketball, win or lose, is a vibrant part of student life at BYU. Probably no area known to man, of comparable square footage, ever produced the din felt and heard in the Ladies’ Gym at the peak of a crucial game. If energy could be stored in brick and wood, here is atomic potential.

School catalogs encouraged belonging to clubs, urging an “interest on the part of every student in all those activities which contribute to a bigger and more democratic ‘Y’ spirit, and which furnish opportunities for all students in those activities which interest them most.”¹⁰ Obviously filling a need for participation in smaller units, clubs fell into several categories: geographic, hobby, academic, and social. Geographic groups represented such areas as Arizona, Alpine, Dixie, Idaho, Spanish Fork, Uinta Basin, Wasatch, and Beaver. Hobby groups covered a wide range of interests, from the Winter Walkers (who sponsored a winter carnival) to the Radio Club that fiddled with homemade components in the basement of the Education Building. Academic clubs proliferated to include Agriculture, Art Service, YEA Graduates, Biology, Mask, Piano. Students and teachers enjoyed warm fellowship in these departmental societies. More difficult to categorize are the Block Y Club (wearers of letters for intercollegiate competition), the YDDs (returned missionaries), and the Rolling Pin Dodgers, that odd minority assortment of married students.

There were also chapters of national honor fraternities on campus, linking BYU with a larger world and increasing its reputation with other schools. The earliest to arrive was the debate fraternity Tau Kappa Alpha, to be followed by Theta Alpha Phi (dramatics), Alpha Delta (commerce), Gamma Phi Omicron (home economics), and Alpha Kappa Psi. Club cohesiveness was fostered by means of an all-presidents’ club.

In almost every discipline, achievement awards sprang up, some sponsored by individuals or groups in the community and others by concerned faculty members, departments, or campus clubs. For example, 1924 saw competition in piano, stringed instrument, and vocal music, and in various oratorical, playwriting, and extemporaneous speaking contests. Special recognition was also given for academic achievement through the Sina N. Chipman Award and the prized Chamber of Commerce Efficiency Medal.

Financial aid was limited and depended largely on local efforts. Because students felt concern that often their peers were compelled to leave college for the lack of a little emergency money, the sophomore class of 1922 initiated a Loan Fund Ball that continued to be an annual event until 1960. At their graduation in 1924, thirty-one students had already benefited from this fund. In 1925, BYU was one of a limited number of colleges to receive loan money from the Harmon Foundation. By 1929, numerous individuals, alumni, and institutions were offering a wide assortment of scholarships and loans.

The 1920s were an important time for women. During this decade, women won the right to vote. The girls at BYU also threw off a few shackles, even to the extent of “bobbing” their hair, shortening their skirts, wearing makeup, and initiating a few programs on their own. A loan fund honoring Emmeline B. Wells was sponsored by the Relief Society General Board in 1923. Elsie C. Carroll initiated a short story contest open just to girls. Home economics and elementary education were still the majors of choice for women, but awareness grew that the options were widening. One of President Harris’s first acts as president was to appoint Amy Lyman Merrill as the first full-time dean of women. She sponsored affiliation with the National Association of Women Students, an organization linking many colleges and universities. A Big Sister movement took shape, with each junior or senior girl befriending half a dozen freshmen or sophomores. There was a standing committee on Care of Girls’ and Women’s Activities, made up of the dean, representative faculty women, and distinguished women from the community. The dean of women in 1924 was Nettie Neff Smart. A directory card for each girl went into her files, and she was available at all times for consultation, particularly to freshman girls.

While BYU was referred to facetiously as “BY Woo,” a mere 1.2 percent of the students were married in 1924. To questions as to whether a student should marry before graduating, President Harris replied that it depended on the girl, but he added, “I think a person has a better show to make it himself than he would with a wife, but the right kind of wife should be a help; she could pitch in and keep boarders.” Women were usually not permitted to work after marriage, so keeping boarders was about the extent of help a wife could give monetarily to a student-husband. So while romance flourished on campus, and many a match was made, marriage was usually deferred until after graduation.

Inevitably, the vigorous ferment of college life began to flow back to its roots by means of outreach programs. The Language Club opened its membership to “all people within easy reach of the university who have studied the modern languages. . . . Membership privilege is especially extended to the people of the community of French, German or Spanish birth.”¹¹ After a popular course in social leadership, enrollees were often transported back to their hometowns to give demonstrations. Thus, for example, a couple of carloads of students from Fillmore, along with teachers Delbert Webb, Algie Eggertsen Ballif, or Gene Roberts, would travel back home for a how-to-do-it session at the stake MIA leadership meeting. This sort of thing was part of the subsequent rationale for Leadership Week (later renamed Education Week) when BYU played host on its own campus.

In 1921, student Ernest L. Wilkinson, using campus talent, organized what was to flower into the Public Service Bureau. Even as early as 1922, it produced fifty-two programs involving 460 persons and reaching audiences totaling twenty-five thousand. Subsequent years averaged one hundred to two hundred programs, presented to ever-widening audiences until eventually entertainments were given state-wide and even nationwide.

