Back in the day . . .

[gee_ess]

KAtmandu says,
Dinner (and more singing) We ate sit down family style dinners every night served by House Boys. Formal Dinners were held every Sunday at noon and Monday evening (chapter night). Formal dinner required pins, dresses, stockings. (no "pantsuits").

The door to the dining room opened at 5:30, and the house mother was escorted to her table by the head house boy. Her table was expected to fill up first, the President's and VP's tables were expected to fill up next. No one had assigned seats but them. If you didn't want to sit at one of the head tables, you hung back at the back of the crowd.

As we entered the room, we stood behind our chairs and the song leader led us in a sung prayer (with three part harmony) then we sat down after the house mother and president were seated.

Our dining room had tables for eight, and the head of table was responsible for passing food, seeing that each person had what they needed, using a little silver bell to summon a house boy for more water, tea, butter, etc. All of the sororities had house boys and it was a prized job on campus.



Every word of this is still very much in practice at Monday night formal dinners on one campus I know of...