The Spectator’s first publication was released in November 1905 in the form of a booklet. The first editions of The Spectator existed mostly as a literary magazine for Mississippi University for Women’s various literary societies. By 1916, The Spectator became the full-fledged newspaper that still exists today.
Every year, new groups of students join The Spectator staff to continue carrying on the mission established 120 years ago by Beulah Sanford, Byrd Walker, Mary Alice Waller, Maud Mabry and Nannie Rice.
Scanned document courtesy of The W’s Archives.
The Spectator’s original mission statement
We the Senior class of Nineteen Hundred five, are editing a college magazine, to be called the “Spectator,” with apologies to Addison and Steele, and to be published monthly. In entering this new field, we feel the great responsibility which rests upon us. But we believe that, college men all over the world are today engaged in this kind of work, we as twentieth century college women shall not see our attempts end in failure. Women in the past have possessed genius and have given to the world additions to its great literature. May it not be supposed that there are today women of literary ability; and that there may be such in our midst?
Hence in publishing this magazine, we purpose to promote the literary and artistic taste of the college, and to furnish to the students a means of developing their powers of thought and of expressing their thoughts interestingly and forcibly. But, though our primary object is the development of our students, we also want our magazine to be of interest and benefit to outside readers. Through this periodical we shall endeavor to portray the work and life of the college, and to arouse the sympathetic interest of every Mississippian in the future welfare of the lI&C by showing to the people that their past efforts toward upbuilding the school have not been wasted. The literary, the social, the religious, and athletic phases of the college life will be treated so that it may be known just what each of these stand for.
The question comes, is it a possible thing that we are undertaking?
Do our plans for the magazine and our conception of it constitute only a castle in the air which will fall with the first breath opposition?
The answer is emphatically NO; on one condition. That condition is that the students consider the magazine as the property of each girl personally and not as the sole property of the senior class; and that they cooperate with us and uphold us with their subscriptions and with their literary contributions.
Courtesy of ‘Loyal Daughters: One Hundred Years at Mississippi University for Women 1884-1984’ by Dr. Bridget Smith Pieschel, Stephen Robert Pieschel