Name/Title
Ward-Belmont Club Sponsors Meeting October 19, 1920Entry/Object ID
2023.115Tags
Ward-BelmontScope and Content
Notes from a meeting of the Ward-Belmont faculty club sponsors, held on October 19, 1920. Sponsors discussed and agreed upon regulations concerning club dues, expenses, budgets, and trips to Woody-Crest. Resolutions that club dues must not exceed $7.50 and that no club colors, pins, or names could be changed during the 1920-21 school year were passed. Each club was to have its own Treasurer's book and budget, and each received two copies of this document. The Twentieth Century Club also held its 1920 initiation at Woody-Crest. Students were not allowed to refuse travel to Woody-Crest unless they received permission from Miss Mills.Context
Ward-Belmont offered ten student social clubs, similar to sororities: the Twentieth Century Club (T.C.C.), X.L., A.K. (All 'Round), Osiron, Agora, Anti-Pandora, F.F., Penta Tau, Del Vers, and Tri K. Per a Ward-Belmont club pamphlet (2023.107), "the club system was introduced here because it was felt that national sororities had no place in a school such as Ward-Belmont. It was, therefore, to supplant the sorority plan with something that offered its advantages without the obvious disadvantages, that the club system was started." Like sororities, there was a week of rushing at the beginning of the school year, and new club members participated in an initiation.
"Woody Crest" was Ward-Belmont's own country club. Described as "a W-B girl's 'other home'" in the 1923 Milestones yearbook, Woody Crest was a popular weekend destination for club meetings and programs. Club dues contributed towards expenses for such trips.
"Middle Tennessee does not boast a more beautiful spot, nor a more ideal estate. The house is old enough to afford romantic tales woven about the fascinating past of the sixties." (Milestones, 1920)
"To Woody-Crest, that palace where many a school girl's dreams of boarding school life are fulfilled, that stately mansion of freedom which is responsible for so many of W-B girls' good times [...] Here on the Sundays and Mondays, ripples of the merriest laughter echo back and forth in the quaint, old-fashioned rooms, with their tapestried walls and massive mahogany furniture. Here, through the winter months, we revel in the wonderful warmth and hospitality of the great blazing logs, crackling on the open hearth; here, in the early May, we revel in the luxurious treats of the extensive lawns with their beautiful array of flower beds and gnarled old drooping trees." (Milestones, 1923)
The Twentieth Century Club (T.C.C.) was a student organization and one of ten social clubs at Ward-Belmont, organized November 24, 1916. The club's purpose was an excerpt from English poet Alfred, Lord Tennyson's collection Idylls of the King, specifically “Gareth and Lynette" (1872): "Live pure, speak true, right wrong, follow the King, Else, wherefore born!" The club's motto was "Ideas and Ideals." Per the 1943 Milestones yearbook, club members "strive toward one goal - the maintenance of the high ideals of both their club and their school."
Miss Mills (Leila or Lelia D. Mills), who is referenced in this document, served as the Dean of Women and Dean of the Home Department at Ward-Belmont. She was heavily involved in the student social clubs, and often served as a sponsor for classes and/or various clubs at the school.Collection
Harpeth Hall School ArchivesLexicon
Search Terms
Ward-Belmont, Clubs, Sponsor, Meeting, 1920, Woody Crest, Twentieth Century Club