Brandon Fey, Editor-in-Chief
The College hosted the “Gettysburg College and Community: A Shared History” panel discussion on Tuesday, from 7 to 8:15 p.m. in the recently refurbished College Union Building Ballroom. This event was held in partnership with America250PA to reflect on the College’s history within the surrounding community. The event was open to the public as well as the campus.
The panel consisted of Civil War Institute (CWI) Assistant Director, Professor Ashley Luskey, Professor of Anthropology, Benjamin Luley, Musselman Library Special Collections Archives Assistant Devin McKinney and student body president Jocelyn Duquette ’27. Professor of History Emeritus Michael Birkner ’72 moderated the panel.
The evening began with an introduction by Gettysburg College President Bob Iuliano.
“Our history is worthy of reflection-not simply to celebrate all that we have accomplished, but also to consider what our shared history asks of us today,” Iuliano said. “We always look forward, and each generation has its own chapter to add to our story, and each one of us has our own role to play in shaping our brightest future.”
President Iuliano opens the panel discussion. Panelists left to right: Jocelyn Duquette, Devin McKinney, Benjamin Luley and moderator Michael Birkner. (Photo: Grace Jurchak/ The Gettysburgian)
Birkner next spoke on the founding of the College.
Gettysburg College was founded in 1832 as “Pennsylvania College,” which it was named until 1921, he explained. Samuel Simon Schmucker chose Gettysburg as the location for his college after receiving public and financial backing from prominent residents, including famous legislator and abolitionist Thaddeus Stevens. Birkner argued that the Gettysburg community has played a pivotal role in the history of the College from its beginning, as local support made it possible to obtain a charter and construct Pennsylvania Hall. He also discussed the role that students have had in community engagement throughout history, from joining abolitionist societies before the Civil War to contributing to the anti-war movement in the Vietnam War era.
Birkner then introduced Luskey as the first panelist, who spoke about the College at the time of the Civil War.
Luskey began her discussion by tracing the College’s history of activism to student anti-slavery advocacy in the 1830s that continued into the Civil War. She mentioned how students debated the issue in campus literary societies, attended meetings of the Adams County Anti-Slavery Society and Young Men’s Colonization Society and how the secret Beta Delta fraternity aided runaway slaves on the Underground Railroad.
She then spoke about the College at the time of the Battle of Gettysburg, during which many students defended the community by joining the 26th Pennsylvania Emergency Militia. Others provided medical services and defended houses in the borough from Confederate marauders. Pennsylvania Hall was ravaged by the battle, having served as a field hospital.
“Having lived on the literal border here in South Central PA between slavery and freedom, caught in the political crossfires of a community torn by the issue of slavery, working firsthand with the emancipated on the Underground Railroad, bearing witness to the great battle fought across their campus and community, and being forced to grapple with its shocking aftermath, left deep and indelible impressions on many of the students,” Luskey said.
She also explained that four months after the battle, students from the College joined the town procession to the Gettysburg National Cemetery to hear Abraham Lincoln deliver his Gettysburg Address, which inspired the First-Year Walk tradition.
Luskey concluded by speaking about the Civil War Institute’s funded internship program, which, for the past 15 years, has sent students across the country to complete summer internships in the fields of public history, resource management and archival work. Locations have included the Gettysburg National Military Park as well as Gettysburg College Special Collections. She argued that the internship program is another example of Gettysburg students continuing to engage with the public and community.
The next panelist was anthropology professor Benjamin Luley, who, along with Professor Kirby Farah, has overseen an archeological dig on our campus, immediately north of Pennsylvania Hall, since 2019. The dig excavates the site of the house where college janitor Jack Hopkins lived in the 1860s. He has also led a separate excavation at another house owned by Hopkins on South Washington Street, which is the planned site of a local black history museum in Gettysburg.
“When Kirby and I started thinking about creating an archeology project for students back in 2019… we wanted to take advantage of this very rich history that makes Gettysburg unique, and this campus so unique,” said Luley.
He spoke about the life of Jack Hopkins and the impact he had on the campus community. He explained that Hopkins moved to Gettysburg from Maryland in the 1840s and became a prominent member of the local black community. He moved into the campus washroom that became his house in 1860 and was responsible for cleaning dormitories, heating the building and ringing the daily bell. Luley said that he was popular among the students, who affectionately referred to him as the College’s vice president.
