Campus Changes

Clyda Weeks Lutz talks about the many changes in education and to the NC State campus since she was student in the early 1960s.

Interview on 2012-09-26 00:00:00 -0400

Transcript

00:00:00.000 Like I say, the handheld calculator, which you can buy at any drugstore or anything for a dollar, was about a hundred dollars then. It had no functions but addition, subtraction, multiplication, division.
00:00:10.180 That was what it was, but that was so big. I mean people were so excited about that
00:00:16.794 because we were used to using a slide rule, and all of a sudden we had something that-.
00:00:24.493 But a hundred dollars in the '60s was a huge amount of money. Well you know how technology is;
00:00:30.799 it starts out high and as it's been here awhile the prices go down, down, down. So that's the first thing I see.
00:00:36.315 Of course seeing girls on campus, I mean to walk out and see all these girls walking across campus is like,
00:00:47.486 this is not the same place that I went to school. [Laughs] And then all the one-way streets on this campus too.
00:00:56.128 It was like, good grief. It was like going through a maze to get here today because I was coming from east on Hillsborough St.
00:01:03.876 and for me to finally figure out how to get to come back and head towards east, it was like, okay.
00:01:13.835 Even though I'm very familiar with the area I just have not kept up with the one-way streets.
00:01:18.570 So you see things like that, and all the barriers that you can't drive anywhere you want to on campus without passes.
00:01:25.621 And of course all the athletic events were held on campus. I think what was our football stadium is now a parking lot.
00:01:35.973 My classes were in the field house of old Riddick Stadium and we sat right there on the railroad tracks,
00:01:47.439 and so as the trains would come through the professors would just have to stop.
00:01:54.586 I mean the building moved with the trains going through. And of course the basketball games were played at Reynolds Coliseum.
00:01:59.261 So everything was confined right here on campus. The married student housing area, that was new while we were here.
00:02:09.167 I can remember far back when I was a child when from here west, between here and the textile building,
00:02:17.947 was prefabricated houses that were built after the Second World War, so those were finally replaced with the married student housing.
00:02:31.356 We tried to get into that but we couldn't get in or we would have stayed out there,
00:02:42.564 but it was new and we didn't get our application in, in time. I don't think there was anything
00:02:47.238 to do with the campus across Western Blvd. at that time. Now the dairy farm, out where the veterinary school is,
00:02:54.146 that was there, I remember that, and there were some farm extensions, one in Clayton and different places,
00:03:04.629 but as far as classes being held, I don't think there was anything across Western Blvd. at the time.