Jim Barnette

Published on June 14, 2017

Jim-Barnette "The place erupted. And I was in the balcony, and I thought, 'This is going to cave in, we’re all going to die,' because . . . people cheered, went wild and then 'U.S.A. U.S.A.' screaming at the top of their lungs."

Chapters

Early Years

Dr Barnette describes his early life and his decision to come to Samford.

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First Thoughts on Samford and Student Culture

Barnette talks about his first moments at Samford and his thoughts about student culture.

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Religious Culture on Campus

Barnette shares his thoughts about the religious culture at Samford during his time as a student.

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Experiences as a Student: Convocation

Barnette describes what Samford convocation services were like during his time as a student.

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Experiences as a Student: Rules and Regulations

Barnette talks about some of the rules and regulations for students during his time at Samford.

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Experiences as a Student: Step-Sing

Barnette describes his experiences with Step Sing during his time as a Student at Samford.

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Experiences as a Student: Academics

Barnette explains how the differences between academics during his time as a Student at Samford, and how they are now.

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Experiences as a Student: Student Ministries and Campus Outreach

Barnette describes his involvement with Student Ministries and the issues with Campus Outreach.

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Experiences as a Student: Being a Religion Major

Barnette talks about his decisions to become a religion major and his experience with the program.

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Experiences as a Student: Dr. Leslie Wright

Barnette gives his thoughts about Dr Leslie Wright.

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Coming back to Samford

Barnette talks about his experience with coming back to Samford as University Minister.

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Experiences as University Minister: Expectations

Barnette talks about the his role and expectations as University Minister.

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Experiences as University Minister: The move to Self-Appointing

Barnette gives the story of his best day ever at Samford: the day when it was announced that Samford was moving to Self-Appointing with Trustees.

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Experiences as University Minister: Public Face of the University

Barnette talks about the University Minister as a public face for the University.

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Experiences as University Minister: Convocation

Barnette talks about his role in planning Convocation.

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Experiences as University Minister: Teaching Biblical Perspectives

Barnette gives his thoughts on the creation of the Biblical Perspectives class as part of the Core Curriculum.

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Conflicts with the Divinity School

Barnette describes the relationship, and conflicts, between the Religion Department and Beeson Divinity School.

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The Transition from University Minister to Religion Professor

Barnette describes his transition from his role as University Minister to full time Religion Professor.

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Thoughts on Dr. Corts

Barnette gives his thoughts on former university president Dr. Tom Corts.

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Final Thoughts

Barnette shares some final thoughts and stories about his time at Samford.

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Transcript

BRIAN KESSLER:   This is Brian Kessler interviewing Dr. Jim Barnette on
October 18, 2012. Okay, so let’s start with your personal background. If you
can just give, where were you born or where did you grow up? You know, your
early years? Just a little bit.

JIM BARNETTE: Born in Louisville, Kentucky, father taught at the Baptist
Seminary there for many, many years. Found about Samford through some seminary
students there who had attended Samford and I was always very impressed with the
Samford guys that I met, with whom I played basketball and tennis and they just
seemed to be just both good, intelligent students, but also very fine people and
so, one Friday, I just drove down here and checked it out and decided this was
where I was going, so…

BRIAN KESSLER: On that, where else did you consider? What other colleges were
you looking at?

JIM BARNETTE:  To be honest, once I came down here, I didn’t look at any
others. I think we made a trip to Georgetown college because, I think my father
and I did, because we felt like we should go to one other one and I did not care
for it at all and I just decided… Really, I didn’t look anywhere else, to be honest.

BRIAN KESSLER: And sort of a little bit more on the Samford… your father had a
history at Samford, or at Howard College.

