Cody Memorial Library was the first freestanding library on today’s campus. The building was named in honor of C.C. (Claude Carr) Cody, Southwestern’s first Dean, close friend of Francis Asbury Mood, and beloved professor of mathematics. Designed by Cameron Fairchild, it cost $81,000 to construct, and was partially financed by a Works Progress Administration grant to the city.

Congressman Lyndon Baines Johnson was instrumental in procuring these funds for Southwestern, then in his 10th Congressional District. At opening, the building held 51,890 volumes. The building was added onto twice - first in 1966 again in 1988. The building is now the home of Special Collections and Archives.

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Bishops Memorial Union served as the first on-campus student center replacing the Pirates Tavern that was located across the street from Cullen. Designed by Cameron Fairchild, the space was named for university alumni and a faculty member who had been elected bishops in the Methodist Church. The Bishops were Sam Hay, H.A. Boaz, A. Frank Smith, H. Bascom Watts, and Edwin D. Mouzon. Constructed from the same limestone used throughout the campus, the building featured a large lounge, faculty lounge, music room, post office, snack bar, bookstore, and bowling alleys. The functions of this building, as well as the University Commons, were absorbed by the McCombs Campus Center in 1998.

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Francis Asbury Mood, whom this monument commemorates, lived from 1830-1884, and is remembered mainly as the founder of Southwestern University. Mood was born in South Carolina just before Texas became a Republic. Throughout his life, Mood served as a traveling Methodist preacher in the Southern part of the United States. He volunteered for the role of Chaplain in the Confederacy, where he served in the early part of the Civil War alongside the eventual founders of Baylor University. He was appointed to the presidency of Soule University in 1868, and was instrumental in the construction of Southwestern as a combination of the four Methodist root colleges – Rutersville, McKenzie, Wesleyan, and Soule – into one university located in Georgetown in the 1870s.

Mood traveled between the “root colleges” and the various Texas Methodist conventions to establish the university in Georgetown, created the name “South Western” for the institution, and ushered it through its formative years until his death in 1884 in Waco, Texas. Funeral services were held at the first iteration of the University Chapel on campus and Mood was buried on campus.

A Mood Monumental Association was created to build the obelisk in his memory. The monument was constructed shortly after his death, circa 1890s, to mark his resting place, and although his remains have since been moved to a gravesite in the International Order of Odd Fellows (I.O.O.F.) Cemetery adjacent to campus, the Mood Obelisk remains as a testament to the centrality of F. A. Mood’s legacy to the collective memory of Southwestern.

However, Mood’s legacy is complicated. Mood’s numerous contributions to the University helped to create the Southwestern that we know today: the four root colleges had been declining for many years, and would not have survived without his intervention. Thus, his role in combining the colleges and creating a unified institution cannot be overlooked. However, his connection to the Confederacy and his documented attitudes towards people of color raise ethical questions about the overall legacy he has bequeathed to the university and whether he should be remembered reverently on campus.

Although Mood himself never owned slaves, he is connected deeply to racial injustices in the South in the 19th Century. As a young man, his uncle was a Methodist Bishop who owned slaves and was a strong advocate for dividing the Methodist church in America in the antebellum years into the Northern Methodists and Southern Methodists because of polarized attitudes toward chattel slavery. Mood taught at a school for Black children, but was said to be “patronizing in his attitude toward blacks” throughout his life (Jones 81). He was a strong supporter of Secession, casting his vote in favor of South Carolina’s Secession in the first Secession declaration in December of 1860, and he willingly entered into the Confederacy as a chaplain (Jones 46).

This situates him as part of a struggle that centered on the question of humanity and justice, and on a side of history which denied an oppressed population these fundamental rights. More important, his efforts to create Southwestern were influenced by these attitudes, and are an integral part of the institution’s foundation that has not been reconciled, even today.

The Mood Monument has occupied several different spaces on campus and was moved multiple times before it was placed in its current location beside Mood-Bridwell Hall. For many years, the monument was the site of several events related to commencement, such as Vesper Prayers or a Founder’s Service for graduating seniors, and publicity for these events was posted regularly in the student newspaper, The Megaphone. However, these events happened near the end of a student’s time at Southwestern, which is one reason why the monument has not been remembered as a regular part of everyday life on campus. Moreover, these events fell out of practice in the 1960s, and the Mood monument featured in later Megaphone articles mainly as an oddity for jokes and potential traditions but not as a site of performed collective memory.

