Years Ago In the Historical Digital Collegian:
Clubs, Societies, Sororities and Fraternities on the Hazleton Campus
Joe Fennewald, Head Librarian
Penn State Hazleton
Attend an alumni gathering and you will certainly hear stories about student life “back then.” Fantastic stories about eccentric instructors compete with tales of super-athletic accomplishments. Trips, dances, and parties are recalled not only as favorable fun-filled festivities but also as occasions where lifelong friendships were established and future spouses first met.
Read back issues of the student newspaper, the Hazleton Collegian, and you can relive many of those special occasions. The newspaper (available online and in the library’s archives) provides good coverage of campus events. Search any club name and you can learn of its plans for a movie, trip, or picnic. Scan back issues and you can also discover the great variety of clubs and organizations, sororities and fraternities the campus offered students. [To search either the Hazleton Collegian or the Highacres Collegian go to "Digitized Collections at Penn State" and select "Hazleton Collegian." Conducting a search here will also give you articles appearing in the "Highacres Collegian.]
1948 Penn State German Lunch Table
The focus of these clubs and organizations varied. A number served as extensions of academic studies, such as the Engineering Club, the Business and Economics Club, the Math Club, and the Chemistry Club. Newspaper accounts tell of guest speakers and plant tours. Meetings, especially in the early years, often appeared to be extensions of class lectures. The March 1949 paper reported that the Chemistry Club discussed systematic qualitative analysis and the Math Club viewed a film on analytic geometry. Students studying a foreign language could join the German, French, Spanish, or Italian club. These clubs seemed to provide more social opportunities than the science clubs; students and teachers played games, watched foreign films, and enjoyed ethnic foods. Miss Anna Erlemann, an instructor in German and Spanish from 1947 to 1951, was often mentioned as a sponsor; she was evidently an accomplished athlete as she outperformed her students in ice skating, tobogganing, and basketball.
May Dance in the Garden
Clubs also celebrated students’ academic achievements. The Parnassus Society was an “honor-service organization that recognized all-around students.” It was the Hazleton campus’s chapter of the Keystone Honor Society, which encompassed all Penn State campuses. The society held candlelight initiation ceremonies for new members and assisted in the library book sale, graduation ceremony, and student of the year award. The Belles Lettres Society attracted students with literary and cultural interests. It sponsored art shows, reading festivals, and trips to New York to view Broadway plays. The campus also had chapters of Theta Sigma Phi, Alpha Pi Omega, Delta Delta Tau, and Mu Delta Sigma. They would team together to work on the annual May Day ball as well as a number of spaghetti dinners and holiday parties.
Mummy Club Party
There were many relatively short-lived groups that reflected student interests of the time. In the 1950s the Hazleton campus had its own Amateur Egyptologists’ Society known as the Mummy’s Club. A newspaper account of its founding reported that when a professor told a class of bored students, “Let’s not sit there like a group of Egyptian mummies,” students responded by forming a club to study ancient Egyptian life. Meetings were presided over by a Pharaoh, ably assisted by a couple of Gran Viziers and a Scribe, and attended by mummies. Members of the Speleology Club (1979) explored caves. The SciFi Club in the 1980s showed films, published the Vortex newsletter, and provided opportunities for students to play “Dungeons and Dragons.”
Throughout the campus’ 75-year history there were also sport clubs such as the Fencing Club, the Boxing Club, the Ski Club, and the Crosswinds Karate Club. Members of the Highacres Skyhawks Sport Parachute Club (at times misspelled shyhawks) completed twelve hours of training before they took to the skies from the Hazleton airport.
1971 Italian Cultural Society
As recalled by many Hazleton alumni, these activities and events were important to students’ social life and sense of belonging. Today through clubs and organizations, friendships continue to form, interests are further developed, and leadership skills are nurtured. Throughout the paper’s history, there are accounts of club and organization activities. There are also testimonials from students on how much they appreciated the Hazleton campus for the social opportunities provided. In 1982, Penn State grad George P. Yanoshik, Jr., wrote that getting involved gave him a “chance to make a lot of new and lasting friendships, to personally get to know faculty and staff members, and administrators; and, for the first time in my life, to really feel comfortable with the decisions which I have had to make over the past two years regarding my future.”
The digital collection of the Hazleton Collegian (December 1937 to December 1954) and the Highacres Collegian (January 1955 to April 1994) provide easy access to search the clubs and events you remember. These issues, as well as later editions, are also available in the Penn State Hazleton Library Archives.
German Club Camera Club