Prior to the dawn of the first World War life at the Rice Institute resembled that of any other college campus. Students were free to manage their academic and social lives without much influence or concern from administrators. Declaration of war on Germany by the United States in 1917 prompted a response by many students and faculty on campus. Soon after this declaration, under the terms of the National Defense Act of 1916, a branch of the Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (ROTC) was assigned to the Rice campus. This prompted many changes on campus for students returning in the fall of 1917. This exhibit spotlights a Rice student and a faculty member in service, highlights some of the changes on campus during this time, and the pushback by the student body against the enforcement of new rules on campus.

WWI Begins, Rice Students and Faculty Called to Service

On April 2, 1917, the United States declared war on Germany.The effect of this declaration was immediately felt on campus as many students and faculty members volunteered for military service. Out of the 44 seniors scheduled to graduate with the Class of 1917, 18 had already arrived at the officers’ training camp in Leon Springs, Texas. The graduating seniors who arrived at Camp Funston prior to commencement received their degrees from President Edgar O. Lovett during a special ceremony held at the training camp.

In an article from The Thresher, published May 4, 1917, it is noted that among the upperclassmen that had left for officers' training in Leon Springs were the student body president, president of the student honor council, editor-in-chief and business manager of the Campanile, and the athletic editor and managing editor of The Thresher, as well as the following year's business manager and editor-in-chief of the Campanile. Officers from the Engineering Society were also gone by this time, and many board members of Literary Societies and The Thresher had left campus as well.

WWI Begins, Rice Students and Faculty Called to Service

Rice student's scrapbook provides personal anecdotes of his time abroad.

Electrical engineering student James S. Waters was one of the 18 students who attended officer training camp in Leon Springs in 1917. According to the scrapbook kept by Waters’s wife, Pauline, he joined the first officers’ training camp at Leon Springs on May 7, 1917.  By June 1917, thirty-five Rice students had been admitted to the officer training camp.

In 1918, Waters trained at Camp Travis as part of the 90th Division and joined other service recruits in offensives in St. Mihiel and Argonne that summer, which earned him three combat stars and rank as First Lieutenant.

WWI Begins, Rice Students and Faculty Called to Service

Twenty-five faculty members served in World War 1.

Dr. Thomas Lindsey Blayney was one such member. Dr. Blayney was the Rice Institute's first professor of German and was present on the Institute's very first day of classes in 1912. He met Edgar O. Lovett in the late 1890s while both were graduate students in Germany.

Soon after war was declared by the US, Dr. Blayney was one of the first faculty members to enlist. He attended the first officers' training camp at Leon Springs and secured a Major's commission, serving alongside General John J. Pershing's staff. Among his many accomplishments while in service, Dr. Blayney received two French  Croix de Guerre, war crosses for conduct on front line duty.

Wartime on Rice Campus

Under the National Defense Act of 1916, the Rice Institute was granted a Reserve Officers' Training Corps (ROTC). The act of June 3, 1916 issued regulations regarding the implementation of the ROTC on college campuses.

Excerpt from Sec. 40:

The President is hereby authorized to establish and maintain in civil, educational institutions a Reserve Officers' Training Corps, which shall consist of a senior division reorganized at Universities and colleges requiring four years of collegiate study for a degree... 

The general principles governing training, establishment, and the organization of the program were outlined. Applications were to be submitted  to the Committee on Education and Special Training at the War Department by institutions who were interested in hosting a unit of the ROTC.

Students attending class in the fall of 1917 returned to a different Rice Institute. Following the declaration of war against Germany in April 1917, and the enlistment of many members of the student body and faculty thereafter, the Rice Institute now had an ROTC on campus. Male students enrolled in courses taught by professors of military science and tactics assigned to each participating campus by the War Department.

Major Joseph Frazier of the United States Army was assigned by the War Department to the Rice campus as professor of military science and tactics. Upon completion of the military training course in theory and practice, students were to be elegible for examination to obtain officers' commissions.