Currently, there are no events or traditions that involve the Mood monument, so it mainly is experienced as an impediment to travel between the Mood-Bridwell and Cullen Buildings. This lack of communal knowledge about the monument, and about Mood himself, seems to suggest that the foundation and structure of Southwestern as an institution is largely overlooked. But it also shows that Southwestern as a collective has not spent time grappling with the difficult ethical questions presented by Mood as an individual or this monument as a celebration of his legacy.

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For a short period of time, Korouva was first located in the now demolished West Gymnasium, on the same site where the F.W. Olin building was built in 1996. But for the majority of its existence, Korouva was located in the Field House in a building it shared with the Southwestern Police Department on the west side of campus, at 1005 Maple Street. Interestingly, the Field House itself was moved to the Maple Street location from a location in the center of campus in the spring of 1940; the house has a twin with the same design at 1202 E 15th St. in Georgetown.

In the fall of 1994, Korouva Milk Bar held a pre-opening event which featured a performance from a local student band by the name of Smudge, and an art exhibition which featured drawings, paintings, and other art created by students. This pre-opening event set the artistic, creative, and often chaotic but fun tone for the future of the café and the identity it would sustain. The large-scale student collaboration on the opening also illustrated the cultural significance Korouva had on the Southwestern campus.

Korouva offered a unique environment that encouraged student creativity and fostered a sense of belonging and self-expression. The students who worked there encouraged student interaction by providing board games and different scale seating areas as well as hosting events like open mic nights and providing space for other student organizations to meet. Many student testimonials about Korouva have a similar theme, which remained consistent throughout the Milk Bar’s 20+ years of operation. Students claimed that the space allowed them to relax, study, connect with others, and get away from the stresses of the rest of campus (despite technically being on campus itself).

Korouva was highly involved in art since it first opened, from hosting art competitions and hosting art exhibits where Southwestern’s art students could showcase their works to allowing students to draw and write on the walls and ceilings. Because the space was not only operated but also curated by students instead of faculty or administrators, it created an environment that was by students for students. In terms of collective memory, the art covering the interior also contributed to a certain level of intimacy and continuity between current and former students. Seeing the words and drawings of former students people may have never met provided a view of life and campus culture over the years. It was a sort of living documentation of the self-identity of Southwestern students.

During the fall of 2006, Korouva was closed for a short period of time because it needed extensive repairs. Reflecting on missing Korouva being open, one student stated that when they go to the Cove to study, they often feel self-conscious. When they went to Korouva to study, however, they could show up in their underwear and nobody would care. This student testimonial accentuates the sort of “informal” and unique environment that could not be found anywhere else on campus. Also in the same issue of The Megaphone, Korouva was described as being a middle ground between a fraternity house and the Smith library. Many students who are not involved in greek life are excluded from fraternity houses, which greatly limits the amount of informal spaces where they can relax, be themselves, and simply hang out. On the other hand, the library can be too formal of a space for relaxation or socialization. Korouva functioned as a middle ground.

Korouva also functioned as a place of inclusivity. Because it was a place which emphasized that anyone and everyone was welcome, the Milkbar often worked with campus organizations to raise awareness for social issues that affected minority groups, especially the LGBTQ community. One example of this occurred in December of 2005. Korouva hosted an event alongside Southwestern Allies on national AIDS awareness day. T-shirts with personalized messages such as fatality statistics were created by students at Korouva using art supplies like spray paint, markers, and stencils. The shirts were then worn by students around campus the next day.

The inclusive environment of Korouva and the sense of safety students felt there is somewhat contradictory given the basis of its name. Korouva’s name originates from Anthony Burgess’ 1962 satirical dystopian novel A Clockwork Orange, which was made into a cult-classic film by Stanley Kubrick in 1971. Within the novel and film, the Korova Milkbar is a place associated with violence, exploitation, and the sexual assault of women. This fictional place also served milk laced with LSD. Because of this association, in the winter of 1996, a Southwestern Board member decided to change Korouva’s name to “Café Java''. According to an interview with the board member in The Megaphone in January 1996, the decision to change the name was discussed for years with discourse beginning around the time Korouva first opened. Most trustees agreed with this decision, stating that it was necessary given the violent associations in the novel.

