by Kate Szilagyi The headline on the front page of The Hatchet on April 13, 1917 read ³War Suspends GWU Athletics.² Fighting had been going on in Europe for the past three years, but the United States just aligned with Great Britain.

While the varsity baseball team didn¹t hit any home runs that season, 17 GW medical students entered the Navy as surgeons. The Hatchet encouraged the students to do their part for the war and supported the University¹s decision to suspend athletics.

³(The) suspension of athletics was a patriotic step, and allows full devotion to war work,² wrote The Hatchet on April 13, 1917.

GW offered credit to men who entered the Officers¹ Reserve Corps. University President Charles Stockton told The Hatchet, ³It will be as if the men had gone in to Federal service, and they will get full benefits of special provisions during the war.² More than 500 men chose to enter the reserves.

During WWI, GW welcomed European students and faculty, whose studies were disrupted by the war, to Foggy Bottom. The University set aside $1,500 to assist them with tuition costs.

Despite the war, academics and student life continued at GW. As the war ended in November 1918 and returning veterans began their studies, student enrollment increased once again.

by Jessalyn Pinneo Candles flicker on each table, illuminating bare outlines of the figures sitting there, lounging against the walls and listening. The low, mournful notes of a tenor saxophone slide into the room, lingering in the smoky air as a lone musician stands in the center of the stage. The lights come up on the stage, revealing the identity of the musician. It is Louis Armstrong, blasting out on his trumpet the rendition of ³St. Louis Blues² that made him famous. The crowd, a mix of black and white, goes wild.

The era is the Roaring Œ20s, the venue is D.C.¹s own Club Caverns ­ the U Street hotspot for jazz. During the time, the club hosted headliners such as Dizzy Gillespie, Billie Holiday, Miles Davis and Ella Fitzgerald.

The club opened at the height of the Jazz Age in 1926 and became popular with performers and patrons, alike, smoothing over racial and political tensions and immersing everyone who stepped through its doors in the culture of jazz.

GW students and faculty went wild for the new music style, using it to add life to a wide range of school events. The Hatchet ran an ad in nearly every issue for several years that read, ³Refined Orchestra, Jazz Music, Any Occasion.² Many headlines also included the word ³jazz.² ³Jazz to reign supreme at football hop² read a headline on Nov. 11, 1921, and ³Siren and jazz dance feature frat revel² read another on Dec. 18. Whenever jazz was featured at a ³smoker² (1920s slang for party), advertisements promised ³the jazziest of jazz music,² and sometimes ³the Œjazziest¹ jazz that Washington can produce!²

The country was in a frenetic uproar, with Prohibition at its peak and the Great Depression only a few years away, but GW students and Americans everywhere were immersed in the gaiety of the time and the whirlwind of sensations that was jazz.