On the third floor of Austin Peay State University’s Harned Hall, the words of the University’s fight song are now mounted on a wall.
“Smash! Bang! To victory/Go the Governors of Austin Peay.”
The song, along with several black-and-white photos of the campus, lends a nostalgic, collegiate atmosphere to the hallway, but it also helps tell the story of APSU. For the last semester, a group of students in a public history class have spent hours tracking down old photos and other bits of information to create a display depicting the history of APSU.
The project was installed last week.
“We have a timeline of Austin Peay, including information before it became Austin Peay, when it was different colleges from 1806 to 1925,” Leslie Crouch, a senior history major, said. “We also covered the presidents of Austin Peay and put in things like the fight song and the alma mater to kind of hit different spectrums of history and what makes up the school and what makes it so special.”
The display also includes background information on the APSU Department of History and a brief history of the building.
Harned Hall, one of the oldest buildings on campus, originally served as a women’s dormitory. It fell into a state of disrepair over the years and was almost torn down before a group of professors, students and Clarksville residents began a campaign to save the building. Harned is now the home of the history and the languages and literature departments.
The display on the building’s third floor will remain a permanent fixture in Harned, and Crouch said future students might expand on their work in the years to come.
