ForeverDukeRETRO When a different pandemic disrupted campus
D
In 1918 and 1920, influenza temporarily changed Trinity College. | BY VALERIE GILLISPIE uke’s spring semester is unlike any that came
before it. Students are largely absent from campus, classes are online, and spring traditions—even commencement itself—are canceled or postponed. As we feel the impacts of the global COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, it’s helpful to look back at how the campus weathered a global influenza epidemic that struck 100 years ago, coinciding with the end of World War I. In 1918, Trinity College had yet to become Duke University. The school, located on today’s East Campus, had fewer than 500 students. In the fall of 1918, the majority of the male students enlisted in the Student Army Training Corps (SATC) at Trinity. The SATC was a program under the United States War Department to enlist currently enrolled students and provide them with training. Trinity was just one of hundreds of colleges and universities that hosted such programs. The SATC radically changed life on the Trinity campus. Those enrolled in the program were no longer fresh-
men or seniors—instead they were divided into sections based on age. Fraternities, literary societies, and campus publications were largely on hiatus. No Chanticleer was published in 1918, and the first issue of The Chronicle during the 1918-19 school year was not published until November, following the armistice that ended the war. As the SATC became ascendant, a global influenza pandemic emerged. It reached Durham and Trinity in September 1918, and over 200 students and several faculty members contracted the flu. In the November 21 issue of The Chronicle, the course of the epidemic was detailed. Of particular interest is the way the students were triaged if showing symptoms:
An example of the way the work was done, as soon as a boy was reported sick, he was at once looked after. “Thermometer squads” were formed who went to every patient twice a day and took his temperature and made a record of it. Mild cases were simply dosed with such medicines as seemed necessary and the proper diet furnished. Cases of a more serious nature were placed in the hands of trained nurses. “Thermometer squads” were formed who Even more serious cases were placed under went to every patient twice a day and took his the care of a physician. In this way the strength of the doctors and nurses was temperature and made a record of it. conserved and used to the greatest advantage possible. FLU: Left, a 1918 headline tells the story; below, the Student Army Training Corps
The school was proud that not a single student died of influenza that season. By November, with the war and the worst of the flu over, attention could return to studies. In response to students pleading to cancel final exams, the faculty met in what The Chronicle described as “that mysterious and secret council known as ‘Faculty Meeting.’ ” Following it, the faculty announced that students would receive credit, but no examinations would be held until March. The Chronicle breathlessly reported that “After the reading of the above resolutions, the eye of every student on campus has beamed with new lustre, and every heart has throbbed with more
Photography Duke University Archives