JIM BARNETTE:  Dad was here, I think it was the 1946 academic year, I think, and
spent one year here. He taught sociology, actually, after having completed his
PhD at the Baptist Seminary in Louisville, taught here for a year, became a
threatening figure from the start, because he helped develop and begin what was
called the Interracial Baptist Pastors Conference and that did not go over well
with the administration here. Major Davis was the president and he called my
father into his office and said something like, “You’re a dangerous man,
teaching a dangerous topic and we’re not going to renew your contract.”
That’s talked about in the book “The Major,” that Harold Hunt’s
daughter, Susan Hunt, wrote. Anyway,  and to his credit later on, if I recall,
Dad ran into Major Davis at a, I think it was a funeral or a funeral visitation
and Davis said “We were wrong to let go of you,” but anyway, yes so he spent
one happy year here and was more or less let go and he went to Stetson after
that for four years.

BRIAN KESSLER: So was there any reluctance on his part to have you come down here?

JIM BARNETTE:  No, actually, no.

BRIAN KESSLER: Okay

JIM BARNETTE:  For whatever reason, he didn’t have any problems with that.

BRIAN KESSLER: Sure. Okay, so once you got on Samford and uh, when did you
arrive on campus? What was your first year?

JIM BARNETTE:  Fall of ’79. August of ‘79

BRIAN KESSLER: Okay. Can you describe sort of your impressions of student
culture or just the culture in general at Samford?

JIM BARNETTE:  Yes. It was definitely more conservative than my own culture of
upbringing and I say that both as far as Louisville, which is kind of more of a
northern town, I would argue. It’s just south of the Mason-Dixon Line, but it
has-it’s really more of a northern city, so coming down here, I did wonder at
least initially, how it was going to be here, because it was definitely more
religiously, theologically conservative. Also more socially conservative in
certain ways. But at the same time, I think I saw the goodness in it that I had
seen in the goodness of the students who befriended me kind of as their little
brother, you know, up at the Seminary and so I kind of saw the goodness, you
know, that kind of transcended the southern conservative kind of stuff that
could be off-putting at points.

BRIAN KESSLER: You said “socially conservative” in some ways. Can you, can
you describe?

JIM BARNETTE: Yeah…

BRIAN KESSLER: Is there anything in particular that sort of sticks out? Maybe a
culture shock moment?

JIM BARNETTE:  I’m trying to think of socially conservative… I think I was
more struck by the theological conservatism and I guess I would say the
political conservatism. I think I thought there would be at least some (chuckle)
you know, at least among students, there’d be some Democrats or some who were
from a more liberal upbringing like my own, but there really weren’t very
many. I was, you know, I was just really struck by that. As far as socially
conservative, I guess it was more of that southern, traditional kind of demeanor
that people had. Part of it was a real friendliness. I had never been around
people that would just greet you, you know, “Hi, how you doing?” I didn’t
grow up in a context like that, but I was drawn to that actually. I know some
people wind up deriding it and saying it’s so superficial and not genuine and
all that, but I was very drawn to it. To be more specific about social
conservatism, I’d have to think about that. I do, you know… I think at times
there was this pressure to be more socially refined than one really was…
(chuckle) You know, but you kind of put on this air of goodness and
traditionalism that at times really wasn’t there, but that’s probably the
best I can put it.

BRIAN KESSLER: We had other interviewers who described sort of the dress of
campus, that people-this would have been late 60s, early 70s, almost dressed up
to come to class?

JIM BARNETTE: Yeah.

BRIAN KESSLER: Was that still the case?

JIM BARNETTE:  Oh yeah, that was still there and it was funny. More so with, and
this may sound sexist, but more so with the women than with the guys. I think a
lot of guys, you know, it could be T-shirt and jeans or maybe a button-down and
jeans, but the women, I mean it was not strange at all to see them wearing
sundresses to class, which I loved, I thought that was great, you know, so
again, that was something about southernness that I found charming and sometimes
quaint and also attractive, so, you know, I didn’t mind that.

BRIAN KESSLER: So in terms of the religious culture on campus, I mean as an
expressly Christian school, at the time an expressly Baptist school, how did
that affect your life as a student?