However, the vast majority of students resisted the change. In response, one student claimed that the name should not have been changed because none of the things that happen in the book happen at Southwestern’s Korouva. Another student’s response to this was that the name should stay Korouva because A Clockwork Orange is a great piece of literature which should be honored by Southwestern. Either way, the name Café Java did not last long, as The Megaphone refers to the café as Korouva in a publication just a few months later. I never did find any information regarding when the name was changed back. However, I would assume that students continued to refer to the café as Korouva and the Board realized that people would only remember it by that name due to the student's collective memory associating the café with its original name.

Rowan Via, a 2023 Southwestern graduate, took the photos accredited to them in this entry while Korouva was still in operation just before the pandemic. They and I took a course together in the fall of 2022. An assignment we had was to create a presentation about an on-campus location of personally meaningful memory. Their project was on Korouva Milk Bar and the experiences and memories they had made there with friends. While they were presenting, I learned what Korouva was for the first time. It occurred to me that Rowan’s graduating class was truly the last to experience Korouva as the Korouva in the Field House while attending Southwestern. I remember feeling a sadness and a sense of loss for something truly special to Southwestern despite never experiencing it personally.

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I went to the SUPD office that shared a wall with Korouva and asked an officer to be let inside to do an analysis of it as a memory place. The officer ended up being Southwestern’s Chief of Police, Brad Dunn. He was happy to come with me and share his memories of Korouva when it was open. He reminisced about the two campus cats the café staff used to take care of, named Madeline and Squinty. Chief Dunn seemed to have had a connection with these cats himself, because he was reluctant to tell me that they had both since died. He also told me about how his daughter used to like going there when she was a student at Southwestern only a few years ago. He then told me about the back patio that used to exist and how students enjoyed hanging out there. Unfortunately, the patio had to be removed after taking damage from a falling tree, one of the many casualties of the winter storms in the early 2020s that killed or injured many of the campus trees.

No action had been taken to remove the Korouva logo painted on the front door. Inside, the building sat as it had since it shut down, a ghost of its former self. Most of the objects inside had been left exactly where they were 3 years ago, including menus, wall and ceiling art, the cash register, photos of campus cats, and a variety of random items like a late 90’s TV with a copy of Citizen Kane on VHS placed on top.

The space was being used to repair and store Pirate Bikes over the summer. To make room for this effort, the furniture that once spread across the common area was now piled up against the back wall. It formed an odd mix of abandoned memory objects disrupted by dozens of pirate bikes in the middle of everything. I felt like I was standing in an area that had been frozen since 2020 (aside from the pirate bikes).

Chief Dunn told me that the Student Life department had originally hoped to reopen Korouva once students could return to campus, but that never happened. Instead, the building where it was located, the Old Field House, fell into disrepair and was slated to be demolished as part of the current Facilities Master Plan. In May, 2023, President Trombley announced “the return of the beloved Korouva Milk Bar” was planned as part of the construction of a new mixed-use residence hall and welcome center on the east side of campus. When that happens, the old Korouva based in the Field House will not only be a relic, but a ghost...

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Griffith House (also referred to as ‘the White House’) was the first president’s home on campus. The building was bought by Southwestern after the Ladies Annex fire in 1925. At the time, President Barcus and Mrs. Barcus were living on the first floor of Snyder Hall, an on-campus house serving as a women’s dorm. However, they moved out to accommodate the relocation of the women who lived in the Annex.

The Griffith House was named after its original owner, Claude Stevens Griffith of the C.S. Griffith Lumber Company, who was responsible for building many of the early establishments in Georgetown. Claude and Nancy Griffith built the house int he early 1920s. The couple had a prominent relationship with the University, hosting a variety of events for the students and faculty in their home starting around 1909. They had three children, who all graduated from Southwestern.

After selling Griffith House to the University in 1925, Griffith continued to live in Georgetown, while maintaining his connection to the University. In the early 1940s he became mayor of Georgetown, staying in that position until 1949. Around the same time, he bought a new house located at 1204 Olive Street. Housing census documents from the 1940s and 1950s state that the Griffith family’s house on Olive became the unofficial Kappa Sigma fraternity house while the Kappa Sigma house on-campus was undergoing renovations.

