Spring2024 37 STEPHEN JOHNSON/SJPHOTO.COM yearbook. Women asked men to the dance, gifted them massive corsages that blossomed extravagantly over their lapels, and paid their dates’ way. “The purpose of this dance,” the yearbook continues, “is unknown to the men who attend, but everyone enjoys it just the same.” And then there was “fussing” — slang for dating. The campus-wide obsession with dating is evidenced by the fact that the student directory itself was known the Fusser’s Guide.An analog face book long before there was Facebook, it contained the names, addresses, phone numbers and even, for a period, the marital status of everyone on campus. (In keeping with the theme, the covers of many in the 1940s came adorned with cupids and hearts.) Most first meetings would have taken place publicly. Students didn’t have personal phones in their rooms, so prospective suitors had to figure out where the other person lived, call and request to speak to them. (You can imagine how giggles might have spread down the dormitory hall when a young woman was summoned to the phone.) To understand the fateful matchups the book could produce, one need look no further than Ray Hewitt, ’71, and Janet Schamber, ’69. As winter break drew to a close in 1968, Hewitt paged through the Fusser’s Guide, calling girls who lived near his parents’ Idaho home to see if they might need a ride back to campus. The result? A 53-yearlong (and counting) marriage. The Fusser’s Guide kept its name into the ’70s, well after the term fell out of use. “That was just the name of the publication,” says Mary Jo (Casciato) Binker, ’73, who edited the Fusser’s Guide as a journalism and communications student. “No one I knew used that term to talk about dating.” The idea that romantic intrigue would play out on campus, and warnings about how it might go wrong, were also baked into the student code of conduct. “LEST YOU FORGET,” proclaims the 1920 Rook Bible in its orientation for new students, “YOU MUST NEVER … Fuss at athletic events. Fuss on weeknights.”Apparently mixing dating and sports was especially off limits because it could distract from rooting for the Beavers. The Co-Ed Code, a handbook for women students, gave guidance for how one might respond to romantic advances. “Now here’s the part of your ‘private affair’you’ve probably been dreaming about — dating,” says the 1949 handbook. It reeled off “popular boy-and-girl functions,” including lectures, movies, concerts, church events and dinners. Importantly, it offered advice forwhat to do if a swooning suitor showed up to express his love through song — namely, if it’s not your serenade, then mind your own business. Serenading was a very public part of certain Greek pinning ceremonies, in which a fraternity member gave his girlfriend a pin as an emblem of his devotion. (For decades, the Daily Barometer included a “Pins and Rings” column.) “As soon as you hear a serenade, you should be absolutely quiet,” the Co-Ed Code instructs.“Turn out your lights at once.” What if it’s an “improperly conducted serenade,” perhaps with a singer drawing courage from copious amounts of alcohol? These “should receive an attitude of complete indifference in an effort to curb them.” ۄ George and Mary in 1977 in Point Reyes, California. They fell in love 51 years earlier in an English class at Oregon State. George Mary Oppen “Parked in the fields / All night / So many years ago, / We saw / A lake beside us / When the moon rose.” So begins “The Forms of Love,” the poet George Oppen’s lyrical account of his first date with Mary Colby, whom he met in an English class at Oregon State College in 1926. They stayed out all night. Upon returning to campus in the morning, having broken curfew, Mary was expelled. George was merely suspended, but he, too, left the college; they moved to San Francisco, married, and remained together for the rest of their lives. They hitchhiked across the United States; started a small press in France; organized unions during the Great Depression; and wrote. In 1969, George received the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for his collection Of Being Numerous. As Mary writes in Meaning a Life: “Young George and Mary, or George and Mary now — so long as it is George and Mary it is life as I have known and lived it, as we have known and lived it.”
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