Female students enrolled in modified war courses, which included physical training, hygiene, and first aid. They were also required to wear a standard uniform of khaki dresses, brown shoes, and a regulation army hat, and they performed daily drills on campus.

Wartime on Rice Campus

Not long after the arrival of the ROTC, the War Department granted Rice a unit of the Students’ Army Training Corps (SATC). On July 10, 1918, the War Department released a statement about a plan they were prepared to offer to college students 18 years or older — an opportunity to enlist in military service and to receive training in colleges. Administered by the Committee on Education and Special Training, the goal of the Students' Army Training Corps (SATC) was to provide for the “very important needs of the army for highly trained men as officers, engineers, doctors, chemists and administrators” and to “prevent the premature enlistment for active service of these men who could by extending the period of their college training multiply manifold their value to the country.”

This unit was a way for the War Department to control the number of men enlisting in the army, as not to deplete the population of students on college campuses. It allowed students to receive military training on campus, along with their intended studies, and when or if the time came for them to serve, the government could decide if they should remain in school or attend officers’ training. 

In a handwritten letter addressed to President Lovett, his secretary, J.T. McCants, shares details as to the implementation of schedules and regulations for voluntary enlistment of men into the SATC. Dated August 30 1918, the letter outlines a tight schedule for students, not much unlike the schedule in place under the ROTC:

reveille, 6:45; breakfast, 7:00; drill 7:30-9:30; academic work, 9:30-12:00; mess, 12:15; academic work, 1:00-4:00; athletics; 4:30-5:30; retreat, 6:00; ‘supervised’ study, 7:30-9:30

The letter goes on to emphasize, per the request of Colonel R.I. Rees, Brigadier General, U.S.A., that professors be urged to remain on campus as they and the universities have become “an essential part of the war machine.”

The following is an excerpt from the War Department’s letter to the Rice Institute (as published by the Houston Post on August 19, 1918) explaining the objective of the SATC:

“The students’ army training corps is intended, as an emergency measure, greatly to increase the scope of military instruction at colleges and so to provide a larger number of educated and trained men for the army’s needs. At the same time it is intended to discourage hasty and premature enlistment for active service on the part of young men who, though governed by patriotic motives, would serve the nation better by continuing their education until called to the colors in due course.”

The SATC absorbed the functions and members of the ROTC.

Campus Rebellion

With the arrival of the ROTC, the freedom of college life took a backburner to military drills. 

Rice students did not take to these changes in silence. At the beginning of the spring semester in 1918, an anonymous student publication was distributed across campus. Aptly named Red TAPE it was full of scathing articles noting the discontent of the student body.

The publication listed grievances that stemmed from the implementation of the highly regimented schedule across the Rice Institute campus. The anonymous writer criticized the excessive use of permits needed to do anything “useful” between the hours of 7:30pm and 10pm. This, the article explains, interrupted the flow of scholarly work that students needed to complete in order to be successful in their courses. There were policies regulating every aspect of student life on campus and the writer stresses that this was not  what the War Department had intended in the implementation of the ROTC on college campuses. In fact, the writer goes on to stress that instead of the required 3 hours of training a week outlined by the ROTC, Rice students were committing to at least 5 hours and were instead forced to obey a strict schedule implemented by the institute's administration. The publication goes on to mock the 220 regulations set to inform the behavior of students and tell them how to "eat, sleep, dress, and go to church."

Campus Rebellion

I am not at all surprised to know that there was no formal complaint made before the distribution of ''the scurrilous document" to which you refer. The thing which would have surprised me would have been if the student body had been able to get through the barbed tape entanglements at the foot of the tower, so as to make a formal complaint. I tried it once myself, was denied admittance when asked to be allowed to telephone to Mr. Lovett on an urgent matter and was flatly denied. I finally got hold of Mr.McCants, who further denied me the opportunity to talk for two or three minutes with Dr. Lovett.

At a meeting to address the concerns of students, Captain James A. Baker is quoted by one local newspaper as saying

Rice is not a military school, and only has this feature as long as the war lasts. It is hard to convert  an academic school into a military school in the course of a few months. Rules not properly enforced cause disrepect for military rule. We all feel that the things asked for are reasonable and, under the existing conditions we granted them.

