One of my favorite things about the early years of the Institute is their home-made quality. With no traditions or even examples close at hand the students merrily made up campus life as they went along. Most of their organizations and events, from the band to the clubs to the newspaper, started in this unsystematic way. A whole social world grew up and then was lost and replaced with the advent of the college system in 1957. Pieces of the old ways survived that transition, though, and it’s always fun to see them crop up.
I was therefore delighted to come across this clipping from the Semi-centennial in 1962, in which the Reverend Oscar F. Green, ’16, sort of off-handedly describes the nearly accidental origins of the freshman beanies, which lasted roughly until 1970:
Just for fun here’s young Mr. Green in the first volume of the Campanile:
Bonus: The leaves are finally falling in earnest, a sure sign that it’s mid-winter.