JIM BARNETTE:  In some ways positively and some ways negatively. I, you know,
would sometimes chafe under the conservatism and sometimes what was, what just
came across to me as a syrupy, sweet kind of spirituality among students. You
know, I mean I was President of Student Ministries, I guess like UM now, for
maybe a couple of years, and yet, as much as anyone I chafed under, you know,
that whole veneer of spirituality that some students felt like they had to live
through. That’s one thing that has stayed the course is that sense of
spiritual perfectionism that you have among students. That’s still there and
that’s something I think everyone here struggles with. Maybe they’re wanting
to compare themselves with one another and all that. At the same time, it was a
very positive thing for me to come into a context of theological conservatism
and to learn just some basic tenets of the faith, doctrines of the faith, that
never really was taught to me in my more liberal church context. Just to give
some context, John Claypool was my pastor growing up who wound up being
Episcopalian and wound up at Saint Luke’s over here and a very influential
pastor, but I remember having a conversation with him a few years before he died
and I said, because it was something he said in chapel, when he spoke, and I
said, you know, I really enjoyed-I said Worship at Crescent Hill really
synthetized me to the mystery of God and he cut in and said “But we didn’t
give you a lot of substance, did we?” and I said, “You’re exactly
right,” and what I’m saying is, the conservative context was helpful for me
to learn what I believed. I think I had always just been exposed to this
amorphous kind of spirituality, but it was also, to be real honest, a very
reactionary, liberal kind of thing, where anything that smacked of anything
confessional, I was supposed to scoff at. We were just wired to do that and I
still see that among, you know, some students and a lot of faculty sometimes.
And to me it amounts to a fundamentalism on the left, it amounts to people being
close-minded in their open-mindedness kind of thing. I think that was a phrase,
somehow that tumbled out of my mouth one day, I guess it was about my sophomore
year. I told somebody, if there’s one thing, theologically, this place has
helped me with, it’s helping me realize that I can be very close-minded in my
open-mindedness and really the conservatism was good. And the interesting thing
was when I got back to Southern Seminary, which is where I grew up, more or
less, and I grew up with students who, you know, were pretty sharp, probably
became more moderate in their thinking while they were at Southern, getting a
good, solid, theological education… by the time I got to Southern, the
Seminary was full of people who were like the people in my youth group at
Louisville, and this is probably more material than you need, but it was almost
like it was a reactionary kind of liberalism there that was a big turn off to me
because I grew up with it and I came to realize that just-and the problem was
they had grown up in a real oppressive, fundamentalist context. So by the time
they got to Seminary, they were needing breathing room and they were needing to
run away from their oppressive fundamentalism that they grew up with. I was
doing just the opposite. I was running away from this amorphous kind of
noncommittal theology towards something with substance that you could hang your
hat on. So I just, it was almost like even though I was back in Louisville I
felt like a fish out of water, because I was becoming a bit more… Not (laughs)
and you know me well enough-not overly doctrinaire, but at least, you know,
“Hey I’m going to hang on to some of this,” you know, so, anyway…

BRIAN KESSLER: So I wonder, in terms of things that are sort of most clear when
you talk to students, in terms of religious life on campus, from an
administrator’s level, the requirement of convo, at the time, what was your
perspective, as a student, of those convocations?

JIM BARNETTE:  Oh wow… they were okay, I think it was just more kind of woven
into the consciousness of students to where- it was something you did, it was
like going to church, you had to do it. It was like taking your vitamins or
something and sometimes something would hit the mark with you. More often than
not it didn’t. I think there was a lot less anger about it. There was less
animosity about it. It was just something you did and had to do. There was not a
lot of acting out in frustration with it or apathy toward it, where people would
be reading the newspaper or, you know, balancing their checkbook or anything
like that. By the time I returned in 1994 as University Minister, wow, the
animosity toward convo was just big and I didn’t realize how big. I think that
was the first question I asked the search committee was “How do you—“
because they were students on there, “How do you, how do other people feel
about convo?” and I think they gave more of a positive image of it than really
was there. Boy, I got here and there were people just angry about it and I would
say when I was here it was kind of woven into the consciousness and it’s
something you did and it was almost like that Sunday School checklist, you know:
Bible brought, Scripture verse memorized, you know, convo card, you know,
checked, so it was more like that. Just more a part of the culture.

