Make your bed, clean your room and be home by 11 p.m. These seem like the rules of a strict parent.
But until the 1970s, the University required students to follow each of those rules and more, with harsh consequences for non-compliance.
Until the age of majority was reduced from 21 to 18 in 1971, the University acted “in loco parentis” or “in the place of the parent,” said University archivist Barry Cowan.
Part of the University’s strict regulations were derived from the school’s military past, Cowan said.
Since the school’s foundation in 1860 and until 1969, male freshman and sophomore students were required to join ROTC.
Officers forced students to keep their uniforms clean and their rooms tidy for daily inspections, Cowan said. Poor marks on room inspections or missing buttons were met with demerits. As students accumulated demerits, they were assigned extra guard duties or more serious punishments, he said.
A wide range of well-intentioned rules restricted interaction between male and female students from the time women were first admitted to the University in 1906.
“The University was responsible for students’ well-being and their safety,” Cowan said. “They believed that if they kept girls and boys apart as much as they could and limited their activities together as much as they could, it would be better for everybody.”
This segregation was evident within the administration as well, Cowan said. The Dean of Men handled student misconduct for non-ROTC-affiliated male students, and the Commandant of Cadets for ROTC students. The Dean of Women governed female students.
“Rules for the girls were a lot more strict than they were for boys,” Cowan said.
This inequity was evident in archived “L-Books,” which list the Student Code of Conduct.
The 1950 to 1951 code of conduct forbade women from wearing shorts on campus unless they were participating in physical education classes, and women were restricted to certain areas of campus between dark and daylight.
The 1961 to 1963 “L-Book” dedicated seven pages to regulations specific to women and only one page specific to men.
All of that started to change in the late 1960s and early 1970s, Cowan said.
“After the age of majority was lowered, most of the students on campus were 18 to 20 years old,” he said. “They wanted more say in how they lived their lives, so that is when a lot of rules broke down.”
Cowan observed an “overnight change” in the attire and hairstyles of students as he looked back at that era’s editions of the Gumbo.
One of the biggest changes was the relaxation of rules in student housing, Cowan said. Some dormitories began to house male and female students, and students were not as closely monitored in their rooms, he said.
Adrian Naquin lived in the Tiger Stadium North residence halls as a freshman in 1971. He described an “‘Animal House’ environment” that was a far cry from the regimented dormitory lifestyle enforced just a few years earlier.
“Hall proctors used to keep an eye on students, but this place was so bulletproof that you did not have to have hall proctors,” Naquin said.
Cowan looked back at his own time as a student at the University starting in 1985. He said by the time he arrived, the University had evolved into the commuter school it is today.
He said he believed the tight restrictions placed on students in the past helped foster a tighter-knit campus community than could be found in his time, or today.
“Students had more fun back then than they do now,” he said. “They had to stay on campus and invent things to do. Now it is just, ‘Hey let’s go out.'”
 
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Contact Paul Braun at [email protected]