Daily Hansan
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Friday, Nov. 9, 1962
LAWRENCE, KANSAS
60th Year, No. 41
SECTION B
DOC YAK—During the '20s, the annual arrival of Doc Yak and his "Famous Pep Pills," enlivened Homecoming week. This pep rally in
--front of Green Hall in 1929 shows students anxiously awaiting his arrival.
Alums Return to Recapture College Days of Their Youth
By Rose Osborne
KU alumni will forsake babies and business to rendezvous with the past this weekend.
Homecoming offers the alums a chance to leave the daily grind to recapture their college youth.
Each year the Alma Mater sounds sadder, the game longer, the climb to the Campanile steeper and all the other alumni older.
To alumni Sam, the campus hasn't changed a bit.
Skirts are as short as they were in the forties. The twist is as revealing as the black bottom of the thirties. There is the same old Saturday night crowd at the Campanile
For a weekend Alumni Sam can relive his college days.
GRADS OF THE LATE 1800's might recall the night pranksters roiled a Civil War cannon from the court house up the hill and opened fire on the totem pole erected in front of Fraser by the class of 1833.
Alums of 1911 remember the day a crowd assembled for commencement sighted a whale in Potter's lake. Nobody ever harpooned KU's Moby Dick. The creature disappeared, but nobody ever denied it
This was the era of the beanie and the paddle. Insisting that freshmen were too fresh, upperclassmen of 1908 decreed that "every freshman shall wear a light green skull cap
with a bright red button not less than 1½ inches in diameter.
Fresh were to tip caps to faculty members, touch caps to seniors and give up their seats to upperclassmen. No freshman was allowed on campus with a date.
KU STUDENTS tripped through the twenties with their ukuleles and racon coats. Fellows decided that University women were sufficiently educated to ignore a rule prohibiting smoking in front of women.
In 1926 the Rock Chalk Cairn was erected from a pile of native stones on the highest point on Mt. Oread overlooking Memorial Stadium. The Cairn symbolized KU traditions, history and ideals until vandals blew it up with dynamite in 1933. The Cairn was rebuilt to the North of the Campanile.
Students literally went about unshaven and in sloppy shirts Friday before the Homecoming game.
The thirties saw Hobo Day come to the campus.
This was the decade when KU was known as the "lilac campus of America." Any student could spread an epidemic of spring fever just by sneezing.
The forties brought Dandelion Day and the "Bitter Bird" to KU, and took part of the student body to war.
IN 1938 DROUGHT and borers nearly wiped out the lilacs, but the campus retained its easy informality.
In 1941 a student army of 3,400
In This Section
International Focus . . page 3
New Construction . . page 4
Honey Queen . . . page 13
Class Gifts . . . . page 14
That was the year Beta Theta Pi's great mascott — a Great Dane — was picked up and booked by Lawrence police for disturbing the peace.
Stag week and a night shirt parade livened up the campus for the 49er's.
NO DATES or shaves were allowed during stag week. The project was almost sabotaged when a sorority visited two fraternity houses. At one fraternity the women were welcomed warmly. The boys at the second house "courteously" poured water on them.
Stag week was short-lived. KU women put a damper on it.
By 1949 dandelions growing on Mt. Oread were so sparse that the Building and Grounds Department could control them with spray.
attacked 18%4 million dandelions on the hill.
CLASSES BECAME smaller during the war years and social life slowed. In 1946 the "Bitter Bird" turned up as the campus humor magazine, featuring an alluring she and fascinating he each month.
A night shirt parade may not have been a compromise for stag week, but at least marchers filed down the hill two by two.
Nightshirted men and women in blue jeans and pigtails gathered for a bonfire rally in South Park.
The fifties witnessed the compaction of the Campanile — a monument to KU students killed in World War II.
In 1522 the bells rang for KU homecoming and a student protested that football queen candidates should be curvy, rather than cultural and intellectual.
It was rumored that law students had planted poison ivy in back of the law building to discourage any KU women who might want to detour around Green Hall and the statue of "Uncle Jimmy Green" to class.
The law students and Uncle Jimmy are still here. The ivy is, too.
Wild Days of '37 Are Now Passe
A KU graduate of 1937 attending the 1962 Homecoming will probably not see many of the things which made his Homecoming celebration wild and wooly a few years back.
Gone, for example, is the sorority mouse race.
Held on "Hobo Day," the mouse race was a big affair in '37. That year, the Chi Omega entry won, but only after some cheering soul blasted the little beast out of the starting circle with a snowball.
Gone also is the fraternity sack race, which began right after the completion of the mouse race. Fresh runners, in true Pony Express tradition, sacked the course which started in front of Hoch Auditorium and ended at the Student Union. Relay runners were stationed at the Commons and at Fraser.
(The Commons was a white frame building that sat, until it burned down in 1941, in front of Watson on the corner of Jayhawk and Sunflower. It housed the first cafeteria, and later the anatomy department.)
"Red" McGinley won the sack race for the Phi Gam's, and then proceeded to top his own feat by winning the "Shiller Shore Manhood Trophy" for the longest and most bristling beard among the assembled Hobos.
Hobo Day was tradition unto itself. The day before the game, students and returning alums dressed in their Saturday worst as LiL Abner and Daisy Mae for a snake dance and "Doe" Yak's medicine show in Hoch. The medicine show featured a torch singer, a "Jam" band, and the selection of the Hobo Day queen.
The '37 Homecoming had a few firsts, too. WHB in Kansas City carried the Homecoming game on a national radio hookup, and also carried a 15 minute pep rally before the game. One WHB official with a flair for words called the program "College Spirit in the Modern Manner."
An integral part of Homecoming was the parade down Massachusetts St., complete with fireworks and costumed Indians from Haskell. The parade, rally, and other pre-game activities were directed by Russell L. Wilev, director of the University Band.
One tradition has been retained. Because of the "Cinderella" team KU had that year, the rumor was going around that if KU defeated the University of Missouri, the administration might add an extra day to Thanksgiving vacation. The administration said no.
But KU didn't beat MU anyway. The game ended in and 0-0 tie. A Missouri fan, in his cups to a rather disgraceful degree, said that if either team had left the field, the other wouldn't have been able to score for five minutes.
Homecoming queen in '37 was Doris Johnson, Kappa Kappa Gamma. She was, and this is a tradition that is perhaps well forgotten, chosen by the players of the Missouri team.
HOBO DAY—This pleasant looking couple won first place in the Hobo Day contest during the 20's. The first Hobo Day was held in 1894 and became an annual part of the Homecoming celebration. The tradition was discontinued in the late '30s partially because of the vandalism which usually accompanied the event.