Cover Story |
By Evan Kutzler
T
he Georgia Southwestern State University family knows the value of a good weather reference. From the Storm Spotters who help incoming first-year students transition
to college to the Registration and Academic Information Network (RAIN), weather-inspired phrases abound at GSW. As Georgia Southwestern marks its 115th anniversary, there is an opportunity to look back at our storm’s momentum and chart its growth from a tropical storm into a Category 5 hurricane in distinct 23-year increments from 1906 to 2021.
A Tropical Storm: 1906-1928 The Third District Agricultural and Mechanical School was one of eleven colleges—one in each U.S. congressional district—established by the Georgia legislature in 1906. These A&M schools, designed as branches of the State College of Agriculture at the University of Georgia, came to the cities that offered the most financial support. Americus invested in the region’s future and the State of Georgia accepted the city’s bid of 270 acres of land and $30,000. The first classes began on January 4, 1908. The “Aggie school,” as local residents called it, looked, sounded and even smelled different than it would just a few decades later. Until the 1920s, the college resembled a high school built into a working farm. Girls as young as thirteen and boys as young as fourteen took high school classes alongside specific farming and home economics courses. The Aggie school’s expansive acreage was put to use raising crops and animals. During the 1922-23 school year, there
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were “3 mules, 5 cows, 6 heifers, 30 hogs, 20 goats, 100 chickens, several young calves, [and] 30 pigs” on campus. These early years also began a tradition of adapting to Georgia’s changing educational needs. When the school became the Americus Normal College in 1926, a new curriculum added college courses and phased out the high school classes. The school also began training teachers for the first time.
A Category 1 Hurricane: 1929-1951 The school was a hurricane in spirit before it became a hurricane in name. This tradition dates to the 1930s when the school name changed from the Americus Normal College to Georgia Southwestern College. Student writers, always good for a pun, named their campus newspaper the Sou’wester and the yearbook committee changed its name from Le Resume to the Gale. It took until the fall of 1948, when intercollegiate athletics began at GSW, for the school to officially become the Hurricanes. The distinctive crescent-shaped arc of historic buildings took on a recognizable form during the 1930s. Dormitories for men and dormitories for women, as well
