This one is indicitive of Huntsville Texas

[carol c]

This article is why there are no rape convictions on record in Walker County and there are flagrant hazing incidents that occur at the SHSU campus-they have been doing stupid things to students for years and thinking it was just dandy! What an old fool! As you can see-she remained unmarried all of those years, too. I wonder why!

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October 12, 2000
Item guest column

Recent stories have appeared in The Huntsville Item concerning a female student's hazing at Sam Houston State University in 2000.

I graduated from high school in 1932. When I was a freshman at Sam Houston State Teachers College, I was initiated into the Women's Athletic Club. We watched as upperclasswomen cracked eggs into a dish pan. They beat the eggs thoroughly, then poured into it a bottle of Mercurochrome (we called it "monkey blood" then, and a bottle was in every medicine cabinet). Later, I realized that this was probably a whole undiluted bottle of red food coloring in a "monkey blood" bottle.

As we lined up and passed by the table, a sophomore took a wide paintbrush and swiped our faces, foreheads, cheeks and chins with this mixture. Since it was September in Huntsville, the dry hot weather hardened the mixture at once.

Stripped down to panties and bras (we called 'em brassieres way back then) on our "all-fours," lined up in a "company front," we raced about 25 yards pushing a peanut with our noses (I won).

When I got home, my roommate began peeling the egg mask off my face. It came off easily and resulted in as nice a facial as any beauty parlor gives today.

The next year, as a sophomore, I was a member of the gleeful group to torture the freshmen.

First, we cut off their fingernail tips - straight across. One little blonde cutie burst into tears, but I felt no sympathy. I knew they'd grow back.

For the second part of the ceremony, we had lined up three Ping-Pong tables and strewn them with crumbled, dry soda crackers. Stripped to panties and bras, the freshmen were marched into the darkened gym. Sophomores who were big and strong stood alongside the tables. We told the freshmen, "This is sort of like running a gauntlet. The tables are loaded with dirt and gravel."

One at a time, we laid these girls across the end of the tables. Told them to stretch out and hold themselves very stiffly "so it wouldn't hurt so bad." Then we'd catch them by arms and feet and roll them over and over down the tables. Passing them along, we could have seven or more going down those tables at once. Some of them screamed, one or two cried, but most of them just laughed, especially when Miss Powell turned on the lights.

I considered these two initiations as good, clean fun.

I wonder why officials of SHSTC didn't disband the Athletic Club for Women! In the year 2000, they probably would.

My, my! How times have changed! Weren't we awful in the 1930s to haze those girls?


- Vernon Marie Schuder was born in Walker County 84 years ago and has lived in the same house in Riverside for 62 years.