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courtship in 20th century America: greek side
So I'm reading From Front Porch to Back Seat: Courtship in Twentieth-Century America for one of my classes. Here are a few of the greek references in the book:
At Massachusetts State (soon to become the University of Massachusetts, Amherst), where the ratio of men to women was one to eight (it had been one ot five the other way in the "Golden Age" of the 1930s), "morale hit the dirt as dungaree sales soared." Women turned to one another for companionship, forming six sororities (the first in the school's history) between 1941 and 1945.
A survey at Northwestern found that most women were attending college to find a husband. Joanne Sykora, class of 1950, told the Daily Northwestern: "My mother told me that if I went to college I might meet a boy who would be able to provide me with the things to which I would like to becoem accustomed." NU's chapter of A E Phi advertised in their sorority newspaper, Chez E Phi , for "Husbands for all A E Phi seniors so they will not graduate and disgrace their sorority."
In the 1930s the President's Council at Ohio State reported that some fraternities were spending $1000 per formal.
At the University of Michigan, in the 1920s, a humor columnist cataloged the "tragic incidents," the "moans and discords" of serenades- a ritual in which fraternity men paid tribute to the lady love of one of the brothers- and in his punchline, speculated that the administration might be forced to regulate serenading to prevent "serious injuries." By 1962, the student handbook listed almost a page of regulations governing serenades.
At Northwestern, the first regulations of serenades appeared in the student handbook of 1951-52. Serenades could be held only on Monday evenings before 9:00PM and had to be registered in advance with the Student Affairs Calendar Office.
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