Town and Gown
North Carolina's small college towns have a unique
character and flavor all their own.
On a bright spring day, mot¬
tled sunlight filters through
the tall hardwoods on the
Davidson College campus
and onto Main Street of the
town ol Davidson below. And in back-to-
back wooden booths of the M&M Soda
Shop, a town and college institution, sit
Mayor Russell Knox and college Presi¬
dent John Kuykendall.
It is not always like that. The sun
doesn't always shine in Davidson and
there are no assigned scats at the M&M,
but it's like that a lot in this quaint,
almost idyllic college town in northern
Mecklenburg County. College and town
bump into each other at every turn, and
the school docs cast a different light on
what would otherwise be just another lit¬
tle Piedmont burg.
“When I was a student here.- says I)r.
Kuykendall, "this was a small rural vil¬
lage. It's not a lot more now. but with¬
out the college I think you could argue
it wouldn't be anything at all. There are
perfectly good towns six miles on either
side of it. There would have been no
need for a Davidson.
"In fact, I think you can say that if our
Presbyterian fore beaters hadn't owned
a 150-acre farm here 200 years ago. a
farm they later used as land for a college,
there wouldn't Ik* a town."
Maybe, and then again maybe not.
says Mayor Knox, tlu* man in the next
booth and an heir of longtime Davidson
land barons. There is, he says, a contin¬
uing debate — "you know, one of them
chicken-and-egg things" — about the
town and the college.
“Which came first is really hard to say."
says the* mayor. "But what you can't dis¬
agree about is that they arc all tied
together now."
Mayors in dozens of Tar Heel towns
can and do say the same thing. From
By Tucker Mitchell
Cullowhcc to Elizabeth City, institutions
of higher learning dot the small-town
landscape, and in every case the college
defines the place. A small town without
a college and a small town with one are
as different as a small town and a big city.
Institutions of higher learning trans¬
form the citizenry and the landscape.
Indeed, they transform the whole mood
of the place. And in most folks' opinion,
it is for the good.
"It is a nice lifestyle," says Mayor Knox.
"People love to live in a place like this.
The atmosphere of a college town is very
desirable."
Adds Ray Rapp, for 1 8 years a member
of the faculty at Mars Hill College in
Mars Hill, a small mountain town just
north of Asheville. "Living in a college
town is really Shangri-la as far as I'm con¬
cerned. You can't believe the lifestyle
you have here."
Small college towns share a lot of char¬
acteristics. They possess facilities —
libraries, theaters, gymnasiums, swim¬
ming pools — that their college-less
cousins can only dream about. They are
home to repertory theaters, dance com¬
panies and college sports teams. They
offer townsfolk a chance to further their
education, both formal and otherwise.
Most of North Carolina’s small-town col¬
leges offer extensive adult education
programs, but beyond that there is just
the chance to associate with lots of peo¬
ple who own a Ph.D. In non-college
rural towns there is more association
with plain old pH, the soil acidity.
Small college towns share their prob¬
lems. too. While a college can Ik* a boon,
it can Ik* a bane as well. In a small town
a college is usually the largest employer
so it can overwhelm the place economi¬
cally as well as academically — and with¬
out paring any taxes either. Colleges are
tax-exempt, although many contribute
to their towns' well being out of a sense
of civic duty.
In session, college populations often
dwarf that of the town, which can cause
a host of problems. Should local laws be
tailored to the school or the town? Do
students get to vote in town elections?
And. just who are these businesses for?
All those learned people wandering
around can cause some jealously, too,
particularly when the regular folk aren't
scholars, at least not in a formal way.
There is some resentment, some snob¬
bery, real or imagined, and certain ten¬
sion that is described as the "old town-
and-gown thing."
How much that still exists is a matter
of some debate. Rapp, the dean of con¬
tinuing education at Mars Hill, says
there’s still some of that present in his
mountain town, “but it's certainly not as
bad as it is at. say. North Carolina
(Chapel Hill)."
Rapp should know. He taught at the
"other Hill," the University of North Car¬
olina at Chapel Hill, before moving to
the mountains in 1976.
There is a sense that rivalries are wan¬
ing in most locales. Colleges are doing
more to integrate themselves into the
community, more to make them seem a
piece of the whole. For instance, Bel¬
mont Abbey, the little Catholic college
in the modest Gaston County town of
Belmont, has changed the face of its stu¬
dent body in an effort to become "one
of the boys." Instead of a bunch of Yan¬
kees. the school’s population is now
dominated by natives of the Gaston
County area. Locals make up 60 percent
( Opposite page) In the growing area of
northern Mecklenburg County, Davidson
College has become just one of many players
in an actii>e and thriving community.
Phn.. 41- -Hr jujr ►> thru, Uflhn
Tbt State/ August 1994
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