We have been processing and posting meeting minutes of all kinds. There are University Senate minutes, Congress Debating Club minutes, departmental faculty meeting minutes, Stickles History Club minute books and FCG Classical Club to name a few.
WKU minute takers have done a great job in relaying accurate information to us. They have also found and recorded humor in their meetings. Here are a few examples:
Congress Debating Club, Book 4, page 279
Senator Searcy blew his breath at the crowd and at the same time his vocal chords vibrated in an unintelligble manner.
On page 290 of the same book we find a notation that the previous minutes are an “unhealthy bit of propaganda.”
In a memo addressed to the History faculty April 29, 1977, Dr. Richard Troutman outlines a number of meetings as:
The first meeting will involve consideration of two proposals from the Departmental Curriculum Committee . . .
The meeting following the first meeting should be brief and will involve a continuation of our discussion on graduate assistants.
The meeting following the brief meeting which follows the longer meeting will concern my concern about what direction the Department should take as we seek a new teacher for next year. This meeting should take longer than the brief second meeting, but perhaps not as long as the longer first meeting. But then again, it may take longer.
History faculty meeting minutes have begun “Once upon a time” and ended “. . . and they all lived happily ever after.”
A belated but slight reminder of things past . . . !
As quickly as was humanly possible, Dr. Crowe adjourned the meeting. Deferentially yielded, crowe the younger
The Sept. 19, 1974 meeting minutes open: “This is the Way it Was . . . !” and conclude with:
If there are any questions as to particulars mentioned in this monsterpiece, check with the man who keeps a pad in his shirt pocket. His note-taking ability far surpasses anything done by ‘little old me, honey.’
Stickles History Club
[signed] Scarlott O’Crowe
This image from the Arndt Stickles History Club Minute Book 1, page 4 relates the seriousness of manner in which the members organized:
In ancient days students sat at the feet of the old philosophers or followed them about through gardens, in order to get the gleam of life that scholars of the age had or to hear marvelous stories of the universe, or perhaps, just to be near great and noble characters. Even so, do students of the modern age long for contact with just such noble men as those of old.
These and many more records are available for researchers in WKU Archives.
rchives Month is an annual celebration of all things archival and the work of institutions that preserve historical records while making them available to researchers. This year’s theme for Kentucky is Agriculture in the Commonwealth.
