Seriously. IU, like several other schools, had "women's hours" up until the late 60s. In my guidebook, I read that Read Center, which used to be a women's dorm (it's coed now), still has doorbells at the entrances to the wings - the doors were locked at curfew, and if a woman came back after curfew, she had to ring the doorbell to get in! :eek:

When I was a freshman at the U of Alabama, I went to visit my boyfriend at a small college, Florence State, and stayed in the dorm room of some of his female friends (platonic!!) who went home for the weekend. We went out for a bite to eat and were headed to a movie when he asked, "You did check out, didn't you?" Well no, I never heard of having to check out of the dorm! We had to race back to the dorm and I had to pull a card and check out...and then check back in at curfew. Talk about dark ages!
Very few rooms in our sorority houses had individual phones...if the girls were rich enough, they could have one put in (expensive! Probably $25 a month...equivalent of about $150 2007 dollars). Most everybody took calls in the "Anchor Room," a 2nd floor room at the top of the stairs that had 2 phones and three couches. That was command central! Lonely? You could go hang out in the Anchor Room and talk to the pledge on phone duty. Need advice on an outfit? Go to the Anchor Room where there were bound to be a few sisters hanging out, ready and willing to voice their opinions in front of the full length mirror in the hallway just outside. There was usually a card game going on...and of course a few sisters taking a cigarette break...one year during exams, somebody left a stack of tacky romance comics there, which we devoured...those WERE the days, LOL!:rolleyes:

oh anchoralumna, you really brought back memories.

no one had phones in their rooms during my time-it just never dawned on us. there was a phone on the 3rd floor landing, one on the 2nd and of course, the phone/mail room, where phone duty was carried out. we had 2 or 3 lines-i can't remember.

pledges had to serve as door monitor/phone answerer from 5 to 7 on a rotation basis(because they did not live in the house) and "actives" manned the phone room and answered the door from 7 to 11. executive officers did not hold phone duty. somehow, we all managed to make and receive phone calls with minimal problems, and it was always exciting when the intercom buzzed and the voice from downstairs said, "fsuzeta, you have a call on line
1."

That brings back good memories to me too..

We had a main phone by the front door and it was so exciting when you came in and found that you had a message from someone special!

I remember dancing a jig in the front hall when I saw that a certain someone (who is now my husband) had called after our "blind date.":p

No cell phones, no instant messages, no webpages, definitely a simpler life!

When I was in college, small private school, mid-80s, our campus had a very strict curfew for the women. Freshman women had to be in the dorms by 10 PM weeknights and Midnight on weekends. Upper-class women had curfews of Midnight weeknights and 2 AM on weekends. RAs did bed check at 10:01 PM and 12:01 AM.

You could get 2-hour extensions to your curfew, which had to be filled out prior to check out. Freshman got 6 per semester and Upper-class women got 10 per semester. There were four carbons and one of those was mailed to your parents.

We could only have male guests in our rooms once a month on a certain day. It was usually 6 PM – 10 PM on a Friday or Saturday night. You could only have two guests per visit and the doors had to be completely open.

If you were not waiting for your date in the lobby, the front desk would announce that you had a visitor on your floor’s PA system. Nosey girls would call down to the front desk and see who was picking you up. If you looked up at the windows when you were leaving, you could see all the faces peeking out. I was one of the few girls who had a private phone line. Those who didn’t had to use the hall phones.

When I pledged my chapter in 1992, we didn't have phone lines in all the rooms either. (I think perhaps 2 or 3 rooms did have private lines, because somewhere along the line the occupants of the room paid for the installation out of their own pockets. But the vast majority of in-house residents had to rely on the house phone.)

I did phone duty as a pledge, and also as an active. We had a system down for paging someone over the intercom...a "phone" call meant that you had a female caller, a "telephone" call meant that the caller was male. There was a similar system for visitors...if you were being paged that you had a "guest" it was a female. If you were being paged that you had a "visitor" it was a male. Ah...brings back memories. :)

The rules were relaxing quickly throughtout the seventies at Auburn; for example, senior women didn't have to sign out! This was great for several reasons but a biggie was that we realized that guys were reading our sign-out cards before we came downstairs to see who we'd been going out with. So one of my sisters wrote some fake names on her card and when she walked in, her date said, "I hear you've been going out with 'Chip Smith'."

She had created the name out of the blue and asked him how he knew and he said, "Oh, people know. People talk.":eek:

I'm beginning to think that a "The Way Things Were" thread would be terribly interesting! In many ways, we had it much easier, but in others, much harder. We had our own phones, but we also had a sorority phone in the Chapter Room.

I can also remember going to a girlfriend's home, whose kitchen was just remodeled. She was the first person I knew with a microwave!

I remember living in the KD Dorm at Auburn in the mid seventies...when your date came to get you he came inside, picked up a phone at the desk, dialed the last four digits of your phone number (we all had phones in our rooms) and told you that he was downstairs. For a couple of years I dated the cutest KA who had the MOST southern accent I have ever heard (and I am from Alabama)....I'd pick up the phone and all he would say is : "Ah'm in yo LOBbih."

wonder whatever happened to him?????

And Carnation...what year did you pledge?

I would love to read this! I've been out of college a long time, but I don't think that much has changed in terms of schools regulations since I was there. Technologically, a lot has changed, and I'm sure it has a social impact.

But I'd love to hear about how things were and are now.

Carnation, your "Chip Smith" dating friend was a genius. Did she ever let on what she had done?

No, I think she thought he was an idiot from that moment and never went out with him again. The jokes about Chip, though, lasted until we graduated!

The sad thing is, this kind of thing used to be done for decorum and formality's sake. Now, they still have systems to get into the houses, but it's for safety's sake. When I lived in the house, we had an intercom in the foyer, and you had to go downstairs and let your guest in.

They told us it was for safety's sake because we might be in some kind of distress if we didn't come in at night. However, college boys can be in distress too and I heard that freshman boys never even had to sign out from Auburn's earliest days. Also, AU women (except for seniors) had to live on campus and no men did.

I bet they did. I suspect if you had a reunion or at homecoming, people would still love to see his name on a list of guests.

I can see "Oh, people know. People talk" becoming a catch phrase too, maybe to tip a friend off that you were bluffing about something or couldn't reveal your sources.

Do you think it should stay in Recruitment, or in Greek Life? I'm interested in the "historical" aspect, too!

Of course, I've also toyed with doing my own Recruitment Thread, only because it was done so completely differently! Pitt had a hybrid of its own rush & NPC that is very unique!