When we imagine the typical student who attended “the Normal,” we picture a young woman in a long, white dress, quite literally a “straight-laced” figure in a corset, a goody-goody future school teacher. The institutional narrative, written overwhelmingly by men to persuade other men to send their daughters here, stresses a particular kind of Southern white womanhood. The actual young women who enrolled in the early 20thC often resisted social conventions, however. Most of the time, they merely pushed back gently on the structures. But in a few cases, they committed egregious enough offenses to be intentionally erased from the picture. This is what happened to Lillian Campbell, who

Concerns about undergraduate student ‘belongingness’ are everywhere in higher education these days, but they certainly aren’t new. College staff and faculty have always worried about students’ adjustment to campus life. This one, when it was the State Normal and Industrial School for Women, required every girl who enrolled to join two organizations to combat feelings of isolation and homesickness: the YMCA and the Athletic Association. The administration closely monitored the young women who came here and developed other interventions as well. One young woman, Velna Pearl Barker, documented her struggle with “the blues” in her 1924-1926 college scrapbook, which her daughter and granddaughter carefully preserved. Velna’s story not only helps us understand an understudied aspect of Southern women’s collegiate life then, but now.