{"id":63,"date":"2015-06-12T15:37:40","date_gmt":"2015-06-12T15:37:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/library.brown.edu\/create\/browninthegreatwar\/?page_id=63"},"modified":"2016-02-21T15:54:58","modified_gmt":"2016-02-21T15:54:58","slug":"unscrambling-the-omlette","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/library.brown.edu\/create\/browninthegreatwar\/stories\/unscrambling-the-omlette\/","title":{"rendered":"Unscrambling the Omlette"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\u00a0<\/i><\/strong>“BROWN COMES BACK TO HER OWN AND BECOMES ONCE MORE A SEAT OF LEARNING AND \u00a0NOT A SEAT OF WAR.” \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0<\/span>–Robert P. Brown<\/i>[1. BUA. BAM, 19:4. November, 1918. p82]<\/p>\n

\"Back<\/a>
Back from the Nation’s service. Some of the Brown Men who have Re-entered College.BUA. BAM, 19:7. February, 1919.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

After the armistice celebrations, Brown began \u201cunscrambling the omelette,\u201d<\/em> as president Faunce put it in his 1919 report to the Corporation. Throughout the country, the Government had ordered the disbanding of the Student Army Training Corps. A telegram from Washington informed President Faunce that Brown\u2019s unit\u00a0was to disband beginning on December 1st. By the\u00a021st of the month, the disbanding of\u00a0Brown’s Student Army Training Corps and Naval Training Unit\u00a0had both been completed.[2. BUA. OE-IE-3. Demobilization]<\/p>\n

As soon as military control of the curriculum ended, the University “rapidly swung back to its ordinary and normal life<\/em>.” Faunce explained in his annual report that the students “Instead of imbibing the spirit of militarism, they had acquired for it a strong distaste. When at the end of December, the students were finally discharged from military service and the S.A.T.C. came to a natural ending, there were no mourners to bewail its decease.”<\/em>[3. BUA. Annual Report of the President to the Corporation of Brown University. Providence, RI. 1919. pp9-10] The fraternity houses re-opened, athletic sports began to revive, musical and dramatic clubs reorganized, dormitory rooms were no longer\u00a0barracks and began once again to look like student homes, courses in humanities began to recover their numbers and interest, and Professors returned to their normal work. Building projects that had been placed on hiatus resumed, and within two months the University was almost itself again.[4. Ibid.\u00a0pg11]\u00a0“Quite a number of the men who have been in service are now back on the Hill with their khaki and their halos done up in mothballs. [ ]…Signs of the war on campus have largely vanished and the faculty, which pulled together as a unit during the war, has joyfully resumed its internal hostilities. The cutter that was anchored outside Rockefeller Hall has been sunk, or anyway it has disappeared and the former members of the naval unit have now been ashore long enough to walk across the campus without rocking. When a student salutes a member of the faculty now, we know he doesn’t do it because he has to but because he didn’t think in time to stop himself.”\u00a0–\u00a0<\/em>H. E. Walters.[7. BUA. MS-IUF-W1. H.E. Walters Papers. Review Hints, February 5, 1919]<\/p>\n

\"bdr-61493\"<\/a>
A scene from the Sock and Buskin production of the plays; “Not On the Program”, “Miss Civilization”, and “Nothing But the Truth”, held 1919-1920. Images of Brown.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cWar Certificates” were issued to all of the students who left the college to enter war service. Alumni received another form of certificate. A total of 1,324 War Certificates were\u00a0awarded. 108 men who had withdrawn from the University to to enter service, returned to campus to complete their academic work.[5. Ibid] An\u00a0appointment office was created to assist Brown men\u00a0in finding\u00a0jobs, and not long after,\u00a0294 men had registered with the University Employment services.[6. Ibid. pg65] Officers Abbott, Edwards,\u00a0and Borden had resigned from the staff, but the rifle range installed by the Army and Navy units during the war, remained\u00a0due to the number of students continued interested\u00a0in marksmanship. Varsity football games resumed.\u00a0Brown got “trounced”\u00a0by Syracuse on\u00a0November 1st (53-0),\u00a0but won the\u00a0November 23rd game\u00a0against Dartmouth (28-0) in Boston, in front of a\u00a0crowd of 5,000.[8. BUA. Annual Report of the President to the Corporation of Brown University. Providence, RI. 1919]<\/p>\n

President Faunce described the 1919-1920 academic year as one of “curious unrest”<\/em> and attributed it to a reaction against the discipline of war. He noted in the students an “obvious inability to settle down and concentrate on the real business of study.”<\/em>[9. Ibid.] The curious unrest that Faunce described was not limited to the Brown University campus. The unsettled mood of the nation after the war, ushered in the extravagance of the 1920’s Jazz Age. Times had changed. Brown community members continued to heal from psychological\u00a0and physical wounds suffered in the war. Ex-servicemen attempted to find their place\u00a0in a\u00a0changed workforce populated with women, who had won their right to vote and were asserting their independence.<\/p>\n

\"Ivy<\/a>
Ivy Day, June 14, 1921. Pembroke College archives. Images of Brown.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n
\n

\u00a0<\/span>Related Materials in the BDR<\/a><\/p>\n

\"bdr-91185\"<\/a>
Victory. 1918. World War I Sheet Music.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Here<\/a>
Here they come, those Yankee sons. 1919. World War I Sheet Music.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"bdr-244763\"<\/a>
U.S. Employment Service, 82 Mathewson Street, Providence, R.I. 1919. Prints, Drawings, and Watercolors from the Anne S.K. Brown Military Collection.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Give<\/a>
Give a job to the gob and the doughboy. 1919.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"bdr-20663\"<\/a>
Jazzin’ the blues away. 1918. African American Sheet Music.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u00a0“BROWN COMES BACK TO HER OWN AND BECOMES ONCE MORE A SEAT OF LEARNING AND \u00a0NOT A SEAT OF WAR.” \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0–Robert P. Brown[1. BUA. BAM, 19:4. November, 1918. p82] After the armistice celebrations, Brown began \u201cunscrambling the omelette,\u201d as president Faunce … Unscrambling the Omlette<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":17,"featured_media":0,"parent":20,"menu_order":14,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"full-width-page.php","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-63","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/library.brown.edu\/create\/browninthegreatwar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/63","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/library.brown.edu\/create\/browninthegreatwar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/library.brown.edu\/create\/browninthegreatwar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/library.brown.edu\/create\/browninthegreatwar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/17"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/library.brown.edu\/create\/browninthegreatwar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=63"}],"version-history":[{"count":89,"href":"https:\/\/library.brown.edu\/create\/browninthegreatwar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/63\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3107,"href":"https:\/\/library.brown.edu\/create\/browninthegreatwar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/63\/revisions\/3107"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/library.brown.edu\/create\/browninthegreatwar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/20"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/library.brown.edu\/create\/browninthegreatwar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=63"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}