Quick! Grab the Kodak and come back in time for a campus visit, as InterVarsity marks its 70th year of campus ministry. InterVarsity Christian Fellowship/USA was incorporated on November 14, 1941.
If you know the Dorm Mother, enjoy a good pillow fight, and greet everyone you see on campus with “Hi-de-ho,” then it’s 1941 and you’re cookin’ with gas, Hep Cat!
Coeds in sweaters, socks, and saddle shoes. Men sporting neckties in class. This was higher education 70 years ago—when InterVarsity began bringing the gospel to U.S. university and college campuses.
The U.S. campus and culture of 1941 is world’s away from today, but InterVarsity’s message and mission remain unchanged: faith in Christ alone, authority of the Scriptures, biblically living the Christian life, and commitment to missions both at home and abroad, incorporating into daily life spiritual disciplines such as Bible study and prayer.
True, you’ll notice some changes in InterVarsity compared with 1941: a richer ethnic diversity, broader age-range of students, the inclusion of junior and community colleges. And few, if any, neckties in class.
Yet, during its infancy, the ministry of InterVarsity operated then as it does today: “We were pioneering a student movement in a vast country, with small resources except for the expectation and the vision given by the Holy Spirit.” ¹
Get that box camera for a few snapshots of college life in 1941.
If the picture seems small and populated with men, it’s because a college education was a dream and a luxury for many—mostly men. Racial integration was decades away. Segregation entrenched numerous places of higher education. In 1941, all women’s and all men’s schools weren’t uncommon. Every campus, however, was beginning to see a decline in male enrollment. U.S. involvement in World War II was imminent.
Focus on the cost of a college education and you’ll see that tuition for students attending public universities ranged from several hundred dollars to $0. That’s right; some in-state students were tuition-free. Non-resident tuition, on the other hand, could be $200 a year and more. Students may have been required to pay in-full at the beginning of each semester. In some cases, room and board was $350 a year.
Even then, university catalogs were prime marketing tools. One 1941 catalog opined:
The university halls for men are located on the lakeshore on one of the most beautiful sites in the State, away from the city, yet convenient to class and lecture. … The halls are modern and fireproof [and] undergraduates live under the supervision of an older man, a University-appointed house fellow. The men have their meals with table service in the adjacent dining rooms. … Halls for women are located on one of the most beautiful corners of the campus. Surrounded by lawn and shade, at the foot of the hill, convenient to library and class rooms, these attractive halls have for years been popular student homes. The head residents, cultured university women, are always available for counsel and guidance.²
Vehicular traffic on campus? Not much. Still, there were students who were fortunate to have a DeSoto, Nash, Ford, or Studebaker, shelling out 19 cents per gallon for gas.
While you may long for the days when $2 or less would likely fill the gas tank, don’t kid yourself into thinking that times were easy. In 1941, the U.S. entered World War II, following the attack on Pearl Harbor and President Franklin D. Roosevelt by executive order authorized the internment of Japanese Americans. These were difficult days.
For seven decades, since InterVarsity’s founding, we’ve been aware of God’s grace and goodness. Join us as we reflect on and celebrate 70 years of ministry. Maybe you have some memories of InterVarsity on campus in the 1940s. Email us at information@intervarsity.org.
For more facts about 1941, read on: ³
Car: $925
House: $6,900
Bread: 8 cents a loaf
Milk: 34 cents a gallon
Stock Market: 111
Average Annual Salary: $2,050
Minimum Wage: 30 cents an hour
Other 1941 notables:
- All people born on and since January 13 in Puerto Rico are considered U.S. citizens by birth
- First FM radio station goes on the air in Nashville
- University of Wisconsin—Madison captures its first (and only to date) NCAA Men’s Division I Basketball championship title winning 39-34 over Washington State University, Pullman
- Cheerios is marketed by General Mills as CheeriOats
- Citizen Kane, directed by and starring Orson Welles, premieres in New York City
- Chrysler produces the first off-road vehicle, the Jeep
- Final day of carving on Mount Rushmore is October 31
- King Biscuit Time airs on KFFA, Arkansas (only station to play music by African American artists, inspires B.B. King, Ike Turner) eventually becomes longest-running daily U.S. radio broadcast
- New York Yankees took the World Series, four games to one over Brooklyn Dodgers
- American painter Edward Hopper completes the painting Nighthawk
- Regis Toomey and Jane Wyman held longest screen kiss—3 minutes and 5 seconds—in You’re in the Army Now
- Coach handbags introduced, based on design and surface wear on a baseball glove
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¹ Keith and Gladys Hunt, ForChrist and the University: The Story of InterVarsity Christian Fellowship of the U.S.A./1940-1990 (Downers Grove, Illinois: InterVarsity Press, 1991) excerpt from the Introduction, p. 16.
² Bulletin of the University of Wisconsin 1940-42(catalog), published at Madison, Wisconsin, November 1940
³ Lists from various Internet sources including: www.infoplease.com/year/1941and www.tvhistory.tv/1941
(The photo of Badger Christian Fellowship that accompanies this story is actually from 1948.)
