The Idea, the forerunner of what we know today as the Kentucky Kernal, ran a short piece in May 1910, entitled "Dormitory Influence." "One thing is needed more than anything else at State," the article began, "a good dormitory". "Can a student get the best out of the morrow's lesson when he thinks of climbing to the third story of a small and musty iron cot that might have done duty in a cattle ship of the California gold days of '79?" But comfort and the promotion of good study habits were not the only considerations, let alone the most important one: "Dormitory life," the article went on to argue, "is the real life of the University."
Frederick Rudolph's, The American College and University: A History (University of Georgia Press edition, 1990) is still indispensable on many aspects of its subject, including the pride of place given to dormitory life -- to the idea that "a curriculum, a library, a faculty, and students are not enough to make a college." For a more recent, but equally comprehensive account, see John A. Thelin, A History of American Higher Education (John Hopkins, 2004).
On the dormitory's evolution as a contested, gendered space at the so-called "Seven Sisters," see Helen Horowitz, Alma Mater: Design and Experience in the Women's Colleges from their Ninteenth Century Beginnings to the 1930s (Beacon Press, 1986),
Bibliography of books and articles on UK History, together with a list of some online archival source can be found at the UK Library Archives
Frederick Rudolph's, The American College and University: A History (University of Georgia Press edition, 1990) is still indispensable on many aspects of its subject, including the pride of place given to dormitory life -- to the idea that "a curriculum, a library, a faculty, and students are not enough to make a college." For a more recent, but equally comprehensive account, see John A. Thelin, A History of American Higher Education (John Hopkins, 2004).
On the dormitory's evolution as a contested, gendered space at the so-called "Seven Sisters," see Helen Horowitz, Alma Mater: Design and Experience in the Women's Colleges from their Ninteenth Century Beginnings to the 1930s (Beacon Press, 1986),
Bibliography of books and articles on UK History, together with a list of some online archival source can be found at the UK Library Archives