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The “Madonna and Child” statue, alternately called “Virgin and Child” by the September 25, 1953 edition of the Megaphone, was created by Austin-based artist Charles Umlauf and installed in front of the newly constructed chapel on September 1, 1953. The piece was commissioned by Mrs. Margarett Root Brown, alumna and prominent benefactor of the university, in memory of her mother, South Carolina Easley Root (Jones 383) A plaque commemorating this is placed on the plinth of the statue.

The statue is carved from cast stone, an aggregate material which in this instance is rosy-colored and sparkles in the sunlight. Compositionally balanced, with the knelt figure of the Madonna supporting the upright figure of the child Christ, “Madonna and Child” is a quiet and reverent piece constructed in a restrained modern style.​​ This piece is part of Umlauf’s multimedia collection with the same subject matter and name, and which calls upon a longstanding artistic tradition of rendering this important Biblical story.

Umlauf himself is a Michigan native who spent a large portion of his life in Austin as an art professor at University of Texas. He had many art exhibitions at Southwestern University from the mid 1950s to early 1970s, and was remembered in the student newspaper as a prolific and well-respected artist. Many of Umlauf’s sculptures are located in a sculpture garden in Austin.

Originally, the “Madonna and Child” was placed in front of the Chapel, and would have served in tandem with the building as a reminder of the centrality of religion to student life. It was moved in 1981 during the renovation of the chapel, with the new courtyard being constructed around the sculpture. In its current location, it still depicts the Madonna as looking up to the cross at the top of the Chapel, though just from a different angle.

Ultimately, moving the sculpture placed it outside of normal student traffic patterns. One result is that most current students do not even know it exists, so it has largely dropped out of the collective memory of students as a place. The other result is more symbolic: where once the main reverential object that students encountered in front of the Chapel was a representation of the origin story for Christianity, today, that role is played by the University Seal, which represents the origin story of the University itself–and has its own reverential practices associated with it.

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Lois Craddock Perkins, after whom this chapel is named, was born in 1887 in China Springs, Texas. She attended Southwestern University from 1908-1911. As a student, she was a part of the Youth Women’s Christian Association, or Y.W.C.A., and was involved in the Bible study and finance portions of the club. She was also a member of the “volunteer mission band,” the purpose of which was “evangelization of the world in this generation.” (Sou’wester Yearbook 1909, p. 177). This involvement indicates her passion for Christianity and mission work, which can be seen later in her life as well. She was also a member of the Sigma Sigma Sigma sorority.

According to a Megaphone article from February 11, 1910, Lois Perkins was taken to a sanitarium in Temple, and was noted as having returned in the February 25 article of that same year, although there is no further information given on this event. She was given a distinction in her studies in a Megaphone article from January 13, 1911, and while Lois did not receive her degree from Southwestern, she is a notable alumna from the university due to her numerous financial and cultural contributions.

In 1918, Lois married Joe J. Perkins, a prominent Texas businessman and philanthropist, and had two daughters. Elizabeth, the only daughter who survived into adulthood, eventually married Charles Prothro and the couple became prominent benefactors of Southwestern. There is a major building and multiple spaces named after the Prothros across campus.

In the early days of the university, chapel services were held in the auditorium in Cullen. April of 1882 brought the construction of a chapel on the southwestern corner of the campus, but this was a project of the local Methodist church rather than that of the University. The original idea for Southwestern’s own chapel came from Lois sitting on the creaky pews in the old building, and commenting to her husband that she wished Southwestern could have a “‘a nice chapel’” (Jones 369). Later that evening, Joe reportedly called President Score and offered funds for a new chapel. Lois’ status as an alumna, and her initial urging for the new chapel, led Joe to insist that the building be named after her. To this day, it is one of the few stand-alone buildings named for a woman. The name “Lois Perkins” is, in the life of a Southwestern student, synonymous with the Chapel, and leaves a legacy that does not exist apart from this building.

Throughout the course of her life, Lois and her husband donated millions of dollars to organizations throughout Texas, particularly those with Methodist affiliations. She served on the Executive Committee of the World Methodist Council, was inducted into the Methodist Hall of Fame for Philanthropy, and was awarded Southwestern University Outstanding Alumna’s award in 1970 (Vernon). While she is remembered largely in conjunction with her husband and his wealth, Lois Craddock Perkins was an accomplished woman of her own right, and made significant contributions to Methodism and Southwestern University.

