Who was that on Friday night? After a weekend of partying, it’s a question no one wants to have unanswered. Wesleyan students in the 1910s through the ’50s, however, could have just looked at the Argus. At then all-male Wesleyan, the names and schools of the girls who arrived for Homecoming, the Winter Balls and the Spring Dances were listed in the paper. The list was sorted by frat. Everyone was in a frat.
But first you had to get a date. Wesleyan’s first fling with female students ended in 1914, but even prior to that the women on campus weren’t popular with many male students. Not only were they seen as bookish and threatening to the men by winning academic awards, they also threatened the fraternity system. The only men who hung out with them were the strange ones who didn’t belong in the fraternities. Wesleyan girls were nothing like the girls at Vassar, Smith or Mt. Holyoke. Those girls didn’t do anything to interfere with the fraternities; they fit right in. So, to get a date you wrote a letter, and then you went down to the train station to pick her up.
At the time of these dances, the Argus played second fiddle to Wesleyan humor magazines. The Wesleyan Wasp was published quite frequently and was apparently well received. In the 1910s and early ’20s it would anonymously lampoon individual students and professors. The second page often admonished the reader to buy an extra copy for his date. In later years the magazine had witty poems like this one:
The girl I have at parties
Can’t be classed as any ace
But you’ll have to give her credit
She has a lovely face
I’ll admit her weight’s against her
And she’s not a hot embrace
But what care I for all of that,
She has a lovely face
She digs for gold aplenty,
And she sets a lively pace,
But she is nice regardless,
She has a lovely face
-The Wesleyan Wasp, June 2, 1930
The Weasel, a magazine that was far less of a regular institution at Wesleyan, was slightly more to the point about what the dating scene was really about. One cover shows a weasel dressed up in a suit, waiting at the Meriden train station. He is drinking beer out of a large beer stein and flipping his watch. The sign above lists the train times for trains from Wellesley, Smith and Vassar.
The magazine is from 1941 and the jokes all revolve around impressing your date with how much money you have or getting her drunk and then trying to “make her.” Years from now, historians will be trying to figure out what we mean when we say “hook up.” You have to be careful that you don’t want to make her too fast. An article entitled “Is virginity a Myth?” illustrates the fear that if she isn’t a virgin, then maybe she is just having sex to get at your money.
From “Is She Adequate? A Score-Card for Your Date”
How do you know when she’s drunk?
a) wants to lie down
b) lies down
c) talks with mouth closed
d) shrinks to half size
e) removes outer garments
f) gets hot and cold flashes
Next morning does she
a) hate herself
b) hate you
c) want to go for a bird-walk
d) wag her tail feebly
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