Finding a group of cadets willing to write, edit and print a newspaper from a class of only 73 men is no easy task. Not to mention, in 1907 at a principally agriculture, engineering and textile school. Even as Samuel R. Rhodes, the founding editor of The Tiger, made it happen, he set a robust tone from the beginning:
“Were it not for the fact that this Journal appears under the caption, ‘The Tiger,’ a title, of vigor, and self-reliance, we would make the apologies of timidity, and inexperience, customary in the first issue of the college publication. Under the circumstances, however, we are forced to desist,” Rhodes and his staff said in an introductory editorial.
The namesake of the Rhodes Engineering Research Center was not only the founding editor of The Tiger but also a distinguished electrical engineering professor at Clemson through the early 20th century.
Rhodes was born in Darlington County, South Carolina, in 1881, first attending Furman University and then teaching children after his graduation in 1901. Four years later, feeling “destined for greater things than teaching young America the A. B. C.’s” per his peers in the Clemson yearbook, Rhodes enrolled at Clemson for engineering in 1905.
After graduation, Rhodes ventured up north for a few years to work at General Electric in New York and then at Westinghouse in Massachusetts. The cold scares most people away, though, and Rhodes returned to Clemson in 1913 as an electrical engineering professor. He later became head of the electrical engineering department from 1933-1954.
From Rhodes’ impact on The Tiger’s creation to Clemson’s engineering program, he proved himself to be an influential figure. Rhodes became close with his peers, including Walter Riggs, a president of the University and the first Clemson football coach.
Looking back at his Clemson experience in a 1952 interview with The Tiger, Rhodes joked about the struggles of being the editor.
“Just as must be the case now, the editor-in-chief had to be prodding his assistants eternally if the paper came out at all. And though the first paper was a bi-weekly publication, we still had to sit up into the wee small hours of the morning to meet our dead-line,” Rhodes said in the 45th-anniversary edition of The Tiger. Rhodes has no idea how true his words hold today.
From the Archives is a column delving into the history of The Tiger, South Carolina’s oldest college newspaper. Most information is sourced from the Special Collections and Archives, which houses the archives of Clemson’s student publications.