BRIAN KESSLER: And what was the requirement when you were a student?

JIM BARNETTE:  It was 64 credits, in fact—did you have to get 8 a semester?
—I think you had to get 8 a semester because back then, you could not register
again if you didn’t have 8 credits. You had to do something, I don’t know
what. Fortunately I always got them, but it was 64 credits, but 8 a semester and
they expected you to get those 8. When I came back, it was just 64 before you
graduate, which was horrible, because usually people would wait until their
senior year. It was horrible. But yeah, I remember, I think it was my senior
year, you know, we had those old convo computer cards and somebody got a bunch
of them and put, you know, it was just so clear that the same hand wrote all
these different names and signature (chuckles) and they got caught and had to go
to all these extra convos. But yeah, it was 64 a semester and there were very
few options other than coming here. In fact, I don’t think there was convo
credit. I think there might have been a convo credit, you know, one convo credit
per semester for an arts thing or something but that was it.

BRIAN KESSLER: What type of speakers would they have?

JIM BARNETTE:  It was a lot more preachers.

BRIAN KESSLER: Okay

JIM BARNETTE:  Baptist preachers, on occasion African American preachers, there
was a lot of that. And I think part of that was because, you know, back then Dr.
Wright was needing to coddle constituents and so he would bring in pastors, not
just from large churches, but from medium and small churches and to me that was
pretty clear, that was a lot of it. You would have some pretty good speakers for
Christian emphasis weeks. You know, sometimes it would be another Baptist
preacher, sometimes it would be somebody a little more progressive. Tony Campolo
(spelling?) came my freshman or sophomore year and was never invited back. I
think it was one of those stories where he used a bad word and did that for
shock value and we all thought he was great. Of course we never got to hear him
again. A lot of Baptist preachers and on occasion it was honor; you’d get
invited, like I spoke. I was student speaker one semester and to get that was a
big thing, so… it was a lot of preachers though, a lot of preaching.

BRIAN KESSLER: Are there any, you know, the occasional story I remember from my
time here, there’s occasionally the one that is sort of a flashpoint across
campus. You mentioned Campolo.

JIM BARNETTE: Uh-huh

BRIAN KESSLER: Were there any that you remember, a particular speaker, or
something that was said, that it did reverberate and it did stay around campus
for a while?

JIM BARNETTE:  One of my favorites was Catherine Allen, who spoke. Catherine
goes to Mountain Brook Baptist Church, wrote the definitive biography of Lottie
Moon, and she’s the wife of who was Lee Allen. And Catherine—and I love
this—because she got up and basically said “I’m here to tell you a few
things.” Of course it was kind of fun having a woman preaching anyway. She
said, “God is not a southerner. God is not a Republican. God is not a
conservative,” and she just went on, you know. I forget whether or not she
said, “God is not a man,” but she just got up there and kind of cut through
all these categories and that was a radical thing back then, for someone to do
and I just really appreciated that. She was one of the few who dared to do that.
Frank Stagg came my freshman year. Frank was a great New Testament scholar,
taught at Southern and at New Orleans Seminary and, like my father, not afraid
at all to face up to fundamentalist roots and I think he either started off
saying, or at some point, he said—’79 was when Falwell really got
going—and he stood up and said, “There is no moral majority. They are an
amoral malignancy,” and I may have been one of the few who wanted to just
stand up and yell, “Yeah! Go!” and I thought that was beautiful. Another
wonderful preacher, and this was a Baptist preacher, but to this day, whenever I
see him, he remembers, because I brag on him. A guy named Drew Gunnels, or Jerry
Gunnels. Jerry was the longtime pastor at Spring Hill Baptist Church in Mobile
and I’m sure he’s been a trustee here. And he was, he was kind of one of
those, you know, he was in the good ‘ol boy network, but he was just a fine
preacher and he was the Christian emphasis week speaker one year and did a
sermon called “Going the Second Mile” and it was just a pretty traditional
sermon, but he preached with passion and insight and the way he dealt with the
text, and I’ve always appreciated… you know, it was fun years later to
invite Jerry back and Jerry was probably, gosh, pushing 70, but he got up there
and the students just ate him up and it just speaks to how effective a pulpiteer
he was and is. My favorite, definitely, was when, well there were two people I
invited down when I was president of UM, or what is now UM—we called it
Student Ministries back then—when I had Paul Duke come down to preach and he
did a fabulous sermon on the Good Samaritan called “The View from the
Ditch.” I still use that in BP and he basically stole it from (name hard to
understand), who was a New Testament scholar. That was really good. My favorite
speaker of all time was actually at the fall retreat and then he came back and
did a convo and that was Bill Leonard, who, you know, now teaches at Wake
Forest. But Bill just rang the bell and he was just, I think that was my senior
year, we had him speak at the retreat and in a convo and I think people just
didn’t know what to do with him here. He was so different and definitely
looked at things differently, but they loved his delivery and he’s so
articulate and eloquent and he was probably my all time favorite, but those are
some that just come to mind.