Professor Benjamin Luley speaks at the panel. (Photo: Grace Jurchak/The Gettysburgian)
Luley explained that one of the goals of the dig is to understand the history of the house as it was being built and illuminate the lives of its inhabitants through the items unearthed. He showed a slide with images of found ceramic items, including fragments of chinaware, the arm of a doll from Hopkin’s niece and pieces of an exploded artillery shell from the battle. He also showed a 2,000-year-old Native American knife blade that happened to be in the ground where he was excavating.
He emphasized that the project has been an excellent way for students to engage with the history of Gettysburg and contribute to uncovering that story.
The third speaker was archival assistant Devon McKinney.
McKinney spoke about his work with the oral history archive at the College, told by members of the campus and borough community. He said that the archive began in 1969 when two history professors interviewed a former dean of students, Wilbur Tilbrook. Then, in 1978, English professor Jack Walker taught a course on oral history, for which he sent students to interview alumni from previous decades.
The oral history archive is the product of over 30 years of work, with about 1,850 logged oral histories. Of that figure, 219 are with administrators and staff, 519 with alumni from over a century of class years, and 563 with faculty, coaches, and their family members representing almost every academic department and athletic program. The largest subset of this archive consists of the approximately 700 interviews related to World War II. The Special Collections reading room currently houses 62 binders that hold over 700 printed transcripts from oral histories, comprising about 5,000 pages.
McKinney highlighted some of 21 curated collections that have used the oral history archive, including the History of Gettysburg Seminary Collection, which contains interviews conducted with faculty and graduates of the Gettysburg Lutheran seminary. He also discussed the Black Lives at Gettysburg College Oral History Project, which began by documenting a group of Black students from the College who mentored children in the Third Ward of Gettysburg in the 1960s and 70s.
He also mentioned Birkner’s role in expanding the collection, having conducted over 200 interviews himself, and sending his students to interview family members and people from the Gettysburg community at a local retirement home.
McKinney ended his segment by showing an aerial photo of the campus from the 1950s.
“I love this image because it reminds us graphically that however easy it is to feel insulated on a small rural college campus, the fact is, we’re part of a vast landscape,” he said. To me, education means nothing if it doesn’t lead from an infinity of beginnings to that one final irreducible fact: we are part of a world. More than anything, the oral history archive of Musselman Library has been devoted to that principle: the value of discovering the world around you, one person at a time.”
The final speaker was senior student Jocelyn Duquette ’27.
Duquette presented her work conducting oral histories of College alumni that focused on the history of Gettysburg athletics.
She explained that sports at the College unified the local community for several decades.
“Athletes, coaches, students and community members did so much more than just play sports at Gettysburg College,” she said. “Their stories showed me how connected the college has always been to the broader community.”
Duquette said that community building has been particularly through football games on campus, as local residents would frequently come to campus to watch the Bullets play. She then showed a video clip of a 1949 turnaround victory over Bucknell University, which she had matched to a voice interview of Dr. John Schwartz ’50.
After the clip, Duquette shared stories from College athletics, including that of Patricia Henry ’71, who made new uniforms for her field hockey team after being denied money by the athletics department. She also spoke about David Harbin, a blind student at the College (and the first blind person to graduate from an American Medical College) and his participation in the “jogathon” charity endurance challenge. She said that he was able to participate after Patricia Henry volunteered to serve as his guide runner.
Jocelyn Duquette ’27 speaks about her research on Gettysburg athletics. (Photo: Grace Jurchak/The Gettysburgian)
Duquette finished her presentation with a reflection about the role of Gettysburg students in the greater community.
“Ultimately, being a part of Gettysburg College is more than just an education we receive here,” she said. “We’re also part of the broader Gettysburg community. Understanding the history of that relationship helps us recognize the role we have to continue that relationship today.”
Birkner concluded the panel with a brief discussion on times when town and gown relations have been strained, such as during protest movements in the 1960s and 70s. He described this as a reminder that this relationship can be complicated at times, and that students must continue to have a positive presence in the community.
“I think Gettysburg College has had ups and downs in that regard [community relations], but by and large has done a pretty good job, as our panelists have shown, in connecting students to the larger issues of how do you live a better life and how do you make a better world, and to me, that’s our mission to this day, and hopefully it will continue to be for a long time,” he said.