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Its first year, The May Fete included an extensive program and was held during the afternoon of May 1st. The Southwestern Band and Orchestra played multiple tunes while 160 female students marched in patterned configurations, wearing intricate costumes reminiscent of springtime flowers and butterflies. After the large configurations, nine fast-paced drills occurred, each including ten to fourteen female students. Concluding the drills was a dance around the maypole (see images below).

These dances and drills included within the May Fete were reminiscent of aspects of pagan tradition, specifically due to the celebration of the natural world and Earth’s cycles coming back to Spring. Although not directly, outwardly, or intentionally a resistance of Methodism, the style and topics that are seen thematically within this event and some of Kuykendall’s other events do allude to pagan tradition and celebration. It could be argued that this performance of paganism is connected with female empowerment as an alternate/tangential theology, as it is often associated with witches and sorceresses and is one that revolves around the natural cycles of seasons. This subtle hinting of female power through campus-wide events like the May Fete makes sense, because Kuykendall was an advocate for first-wave feminism in her leadership as a Dean, too.

Following the artistic performance, the May Fete Royal Party was unveiled, with the court being selected by teachers in the School of Fine Arts. The ultimate position, the May Fete Queen, was crowned by President Bishop in the inaugural year. She was student Miss Alma Barrett, daughter of later President Barrett. Other positions included May Fete King, Marshalls, and Maid of Honor. After the Royal Party was recognized, they led the entire campus and its visitors in a procession around campus to conclude the afternoon’s event.

This procession began at the “Woman’s Campus,” or the east side of campus that today houses most first-year students. Even more, the entire May Fete program was held inside and outside of the Ladies Annex. This is notable. For Laura Kuykendall to initiate the largest community-based Southwestern event at the site of what was considered “women’s space” meant that the women of Southwestern owned something notable and important, for both men and women. It was something that represented Southwestern to the outward public. Thus, this event gave the Annex, and therefore the women, power.

Kuykendall was publicly celebrated for the success of this first annual event, with her name making multiple headlines in newspapers within the county. An article in The Megaphone from May 1915 described it as “the swellest and biggest affair that has ever taken place here.” The author gave “a thousand and one million thanks to you, Miss Kuykendall! Three cheers and fifteen more!”

Due to this first-annual success, May 1st became a school-wide holiday by 1918, and future programs were extended to feature two days of events. Included in this was a proper pageant, a ball game, and a formal banquet for the Queen. Most cherished by the community, though, was the delivery of May baskets. This involved the women of Ladies Annex and later Laura Kuykendall Hall going around the Georgetown community at 5:30 in the morning of May 1st, leaving baskets full of flowers for SU friends, professors, and staff while singing songs at their doorsteps.

Kuykendall would never pass up an opportunity to increase the pageantry and intricacy of an event. Notable years in Southwestern and world history included notable and curated May Fete themes to accompany them: 1918 featured a World War theme, 1919 featured a Victory theme, 1921 a Homecoming theme, and 1923 a Golden theme for Southwestern’s 50th Centennial Anniversary in Georgetown.

Following Kuykendall’s death, from 1936 to 1950, the celebration continued as the ‘May Day Festival” out of courtesy and tradition, but after 1950 it fell out of practice altogether. Now, this event has been lost in the Southwestern community’s collective memory altogether.

Although mostly intended for entertainment, the May Fete did mark the first major, annual, and multi-gendered event held at the site of the Women’s Campus. The May Fete still did largely reinforce normative notions of femininity through idealizations of pageantry, beauty, springtime, purity, and spectacle. But, for the time, in 1915, hosting an event that encompassed a vast population of Texans and that was directed by a powerful singular female leader (Laura Kuykendall) is very much notable. Southwestern could have chosen to hold the celebration on the western side of campus, where the upper administration worked and where male students lived. But, to have the May Fete, which was known state-wide, held at the place of womanhood ultimately displayed a transference of or increase in social power for the female students and instructors of the Ladies Annex.