BRIAN KESSLER: Was he at Southern at the time?

JIM BARNETTE:  Yeah, he was a professor of church history. But those are some
that just come to mind that just were, I guess if you look at all those. Jerry
was the one traditional southern Baptist preacher I remember. The rest were just
like a giant hum, but Catherine was great, because of her approach. The others
were just edgy, so that’s why students appreciate them.

BRIAN KESSLER: Sure. I wonder too about, can you talk about either, I don’t
know if they called them value violations at the time, sort of the rules on campus?

JIM BARNETTE:  Gosh, well there was no dorm visitation whatsoever… you know,
well anyway on paper (chuckle) there was no visitation whatsoever. I have a
guilty look, but yeah, there was no dorm visitation at all. You know, the big
joke was to go up to Vail dorm, at the lobby there, which is still there and
there were these little rooms, about four of them, called the “Passion Pits”
and that’s where you know, it was real dark in there, and a guy and a girl
would go in and, you know, you kind of turn your head and that kind of thing. I
don’t think a heck of a lot went on because it was still very public, you
know. There was no dorm visitation… let’s see, what were some other rules?
You didn’t hear much about plagiarism. I’m trying to think of anything else.
The dress code, I never ran into any issues there. I think if you got back to
campus after… was it 11 or midnight? I can’t remember. And it was the
Pinkies. They were called the Pinkies. Have you heard that term? Oh gosh. I
think that was named after Pinkerton, who you, in history, but the campus safety
here, they were called the Pinkies and they were really looked down upon. There
was one guy who was named Shorty, who was wonderful. He was kind of short,
African American dude with an afro and everybody loved Shorty. He would kind of,
you know, just roll his eyes when we got crazy over in CJ dorm, but it’s just
funny. Security was, or public, or campus safety was not very well thought of
(chuckles). I’m trying to think of any specific rules. The dorm thing was
just, you didn’t want to get caught in a dorm. That was just a terrible thing.
What are some of the rules they talk about now? I’m trying to think… that
was the big one and then, yeah, if you got here after eleven or midnight, you
had to show your student ID and sign in. Other than that…

BRIAN KESSLER: Was there any kind of student outcry against any of the rules
that you can remember?

JIM BARNETTE:  No, it’s funny. Even when it came to convo, I don’t remember
editorials that derided it. We were just talking about that out in the hall and
I felt bad, because Matt Kerlin walked by. I hope he didn’t think I was
dogging him, but… there wasn’t any of that in the student papers. Gosh, when
I got here, in ’94 I mean it was like every other editorial was, you know,
bashing convo, but the editorials were quite mild back then. I remember a big
one was when the Pi Kapps wrote on the back of Pittman Hall sign, “It was
rigged,” because the Pi Kapps lost again, or didn’t get Sweepstakes.
Somebody put, “It was rigged,” and that was a big deal, you know. There was
a big editorial about it (laughs) like, okay. I think the editorials were just
mild compared to what you have now, with people like you, you know.

