World War I War Service

Barnard College was an active participant in the war relief effort during World War I. Barnard was a partner with Columbia University in the Columbia University Mobilization Committee for Women’s Work, which launched a concerted campaign to assist the country in places such as rural areas suffering from the scarcity of male labor, in foreign locations in need of medical care and supplies, and locally with the soldiers coming from and going to war. The Columbia University Mobilization Committee for Women’s Work became the Committee on Women’s War Work in June, 1917, and they, along with the Barnard College War Relief Association, spearheaded activities such as the Women’s Agricultural Camp that provided manual labor to farms in upstate New York that had lost many of their farmhands to the war; nurses, through the American Red Cross, to assist with the repatriation of devastated towns and villages in France; workers, through the YMCA, to set up and work in canteens in France; and undergraduate students and alumnae who set up and worked at a canteen at the Columbia University Boathouse to feed, socialize with and entertain troops in transit through New York City going home from the war.