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For being such a beloved and respected figure within Southwestern’s leadership, Dean of Women (1918-1935) Laura Kuykendall was very progressive and even oppositional on certain matters. She advocated for myriad topics, such as broadening the “acceptable” fields for women to study, increasing sex education, encouraging a professional lifepath for women, normalizing youth culture, condemning beauty standards of the time, and advocating for women's mobility rights. Despite all of this, Laura Kuykendall has still been lost in the current campus’s collective memory. I wonder, how could a person so influential to the community, making so many bold stances for social progress, be forgotten?

Most prominently, Kuykendall was an advocate for expanding the boundaries of female higher education. She worked for the expansion of what fields were “appropriate” for women to engage with: “In addition to the traditional subjects, such as stenography, typewriting, and the various domestic science arts,” Kuykendall urged women to explore “bench work, cabinet work, factory woodwork, wood turning and pattern making, forging, automobile mechanics, machine shop practice and printing, mechanical, architectural and engineering drawing.” She saw these fields and subjects as viable for women and she saw women as completely capable of pursuing them with success. In her Master’s Thesis, Kuykendall asserted that “it has been a lack of opportunity that has caused women to seek the selection of certain subjects rather than her lack of ability to master them."

Additionally, Kuykendall, herself a professional woman who had never married or had children, advocated that a professional life path is a valid option: "Only a few years ago a woman found two avenues open to her. One was the way of marriage. the other the path of the spinster aunt… But today a young girl has the choice of a profession as a third way out." Kuykendall actively worked to normalize this woman’s professional path as a valid lifestyle for young women, and fulfilled/embodied this progressive stance herself, all her adult life, as a professional educator and Dean.

Along with this, Kuykendall also supported increased sex education. In her Master’s Thesis, Kuykendall dedicates an entire section to sex, detailing how a Dean should navigate the topic with her students. She posited that “if the boys and girls more fully understood their impulses the problem would be lessened." Although she references sexual activity as “a problem” here, she’s still actively advocating for a world in which it is socially acceptable, and encouraged, to discuss the topic so that students can be more educated on the matter. She began to break down the taboo nature of sexual discussion within private, church-affiliated institutions.

It should be acknowledged that Kuykendall’s thesis was written with the intention of being read by individuals–male individuals–in the upper administration or faculty. Though Kuykendall does challenge normative ideologies within the document, she largely had to adhere to the mission and vision of Southwestern at the time. So, this document resulted as less progressive than some of her other documented opinions from her time at Southwestern.

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One of Kykendall's more-progressive statements occurred while she served as a guest speaker at the convention of the Texas Federation of Women’s Clubs in El Paso in 1927. During this speech, Kuykendall stated that “it is far better to have a petting party in a car, parked at the side of the road, than one in the shade of the trees, with the horse and buggy.” So, she herself admitted to having had sexual encounters, and even shared how to best get away with it! As for youth culture, Kuykendall said that “boys and girls are going hand in hand. I wish to tell you that is alright,” thus again, expanding the norms of relationship and sex culture at the time.

Building off of this, Kuykendall was a staunch advocate of youth culture. She believed that day’s younger generation was higher in intellect and fitter in physique, being “less credulous and keener to detect insincerity,” than past generations. She asserted that “one cannot expect the girls and boys to have the same manners and customs as those of their forefathers if present-day methods of living are different.” So, Kuykendall was very against the critique of young folk, advocating for the differences in their lifestyles from past ones to be accepted.

Kuykendall also disagreed with many of the body standards of her time, and supported youth fashion/beauty choices. In her same speech to the Texas Federation of Women’s Clubs in El Paso in 1927, Kuykendall questioned the real difference between “the abbreviated skirt of [the youth] or the low cut yoke of olden days,” further stating that “the short skirt is not so bad.” Bobbed hair she called hygienic, and “the skins of the youths much better looking,” due to safer makeup formulations of the recent time.

As for female body standards, Kuykendall was very passionate about condemning the standards. She stated that “the mania for slimness of lines may be responsible for the fact that 80 percent of the girls are underweight.” In one of her personal scrapbooks, Kuykendall saved a poetry clipping given to her by one of her students. The poem, The Marry-Go-Round by Helen Rowland, points out the hypocrisy and extreme standard that women at the time were held to, specifically regarding maintaining one’s weight and figure. The poem ends with the line, “verily, verily, eternal suffering is the price of a Perfect Silhouette” (see full poem below).