BRIAN KESSLER: (chuckles)

JIM BARNETTE:  But I don’t remember any significant editorials that were just
really provocative. Not dealing with any hard-hitting issues or… I think there
was more of a fear of standing out, back then, in a real formal way like an
editorial, so I think they were mild compared to now.

BRIAN KESSLER: You mentioned Step Sing…

JIM BARNETTE: Mmhmm

BRIAN KESSLER: What was the culture of Step Sing in your time on campus?

JIM BARNETTE:  It was a big thing because we didn’t have a football team at
the time; basketball was it. So it was a big event. As I recall, unlike now…
there were no boundaries, no strictures as far as the amount of hours people put
into it, so people would practice for hours at their health’s expense, you
know. It was very competitive, fiercely competitive. Intramurals were big too,
but in a way, to me, it was an extension of intramurals, because if you’re in
the fraternity that lost or the class—again, back then, they had class shows,
freshman, sophomore, junior, senior—and they were all really good shows, too.
If you didn’t win it was a big to-do, a big deal. Lot of animosity between the
team that won and the ones that didn’t. To me it was an extension of
Intramurals. It was much more competitive, fiercely competitive. It is really,
if there’s competitiveness with it now, it pales in comparison to back then.

BRIAN KESSLER: Is there a show or performance that stands out?

JIM BARNETTE:  Yes. There were many good ones. Zeta had two good ones, my junior
and senior year, but I’ll tell you the one that was significant, because this
is what happened during my freshman year. We had gone through the show… now
this is what’s interesting, back then, Phi Mu Alpha, the music fraternity, was
so good, they were not allowed to compete. They were amazing, they really were.
These guys would get up there and they had unbelievable voices, half of them in
the A Cappella choir and then there were always these folks that just knew
choreography so well and it was just understood by the time I arrived that Phi
Mu Alpha was not allowed to compete, because they would win every year, which is
strange, it’s evolved and they struggle now, but it was the show, hands down
and they were doing a salute to the armed forces, okay, and so they did each of
the branches and the music and they did it in a variety, sometimes soft,
sometimes loud, you know, good choreography, and what was interesting is, just
before they came out, they were always the finale – just before they came out,
the news arrived that the US had defeated Russia, or the Soviet Union I should
say, in hockey in the ’80 Olympics, which was huge, you know the movie
Miracle…  So they came out and announced that, and—was her name Cathy
Carwell (?)—I’m trying to remember the two emcees, but they announced
that—the place erupted. I was in the balcony, and I thought, this is gonna
cave in, we’re all gonna die, because, literally, people cheered, and I’m
not making this up, I’d say ten minutes. People cheered, went wild, “U.S.A.,
U.S.A.” screaming at the top of their lungs. And it was one of the more
memorable things in my four years here. I tell you who else will tell you about
it, was Melissa Martin, what’s her last name, Alpin/Allpen(sp?), who works
over here? Redhead? Anyway, because I remember her talking about it years later
in some context and she was an ADPi here, but, I mean the place erupted. And not
just the students, like everybody. And so okay, we’ve had this huge, ten
minute craziness. Well, then Phi Mu Alpha comes out and does the salute to the
armed forces, and it’s 1980: Reagan and national defense and patriotism, the
hostages are back and all of that. And the play, like they did every, you know,
and when they would begin every branch, you know, people would go crazy. And at
the end they sang “America the Beautiful” – they started very, very, very
quietly, and then they did this loud, fast crescendo of “AMMEEEEEEERRICA”
and they went on singing for another two or three minutes, but you didn’t hear
anything – the people just went crazy.  It’s one of the loudest places
I’ve ever been, because the pitch over there is pretty precise anyway.  So
that was really memorable for Step Sing. And what was fun too, it had nothing to
do with competition.  I think that’s why I loved it so much, was that it was
not extended intramurals for a moment. So that was, and Phi Mu Alpha again, did
a show—was it the next year or 2 years later?—I think it was my junior or
senior year, they did one on “Rocket Man” and it was kind of a… Dan Jones
was in it… but that was a really good one, too, and it was very creative, but,
again, I would just say, by far, that was the most memorable.

