Last week I posted about the all-school holiday as an effort to forestall student enforced campus lockouts after big football victories. It took little effort to dig up other examples that I already had in my laptop files. This one comes in two pieces that I only put together this afternoon. The newspaper clipping is from a student scrapbook and I was a bit surprised to learn that a gate barricade at a tiny Texas college was worth an AP story:
The second piece is a photograph of the closed gate and it’s not a very good scan (I scanned it long ago) but if you squint you can see that there really are some hangers in there:
Sadly, despite the strong start to the conference season there was no championship that year. We finished right in the middle of the pack.
Bonus: I had a great visit this morning with my friend Sergio Garcia, who grew up on the wild western part of campus before it was all paved over. His daughter, Lillian, granddaughter Claudia, and Stephanie Scoville, one of our Fondren Fellows this year also joined in. I learned a lot, having thought of better questions to ask him this time. I’m very grateful to the Garcia family. (There’s a video at that link above, by the way, that is well worth your time even if you’ve seen it before. I still get choked up watching it.)
October 12, 1931 was a Monday. I’m guessing most of the impromptu closures after football games were Mondays.
Interesting . . . I’ll look.
Also, I could use a free Monday myself. Maybe we could bring this back. Probably not for football victories though.
As I explained in the previous post, a lockout was traditionally held on Monday after the first Southwest Conference win of the year (if any). In 1957, the students, much to the displeasure of the administration, locked out a second time after the A&M win. I believe this led to an all-school holiday being declared each year on the Saturday of the first SWC road game in exchange for a no-lockout pledge. Because of the scheduling, this was always the SMU game one year and the Texas game the next year. The Owls always played the SWC in this order: SMU, Texas, Arkansas, A&M, TCU, Baylor. Texas Tech and U of H had not yet arrived on the scene, and Arkansas was still in.
Monday? I don’t think my calendar has Mondays.
At least, I don’t remember many.
At least, I don’t remember many.