Inside the Echo: Exploring Drexel’s First Student Publication with Archives Technician Simon Ragovin

What can a century-old student publication tell us about the people and everyday experiences that shaped early Drexel? Quite a lot, as it turns out!

We recently sat down with Simon Ragovin, Archives Technician, to learn more about the Drexel Echo, Drexel’s first student publication. Read on to learn all about this unique publication, including some  unexpected stories hidden within the pages of the Echo and how ongoing archival work to make the collection more accessible is opening new possibilities for research into the past.

Want to learn more? Stop by the W. W. Hagerty Library and explore our current exhibit, “The Drexel Echo: The Origins of Student Publishing at Drexel” and check out the companion article Echoes of the Past in the Drexel Echo: The Origins of Student Publishing at Drexel.  

Do you have a favorite issue of the Echo? Or a favorite story, article or illustration?

A single favorite anything – not an easy question for me. I’ve been working on a name index [for the Echo], and the section I enjoy going through the most is the Alumni Notes.
 
Drexel’s Library School was the third in the country and its earliest alumnae were entering a brand-new profession – one interesting thing to me is that they seem to have been relatively widespread geographically. This is compared to engineering and mechanic arts students, many of [whom] stayed around Philly and NJ, and a fair number also went to New York City to work on public transit.  
 
Noticing these patterns is only part of it, though. The Alumni Notes [section] includes geographic locations where people ended up working, which makes it possible to see broader patterns in the careers and lives of Drexel graduates. Although most of the student body came from the Greater Philadelphia area, the Echo shows that students also went farther afield, including internationally. 

The index [will make] those patterns much easier to use [in research]. You can look at how often a name or place appears and notice things that might otherwise be difficult to find, such as where someone got a job or where alumni ended up living and working. The Echo can therefore be a resource not only for understanding Drexel students at the time, but also for understanding what happened to them afterward.

What has surprised you most about the topics, interests, or humor expressed in the contents of the Echo? 

Before I started working more closely on the Echo, I’d known it was the only student publication at the time, but I hadn’t realized how much variety and range it has. It includes many of the sections we expect in a pre-digital student newspaper: student government updates, announcements about upcoming social events, and reports about recent ones, sports, reviews of student theater productions, advertisements from businesses near campus. It doesn’t include a section for local and national politics – editorials focus on internal matters, [but] it does include an exchanges section, which was typical at the time.  

Even though Drexel was a technical institute, most curricula included some study of literature, art, and social sciences, and so the Echo included short stories written for English classes. There’s also poetry and lyrics for songs – a lot of them funny. One of the things that makes the humor especially interesting is that it gives us a glimpse into a part of student culture that otherwise isn’t well documented. Making up humorous lyrics to popular songs was a common part of campus culture, and in the Echo, there’s a fragment of this otherwise undocumented part of Drexel student life.
 
In general, there’s a higher proportion of humorous content than I thought a student newspaper would have. By the fourth volume, the editorial staff included a Jokes Editor for the Jokes section – not that humor was restricted to just that section. There are a lot of in-jokes and funny nicknames in the Class Notes section.  

Where does the name the Echo come from?

Unclear! I haven’t seen it explained in the Echo. Maybe it was incredibly obvious at the time, or it was just explained verbally.  
 
I have one theory that may be a bit too clever: the Echo was preceded by a very short-lived bulletin created by Drexel faculty. The first issue of the Echo’s subtitle is “Students’ Issue” which suggests that the Drexel students thought they were a continuation of that bulletin. They didn't set out to create the first student newspaper, alumni publication, and literary magazine all in one.  

Or maybe it’s because the interior of Main is so echo-y. Could be both.  

Historical publications can serve as a valuable window into life at that time. What does the Echo tell us about some of Drexel’s earliest students and the University itself in the early 1900s?  

The Echo is particularly valuable since few records survive that documented everyday student life during Drexel’s early decades. Student organizations contributed bits of news, jokes, and other material to the Echo, but Drexel otherwise has relatively few records documenting student organizations and student life from this period.

The Echo was also essentially the only campus publication at the time. There were bulletin boards, but they weren’t sufficient for the kinds of information that could later be distributed through multiple publications. The Echo brought together literary material, student news, alumni publications, academic work, and other aspects of campus life in one place.

Because of that, the Echo gives researchers a way to see aspects of Drexel history that aren’t well represented in the administrative records. It helps to reveal what students were doing, what organizations existed, what they were interested in, and how they interacted with the University.

The new name index I mentioned will also make this material more accessible for research. Rather than simply reading an issue from beginning to end, researchers will be able to search for people, businesses, places, and other subjects and identify patterns across the collection.

Let’s talk about the cover art. These illustrations are fantastic. Do you have a sense of what they mean or why they were selected for each issue? Are there certain motifs or symbols there or are they simply just cool drawings?   

Two of the most active founding departments were the department of architecture and the department of fine arts. Back then, engineering students had to develop good draftsmanship, so a significant proportion of students were learning about design and art history. The covers, and artwork inside, gave students a showcase for their work.

So, yes, the cover artists weren’t just demonstrating their technical skills. We can assume that they were each saying something about Drexel, even if it’s not immediately evident what they meant. For example, William H. Alden, Jr. combined torches of knowledge and Neo-Gothic architectural motifs around the Drexel seal to create an impression of a medieval hall. Maybe Alden meant to give Drexel a sense of grandeur and antiquity. Another consideration is that the art style that had the strongest influence on Drexel’s art and architecture students at the time was Beaux Arts, well-known for faux-medieval motifs.  

One of the first things you have to consider when trying to interpret a historical document is who the audience is. In the case of the Echo, other students would have expected the faculty and staff to read it, whether [or not] they were concerned about faculty and administrative reactions. The cover designs were chosen through contests, which allowed students to submit their own artwork. Drexel was right next to Penn, and Penn had been known for architecture for a very long time. The covers might have been a way for Drexel students to establish their own identity alongside Penn—almost saying, “Hey, Penn, we’re here.”

For someone exploring the Echo collection for the first time, what would you encourage them to look for and why? 

Like most newspapers or magazines, you don’t need to read it back to front. In fact, I recommend you don’t. Most issues of the Echo open with a short story or essay, and I suggest skipping those to start with so you can get an idea of each issue overall. Unless short stories and essays are specifically what you’re interested in, I’d recommend looking through everything first to get a sense of what’s there before diving into individual pieces. The Organizations section – updates about student organizations – and the Athletics sections may be a good place for a lot of people to start because you can find a lot that’s familiar and a lot that’s surprising there.