BRIAN KESSLER: Switching over to the academic side…

JIM BARNETTE:  Okay—that was fun (chuckles)

BRIAN KESSLER: I do wonder, what was your experience, even coming as a freshman,
of the academics of Samford?

JIM BARNETTE: Mmhmm

BRIAN KESSLER: What did that look like? What was a day like on campus?

JIM BARNETTE:  Yeah… what was the day like? Probably a lot like it is now,
just, you know, different classes, you know. The English department was in the
top of the library and math was still in Brooks as it is still now. History was
in DBH. I guess it’s still there, right? A lot of these are still in the same place…

BRIAN KESSLER: I think math is actually over here now…

JIM BARNETTE:  Oh is math over here—that’s right. A lot of English is over
in the Divinity school… but as far as going through the day, I’d say morning
classes were more common than afternoon, so it was just understood, that you
went to your 8 o’clock class and then went to convo, which is almost kind of
automatic, and then you might have an afternoon class or you might not.

BRIAN KESSLER: Did they have the Tuesday-Thursday convo at this point or was it
something different?

JIM BARNETTE:  I think it was Monday-Wednesday-Friday, I think that’s right,
it was Monday, Wednesday, Friday. Let me think, yeah, because I think it was
only Monday-Wednesday when I got here and then they switched it to
Tuesday-Thursday, I think that was the deal. I think it was
Monday-Wednesday-Friday, was convo. And again, one more reason why it was kind
of woven into—and you’re going to have to check me on that, but I think it
was 3 days a week—but as far as how the day went, I think typical: go to
class, afternoon, you might have some activity, or study and stuff in the
evening. I don’t know of anything utterly unique about it or any different
from now, as far as the rhythm of it. You know, there was less, you’ve got
late night stuff going on. Definitely the pace of what was going on was not near
what it is now for students. It’s just amazing to me how overcommitted they
are and how they just… it’s almost understood that when they come to
college, they’re going to get less sleep. We were more conscientious of
“Okay, I’m going to pull a late-nighter tonight and just have fun with my
friends, but I know at this certain time, I’m going to make it up.” These
students seem to be at peace with 3 or 4 hours a night, which I couldn’t have
functioned. They’re more caffeined-up I think now. I do think that classes, in
a way, and I may be wrong on this, but I do think that classes, in a sense, were
more of an event back then, because there was less to do here, less
distractions, less fun things to do. I do think you have, in some ways now, more
of a student life emphasis, in some ways, that’s at the expense of classroom
time. It’s almost like, you know, classroom time has to compete with a lot
more now. It’s more challenging to teach, in certain ways. I think back then,
there was just more of an automatic sense of “This class is an event and this
profess

Audio Information
Attribute	Value
Interviewer	Brian Kesler
Interviewee	Dr Jim Barnette
Repository	Samford University Oral History Collection
Accession	SUHist/SamfordHistory/002

Jim Barnette

Chapters

Early Years

First Thoughts on Samford and Student Culture

Religious Culture on Campus

Experiences as a Student: Convocation

Experiences as a Student: Rules and Regulations

Experiences as a Student: Step-Sing

Experiences as a Student: Academics

Experiences as a Student: Student Ministries and Campus Outreach

Experiences as a Student: Being a Religion Major

Experiences as a Student: Dr. Leslie Wright

Coming back to Samford

Experiences as University Minister: Expectations

Experiences as University Minister: The move to Self-Appointing

Experiences as University Minister: Public Face of the University

Experiences as University Minister: Convocation

Experiences as University Minister: Teaching Biblical Perspectives

Conflicts with the Divinity School

The Transition from University Minister to Religion Professor

Thoughts on Dr. Corts

Final Thoughts

Transcript

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