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Clearly, Kuykendall was progressive in many of her opinions. We won’t ever know today whether or not her opinions were treated with respect or disagreement, but we do know that through all of her progressive opinions, Kuykendall was still highly regarded at Southwestern. Parents viewed their daughters as safe under her care, students viewed her as a close mentor and friend, and the rest of the administration recognized and appreciated all the various hats that she filled at the institution. In 1923, Kuykendall was even rewarded with a wage increase, to the same level as the male faculty!

Through all of this affection, Kuykendall was still able to make her radical opinions known. She did so, I believe, by strategically picking her battles, and giving her everything to Southwestern by fulfilling her various roles as Instructor, Dean, and event planner. With this much contribution to the Southwestern community, and with all the progressive opinions she held, Laura Kuykendall has still been lost altogether in today’s collective memory on campus. I wonder, how could a person so influential to the community, making so many bold stances for social progress, be forgotten?

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The Young Ladies’ School was established by people associated with Southwestern in 1878 due to the demand for a post-seconday educational program for the daughters of Southwestern faculty as well as the townspeople, preachers, and significant town leaders. A retrospective Megaphone article from Thursday, October 13, 1977 describes how plans for a “ladies' program” connected to the University were discussed and insisted upon from the beginning. The Young Ladies School met temporarily in the basement of the First Presbyterian Church of Georgetown until the Ladies Annex building was officially ready for use.

The church still stands today on at 703 South Church Street and is known as the First Presbyterian Church of Georgetown. In another Megaphone issue on Monday, January 2, 1939, the article subtitled, “Georgetown’s Contribution” briefly encapsulates how the city significantly aided the University in this endeavor. The article states that the First Presbyterian Church of Georgetown made it possible for the first girls to enter Southwestern and beginning in September of 1878, the church was available for their use until the Ladies Annex was completed.

The establishment of the Young Ladies’ School serves as a kind of pre-history of Southwestern’s approach to educating women, so it is vital to the history of the University itself. It shows how the community came together and demanded that the daughters of prominent townspeople in town be educated.

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The Justice, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (JEDI) Center was created in 2022 by Malissa Ismaila, Director of Student Inclusion and Diversity. The JEDI center is located on the 3rd floor of the McCombs Campus Center. Its predecessor, the Office of Diversity Education (ODE), led by Terri Johnson, former Assistant Dean for Multicultural Affairs, was located on the 2nd floor of the Prothro Center.

JEDI as an organization supports students from groups that are historically underrepresented in higher education by fostering a supportive community that promotes diversity and social justice. Their main work is coordinating student social justice organizations, and working with staff and faculty on diversity, inclusion, belonging, and equity (DIBE) efforts on campus.

In an interview with Dr. Ismaila in 2023, she said that the JEDI Center “is more than just a place to visit for resources, events, and workshops; it is a concept that embraces self-awareness, cultural competence, and living in your authentic self. The JEDI center is a space where individuals can have meaningful conversations, difficult dialogues, and also encouragement. We seek to offer support for identities such as age, ethnicity, race, gender, sexual orientation, physical/invisible, religion, educational background, socioeconomic status, and body image.”

Most important to students, JEDI has created a place for students in the Coalition for Diversity and Social Justice (CDSJ), and all eleven organizations within it, to call their own. Those organizations include the likes of the Asian Student Association, the Black Student Union, the Reproductive Justice Alliance, Pirates for Pride, and many others. Students have been advocating for such a place for years.

The JEDI center hosts many events throughout the year, such as Step and Stroll, International Cultural Night, and the Ebony Gala. Events like these unite the Southwestern community and open their eyes to other opportunities this office offers. JEDI events are open to all students, faculty, and staff.

Two of the first student leaders and workers, Rachel Thompson ‘23, and Aleena Khan ‘24, have made a special connection with this office. Aleena said, “I have always had a passion for social justice and advocating for minority students, and being in JEDI has given me the means to do that on a more campus-wide level.” And Rachel, the previous president of the CDSJ, has high hopes for the future of this program, “I would like to come back to Southwestern to see that JEDI has grown more student involvement, more staff and student workers, a bigger space, and more departments on campus who are involved in the JEDI center's success.”

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