Mischief Managed

Well-behaved women seldom make history, wrote Laurel Thatcher Ulrich. Girls just want to have fun, sang Cyndi Lauper. At Westhampton, we have our fair share of history-making, fun-loving women.

But you’d never guess that from looking at the old handbooks. Back then, the rule book was still a literal book. And there were social regulations to govern nearly every aspect of life that co-eds today take for granted: where to sunbathe, when you can go off campus, and when and how you can go on a date.

To be sure, many complained. Many students still complain about University rules. But these regulations existed during a time when the consumption of any alcohol, regardless of the legal age, was considered against the University’s educational mission. A first-year’s overnight absences from campus had to be approved by the dean. The University stood solidly in loco parentis. Most institutions of higher education did.

First-year women in the late ’20s endured a week of nightly classes and a written exam on the social regulations of the day. The seniors helped lead the five- to six-person groups.

“The purpose of these classes was to teach the new girls not only the literal wording of the rules, but also to interpret them in the approved manner,” reads one Collegian article.

But it’s hard not to think that “interpreting” the rules left a little wiggle room. In 1942, Dean Raymond Pinchbeck of Richmond College addressed reports of men visiting the Westhampton Activities Building tea room and lounge outside of scheduled visitation hours. Pinchbeck used The Collegian to exhort his male charges to “cooperate with the faculty and administration at Westhampton College in observing strictly all of the rules of Westhampton College.”

In the 1950s, The Collegian alleged that the first-ever panty raid occurred with the complicity of South Court residents flinging souvenirs from the second-floor windows above the courtyard.

On paper, you might think that Westhampton and Richmond were models of ordered conformity. But that assumption is just wrong. Sparks of individuality and a sense of humor emerge when you begin to read between the lines. Take this senior picture of Edith Garland Sydnor, W’19, from The Tower. She listed as her ambition “to show the faculty how.”