The Student Army Training Corps, or S.A.T.C., was a World War I federal program originally under the name of R.O.T.C. in which colleges provided Reserve Officer training to students. The U.S. Army established an S.A.T.C. program on the Trinity campus from 1917-1918.

There was a vested interest in instilling military training at Trinity College since its earliest days as Washington College. “Bishop Brownell had hoped that military exercises and drill would find an important place in the curriculum,” even going so far as to hire a Professor of Mathematics and Engineering trained at West Point “with a view of his employing the students in military exercises, during a portion of their leisure hours; as conducive to their health, and as subservient to their better government.” While this did not come to fruition (and neither did his dream of mandatory uniforms) Brownell did organize the Phalanx (later, Archers), the College's first ceremonial drill team. During the Civil War, the Graham Guard was organized by students with the support of the Connecticut Adjutant General, who supplied rifles and uniforms for on-campus drills. The College briefly considered introducing a Military Science department to the curriculum in 1862, but this was abandoned.

Members of the S.A.T.C. in front of Northam Towers, 1918. Photo from Trinity College Archives.

As early as June, 1916, the Trinity Trustees approved of required military training for students. In December of that year by order of the War Department, Major Robert M. Danforth, visited the College and recommended an officer be detailed to the campus, as he believed the campus was a good environment for training, but nothing was done at the time.

President Luther, was too an advocate of permanent military instruction as part of Trinity's curriculum, but the faculty were not supportive of the idea. During the advent of World War I, students unsurprisingly talked at length about the war and the potential for “getting in” to the army, and petitioned for military training. In early 1917, President Luther applied for the Reserve Officers Training Corps (R.O.T.C.), and military training began on a voluntary basis March 22, 1917. By that time, students were already enlisting in the U.S. military, but Luther advised them to wait, “until we are sure where we are most needed and most capable.” Captain Emerson Gifford Taylor of the Machine Gun Company, First Connecticut Infantry Regiment, was the company's first commander, but was replaced by John Henry Kelso Davis, Class of 1899, Hon. M.A. '23, when Taylor was called to active service. Davis had recently returned from active duty with the Connecticut National Guard Troop B on the Mexican border during the Pancho Villa campaign.

In April, a military science course was approved and taught by Professors Humphrey, Professor Walter L. Barrows and Doctor Horace C. Swan, assisted by Captain Davis, who was appointed Instructor of Military Science in June 1917. By that time, one-fourth of the student body were in military service, including 25 men serving in the 101st machine gun battalion, a federalized unit of the Connecticut National Guard that was deployed to France. At first, military training was given course credit by allowing students to substitute the course for another of their choosing and later by substituting it for History, but by September it was a mandatory course “with provision for exemption on presentation of valid excuse” and endorsed by the War Department. Evoking Brownell's vision, Captain Davis ordered that the students' military uniforms be worn on the campus at all times. He was assisted in his training by officers of the Connecticut Home Guard, all Trinity alumni:Captain J. Humphrey Greene, Captain Frederick W. Prince, Lieutenant Harold G. Hart, and Sergeant-Major Raymond H. Dexter.

Trinity Term [Summer 1918] marked the high tide of the “war spirit at Trinity.” The Political Science Club, under faculty leadership of Professor Edward F. Humphrey, held regular meetings which featured militaristic programs and speeches. The campus east of the Gymnasium was ploughed up for “war gardens” in which plots were assigned to residents of the neighborhood by the Home Gardens Commission. And at an “Open Air Patriotic Service,” which was held on Sunday, June 18, 1918, the day before Commencement, Ex-President of the United States Theodore Roosevelt delivered an address which urged the Trinity community to the greatest heights of patriotic endeavor.¹⁾ Roosevelt's speech centered on the need to “win the war, and win it now,” and chastised inaction or neutrality in times of war, which would only delay future conflicts. A Bible verse quoted in his speech is memorialized in the Roosevelt plaque on the Long Walk.

In 1918, a Congressional Act replaced the R.O.T.C. with the Student Army Training Corps and established a program on the Trinity Campus in October. The program “instead of adapting the training to the special skills of the colleges, literally turned the campuses into army camps” which, due to “indiscriminate admission,” brought many young men to the campus who were ill-prepared for even the “diluted” higher education taking place. On October 1, 1918, all Trinity students who were physically fit for military service were inducted into the S.A.T.C., given uniforms, and made subject to military regulations; at the same time, inductions began with a quota of 175.

“Cadets,” as they were called, spent long hours at drills with little time for academic study and scholastic achievement fell to a “deplorable low.” President Luther felt it necessary to reduce academic courses as well as the number of faculty. The War Department stated that “fraternity activities and military discipline are incompatible in the very nature of things,” so all “Fraternity activities” were temporarily suspended, as was compulsory Chapel attendance. However, when the armistice was signed on November 11, the new regulations were reversed.

“From an academic standpoint the work of the term was a distinct failure,” President Luther said. He felt that “the effect of the military training upon the students was distinctly and obviously good,” in that “it taught them that many of those things which had been called for many years features-·of 'college life' were unnecessary.” Over the next few months, many of the discharged S.A.T.C. members left the College, leaving the few civilian students to transition to normalcy, but they were not prepared for College-level academics or had no intellectual background.

On December 7, 1918, Luther submitted his resignation, citing poor health, his age (70) and his inability to discharge his duties. It was accepted by the Trustees on January 18, 1919.

Trinity College in the Twentieth Century (2000) by Peter and Anne Knapp, pp. 6, 19.

The History of Trinity College (1967) by Glenn Weaver, pp. 281-284.

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