The meeting abolished the call to quarters, guard duty, taps, and roll call, and formed a student association with the president of each of the four classes as members to consult with President Lovett in the future.

War Ends, SATC Demobilized

The Armistice of Compiègne on November 11, 1918 ended the fighting in Europe.

 On November 26, 1918 the Committee on Education and Special Training issued a statement to the presidents of all institutions with units of the Students’ Army Training Corps (SATC). It announced the demobilization of the SATC before the commencement of men for the week of December first of that year.

An excerpt from the telegram follows:

The Students’ Army Training Corps was conceived as a war measure to operate under war conditions. The conclusion to discontinue under the pesent conditions has been reached with regret and only after a careful canvass of the situation from every point of view. This Committee desires to express its appreciation of the loyal spirit with which the educational institutions of the country have co-operated in this undertaking.

In December of 1918, the Rice Institute was informed that in lieu of the demobilization of the SATC, the Secretary of War had instructed the Committee of Education and Specialized Training to develop and authorize the continuance of the ROTC. It was up to individual institutions to decide if they wanted to organize a permanent unit of the ROTC on their campus.

On December 27, 1918, a message was sent from A.H. Wheeler, Secretary to President Lovett at the time, to the Committee indicating that the Rice Institute did not seek to continue military training. 

Resources

For a brief overview of the war years:

Meiners, F. (1982). "Rice and the Great War,"A History of Rice University: The Institute Years, 1907-1963. Houston, Texas, Rice University Historical Commission, 1982.

Archival Resources Consulted

WWI Begins, Rice Students and Faculty Called to Service:

Dr. Blayney's photographs: Thomas Lindsey Blayney Papers, 1893-2004, MS 64, Woodson Research Center, Fondren Library, Rice University.

Information file: Lindsey Blayney, Woodson Research Center, Fondren Library, Rice University.

James S. Waters scrapbook: Rice University scrapbook collection, 1907-1985, UA 230, Rice University Archives, Woodson Research Center, Fondren Library, Rice University.

Information file: James S. Waters, Woodson Research Center, Fondren Library, Rice University.

Wartime on Rice Campus:

“The Reserve Officers’ Training Corps Regulations,” Students’ Army Training Corps-World War I (folder 1), Box 34, Folder 4, President Edgar Odell Lovett's Papers - 1912-1945, UA 014, Woodson Research Center, Fondren Library, Rice University.

President Edgar Odell Lovett's Papers - 1912-1945, UA 014, Woodson Research Center, Fondren Library, Rice University.

“The War Department Authorizes the Following Announcement,” 1918, July 10, President Edgar Odell Lovett's Papers - 1912-1945, UA 014, Box 34, Folder 4, Woodson Research Center, Fondren Library, Rice University.

Campus Rebellion:

Excerpt of letter from parent: Mayberry, J.B. (1918) “A Parent Who Does Not Agree with Rice Trustees,” Information file: ROTC Rebellion 1918, Woodson Research Center, Rice University.

Captain James A. Baker quoted: “New Rules Made and Troubles of Rice are Over,” Information file: ROTC Rebellion 1918, Woodson Research Center, Fondren Library, Rice University.

“New Rules Made and Troubles of Rice are Over,” Information file: ROTC Rebellion 1918, Woodson Research Center, Fondren Library, Rice University.

War Ends, SATC Demobilized

“Demobilization of the Students’ Army Training Corps,” Committee on Education and Special Training, 1918, November 26, Students’ Army Training Corps-World War I (folder 1), Box 34, Folder 4, President Edgar Odell Lovett's Papers - 1912-1945, UA 014, Woodson Research Center, Fondren Library, Rice University.

Letter to Committee on Education and Special Training from A.H. Wheeler the Secretary to President Lovett, 1918, December 27, Students’ Army Training Corps-World War I (folder 2), Box 34, Folder 5, President Edgar Odell Lovett's Papers - 1912-1945, UA 014, Woodson Research Center, Fondren Library, Rice University.