scan of faculty report

Pictured here is a modified version of the Faculty Report of July 14^th, 1863. This document was written in the Faculty report to the Board of Trustees, and can be found in its entirety in the catalogue of Faculty Reports. This is a picture of the actual, hand-written version, as copied down in the Faculty meeting of July 14^th, 1863.

Here is a typescript version of the Faculty Report, as found on page 106 of Shaw's Davidson College.

"The young are usually the first to be seriously affected by the influences which tend to relax the sense of moral obligation and foster a spirit of insubordination and lawlessness in society. We are passing through a season when such influences prevail to an alarming extent in our country and our pupils for the most part have been of that age—the equivocal age between boyhood and nascent manhood—which has ever been found most susceptible to adverse influences and most difficult to be controlled.

Then, too, we had no Senior, nor even a Junior class (the three lower classes were organized, but the Junior Class was abandoned early because of the paucity of its members, and the Sophomore Class was later in the year disintegrated) composed of members whose experience and established characters in ordinary times, serve to give a healthy tone to the public sentiment for a college. The literary societies which do much to suppress disorder by their regulations and by the employment their exercises afford for leisure hours have of necessity been suspended since the number of students of suitable age and attainment have not been sufficient to conduct the exercises with propriety and advantage. Withal, it is possible that the method we have pursued in the government of the Institution in its present complex character, has not been in all respects the most judicious. Our experience we think has taught us some lessons by which we hope to profit in the future."

Faculty Report of July 14th, 1863.

For questions about the project, contact Shireen Campbell