There was nothing at BYU in the 1920s comparable to the current student wards. The students were scattered among the local wards, and most bishops were baffled about how to tap the resources of this elusive minority, unexpectedly housed in their precincts. Often, too, Utah County students took the “Orem” train home for the weekend, further eroding the ward’s unstable membership. Religious life at the University was fostered in general through the devotional programs in College Hall and in particular through the theology teacher, who felt a special obligation to become intimately acquainted with the students in his classes and to encourage them to come to him with their personal problems. President-emeritus Brimhall was keenly aware of this need. He often sent out questionnaires to the theology teachers, asking, “Will you kindly furnish a statement of what you have done thus far this year toward rendering the members of your class pastoral attention in the lines of becoming personally acquainted with them.” Or, “How often do your students pray and would they take religion classes if not required?” Such surveys were anonymous.¹²

During the later years of the decade, science and technology plunged ahead at a bewildering rate. All over America, new sets of values and new moralities clashed against conventional religious beliefs. Many students hungered for the reassuring comfort of their hometown faith. President Harris felt this anxiety and tried to meet it. As one former student wrote:

As students we all respected President Harris very highly. Having never been to a university before, I was particularly naive, strictly a farm boy from the broad sagebrush plains of southern Idaho. We thought of him, not only as a fine scholar, sophisticated—in the best sense of the word—urbane, world traveled, and a gentleman; but we also knew him to be a sensitive and perceptive father away from home to every student.

The 1920s were the great period of college fraternities and sororities. As such organizations flourished on sister campuses, the clamor from BYU students became insistent. Both the Church and the University administration sensed danger in organizations that were exclusive and secret. Nevertheless, students felt a valid need to belong to a smaller more intimate group. Elsie Carroll wrote as follows to President Harris:

Unless we can supply a more satisfactory means for giving the students of this school a broader and more formal social training, I should very much dislike to see these clubs abolished. Instead, I should like to see encouragement given for the creation of a sufficient number of such clubs that all students who desire might be affiliated with one.¹³

Much soul-searching ensued before a plan emerged that would, it was hoped, alleviate some of the hazards. As the 1928 catalog put it:

The University recognizes that proper social development is one of the important by-products of college training. This social opportunity has been provided through the class and club organizations of the institution, but in recent years these organizations have become too large to provide the students with the ultimate opportunities for leadership which are thought desirable.

Every student was to join a social unit of from twenty to thirty persons, established on the basis of gender, interest, and congeniality. It was argued that if there were a social unit for each student, the undertaking might work. The 1929 Banyan pictures members of about two dozen social units. Assuming a total enrollment of fifteen hundred, this would suggest that at least half of the students were not yet affiliated. An examination of three separate quotations from this publication leaves the impression that the social unit problem was still just that—a problem. On page 193, the response is positive:

This year marks the first full year of the operation of the Social Unit system. Started as an experiment in Democracy last year, it is working so well that most of its critics have been silenced. Although there have been many problems arise in the inauguration of such a radical departure from the policies of the past, most of them have been met and successfully solved. It is not a settled proposition yet, by any means, and much still remains to be worked out.

The most notable contribution of the Social Units this year has been the cooperation with the student body officers in the putting over of various projects. The value of the existence of many groups already well organized was proved numerous times. Among these were, The Spanish Fiesta, staged during Leadership Week; the Pep Vodie; the big pilgrimage to Salt Lake before the Dedication Game (new stadium); and on various other occasions.

The social life of the school has been increased both in quantity and in quality due to their activities. They have given opportunities and development that were impossible under the old system.

On the other hand, there are pages covering only a dozen clubs, including the honorary fraternities. There is an almost wistful note to be found in the quote on page 218:

The variety and large number of clubs on the Brigham Young University campus, has always been traditional in the past. Although the beginning of social units has caused a decrease in the number, the quality has not suffered any slump. Clubs offer an opportunity for contact with people who cannot be met in any other way and they will never die out.

The final quote, from page 215, may or may not tell it like it was:

Social units are at once the pride and joy and the target for ridicule at Brigham Young University. The optimists among the faculty and students view their handiwork with beaming approval, proclaiming it a panacea for every social ill. The pessimists, intolerant and impatient, regard it a masterpiece for making bad conditions worse. The majority of students regard it with toleration and sympathy, realizing that it is like a young baby that is not yet entirely sure of its steps. They hope that it will soon grow up into a husky system, well able to take care of itself. It is with hopeful eyes that the future is faced with the expectation that this will prove an improvement over the past.¹⁴

What happened next belongs to the 1930s.

The twenties changed the face of America, including and perhaps especially the small towns. Now they were linked to the wide world by roads, Model A Fords, radio. Additional frontiers vanished with the advent of the airplane. On 10 May 1927, Charles A. Lindbergh had flown nonstop to Paris. High-pressure advertising crowded kitchens and barnyards with expensive and intricate machines. It was a bull economy. To innovation and progress there appeared to be no foreseeable end.

There was an end, of course. And the thirties forced a sobering change in student life at BYU.

Helen C. Stark

BYU Studies Publications