Written by Caitlin Stamm
Since its inception, the U of I has been home to many illustrious awards and award-winners. One of the more unique titles, though, was awarded to an Illinois student one hundred years ago.
In April 1914, the Chicago Sunday Tribune named ten girls “The Most Popular Girls in College.” The
girls selected represented schools from across the country, from Stanford University in California to Wellesley College in Massachusetts. According to the Tribune, the defining characteristic of all of the young women selected was “a gracious democracy.” They wrote, “[E]ach and all of the girls chosen possessed above everything else the genius for democracy. It was their certain loadstone of attraction.” The women were selected after correspondents from the paper sent photographs and a description of each girl, detailing “the traits which accounted for her being the universal choice of her school” [1].
One of the ten women selected was Clara Cronk, a senior at Illinois in 1914. The Tribune described Ms. Cronk as “the most popular girl at the University of Illinois,” who “is a senior, a member of the senior memorial committee, and has always taken a prominent part in class politics” [2]. Continue reading “Found in the Archives: The Most Popular Girl in School”