36 ForOregonState.org/Stater IN THE BEGINNING, IT WASN’T ALWAYS easy to find ways to fan romantic flames on campus. In fact, the university went to lengths to make it quite difficult. “All communications between ladies and gentlemen on the College premises are expressly forbidden,” reads the 1881-1882 general catalog. Social interactions between the sexes were strictly regulated in Oregon during that period, and the college campus was no different. So it remained for some 70 years to follow. “It was the nature of society at the time — anything having to do with sex was just verboten,” says Larry Landis, former director of OSU’s Special Collections andArchives Research Center.“I think that extended to anything that could be construed as a romantic interaction between men and women who attended the college.” Breaking those rules could have serious consequences, ranging from demerits (100 of which amounted to a dismissal) to outright expulsion. In 1926, George Oppen, who would become a Pulitzer Prize-winning poet, asked Mary Colby out. “We drove out into the country, sat and talked, made love, and talked until morning,” Mary writes in her autobiography, Meaning a Life. “I was expelled from the college for coming in past the dormitory curfew.” Consequences tended to be more severe for women: George faced only suspension, but he chose to withdraw from school to remain with Mary. The college did soften its original “no fraternizing” stance, however, to create venues and events where students could socialize under supervision. Starting in 1897, sanctioned campus dances were especially important. These were often elaborate, rigorously produced and put on in collaboration with Oregon State’s military department. (At this time, all male students received military training.) Picture cadets in smart uniforms, women with dance cards — small booklets with space to pencil in the dance partner for each waltz or two-step or polka — tied around their wrists, and faculty chaperones keeping careful watch. Until about 1967, when dance cards fell out of use, they remained important keepsakes, serving as a written record of first dances and fateful nights. In 1905,the first Greek organization,the fraternity Gamma Delta Phi, earned a permanent charter at OSU.Alpha Chi Omega followed as the university’s first national sorority in 1915. Women were absolutely prohibited from going into fraternity houses without a chaperone, but fraternities and sororities co-hosted their own mixers and dances. Over the following decades, dances multiplied and became more playful. Mortar Board, an honorary club for senior women, hosted an annual event called the Reversia Dance, in which “strong men shudder, play coy and in general, act like they think the women have acted,” according to the 1953 THE COED CODE OFFERED ad i e FOR WHAT TO DO IF A sw oning SUITOR SHOWED UP TO EXPRESS HIS LOVE THROUGH SONG. “
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