# Did college students of yesteryear regularly wear beanies? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [January 10, 2013, 4:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-college-students-of-yesteryear-regularly-wear-beanies/646719 "2013-01-10T04:08:16Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 13\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Indistinguishable](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/90ced4/32.png) [@Indistinguishable](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Indistinguishable)\ **Post date:** [January 12, 2013, 5:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-college-students-of-yesteryear-regularly-wear-beanies/646719/41 "2013-01-12T17:58:51Z")
> [@UncleFred](#): > > RPI had a 33% drop-out rate. At our first orientation meeting they told us “Look to you right. Now your left. One of you won’t make it.” > [@Leo\_Bloom](#): > > The mathematics of this cannot be right. I can’t formalize it though. Why not? For example, suppose the students were in a line, in which every third student, including the second and the penultimate [with the number of students being a perfect multiple of 3], would eventually drop out. Then, indeed, of every student, either they or a student adjacent to them would drop out. It’s unlikely for the drop-outs to be so uniformly spread through the line, of course, but not impossible… ---
**Author:** ![Spoke](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a88e57/32.png) [@Spoke](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spoke)\ **Post date:** [January 12, 2013, 6:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-college-students-of-yesteryear-regularly-wear-beanies/646719/42 "2013-01-12T18:53:15Z")
Duke had a [unique take on beanies](http://i.ebayimg.com/00/s/NDgwWDY0MA==/$%28KGrHqZHJCIE-pSH68b,BP+Lipd!1w~~60_35.JPG). As recently as the 1980s, the freshmen of House P wore these to basketball games as an emblem of solidarity. ---
**Author:** ![Gothamaven](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/71e660/32.png) [@Gothamaven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gothamaven)\ **Post date:** [January 10, 2014, 8:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-college-students-of-yesteryear-regularly-wear-beanies/646719/43 "2014-01-10T20:46:50Z")
My brother went to NYU (which was then on a campus in the Bronx) in 1966 and caused a minor uproar when he refused to wear the beanie that every freshman was supposed to wear. 1966! Seemed crazy then, and crazier now. ---
**Author:** ![Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/spectre_of_pithecanthropus/32/12343_2.png) [@Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spectre_of_Pithecanthropus)\ **Post date:** [January 10, 2014, 10:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-college-students-of-yesteryear-regularly-wear-beanies/646719/44 "2014-01-10T22:28:12Z")
> [@UncleFred](#): > > Again, at RPI 1968 all freshman were expected to wear their beanines at least through orientation week. The people running orientation told us it was a ‘team buillding’ thing, but it felt more like humiliation. > > I don’t recall fraternities requiring pledges to wear their beanies (I didn’t pledge) but it might have been. > > RPI had a 33% drop-out rate. At our first orientation meeting they told us “Look to you right. Now your left. One of you won’t make it.” > > Makes you feel right at home… I think we got a similar line at my Revelle College (one of several undergrad residential colleges UCSD). But what they never seem to make clear is whether that included people who transferred to other in-house colleges, or to other universities, for any and all reasons one might have for doing that. As for beanies, when the school opened in the mid 1960s freshman were supposed to wear them at some point but I have no idea if many freshmen actually did so. From old pictures I’ve seen the beanies in question were more the sailor-hat style as described by **yabob**. By 1975, when I arrived, the practice had been long forgotten. ---
**Author:** ![Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/spectre_of_pithecanthropus/32/12343_2.png) [@Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spectre_of_Pithecanthropus)\ **Post date:** [January 10, 2014, 10:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-college-students-of-yesteryear-regularly-wear-beanies/646719/45 "2014-01-10T22:30:29Z")
> [@Indistinguishable](#): > > Why not? For example, suppose the students were in a line, in which every third student, including the second and the penultimate [with the number of students being a perfect multiple of 3], would eventually drop out. Then, indeed, of every student, either they or a student adjacent to them would drop out. It’s unlikely for the drop-outs to be so uniformly spread through the line, of course, but not impossible… Engineers! Actually, although IANAE, I have to admit I was pondering the same questions… For instance, what if the dropout rate was 32%? Then _nearly_ one of you wouldn’t make it, leaving a thin slice of person on graduation day? ---
**Author:** ![Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/spectre_of_pithecanthropus/32/12343_2.png) [@Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spectre_of_Pithecanthropus)\ **Post date:** [January 10, 2014, 10:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-college-students-of-yesteryear-regularly-wear-beanies/646719/46 "2014-01-10T22:42:39Z")
> [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](#): > > Flounder wore one as a freshman in _Animal House_, set in Fall 1962, and was clearly portrayed as a dweeb for doing so: [https://images.nonexiste.net/img/irc/2011/04/05/Flounder-Animal-House.jpg](https://images.nonexiste.net/img/irc/2011/04/05/Flounder-Animal-House.jpg) I never saw it that way; I took the character to be a dweeb generally and the beanie wearing was tangential to that. Chip Diller, the Kevin Bacon character, also wore his, and I wouldn’t call him a dweeb. He was more like a well-bred ass, rather than socially awkward in the manner of Flounder. I used to have the National Lampoon graphic novelization, and it went into a little more background on Chip Diller. ---
**Author:** ![Neidhart](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/bbe5ce/32.png) [@Neidhart](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Neidhart)\ **Post date:** [January 10, 2014, 10:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-college-students-of-yesteryear-regularly-wear-beanies/646719/47 "2014-01-10T22:55:22Z")
The University of Maryland at College Park required freshmen, both male and female, to wear beanies, known as “dinks”, as late as 1961, as seen in the yearbook for that year. Nobody seems to know when that tradition died. ---
**Author:** ![Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/spectre_of_pithecanthropus/32/12343_2.png) [@Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spectre_of_Pithecanthropus)\ **Post date:** [January 10, 2014, 11:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-college-students-of-yesteryear-regularly-wear-beanies/646719/48 "2014-01-10T23:07:48Z")
> [@Hottius\_Maximus](#): > > I am seeing several posters here talking about “requirements for freshmen” to wear the beanie as a mild form of hazing. Was this then strictly for pledges to fraternities? What if a freshman was not a pledge to any particular frat house? Would the college administration still want the incoming freshmen to wear the beanies and if so why? Such hazing as we hear about these days seems to revolve around Greek societies, sports teams, and marching bands. As bad as that can be, if you go back about 100 years there used to be a great deal more hazing of freshmen generally,in both high schools and colleges–sometimes to an extent bordering on mayhem. For instance, KU had annual class brawl between the frosh and sophomore men, and I don’t think it was something you could abstain from without paying some significant social cost. ---
**Author:** ![Hari\_Seldon](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hari_seldon/32/5173_2.png) [@Hari\_Seldon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hari_Seldon)\ **Post date:** [January 10, 2014, 11:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-college-students-of-yesteryear-regularly-wear-beanies/646719/49 "2014-01-10T23:09:17Z")
When I started at Penn in 1954 freshmen were “required” to wear beanies. For the whole year IIRC. I never even owned one, but then I was a part-timer and a commuter besides. No one ever bugged me about it. ---
**Author:** ![Ludovic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/7ab992/32.png) [@Ludovic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ludovic)\ **Post date:** [January 10, 2014, 11:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-college-students-of-yesteryear-regularly-wear-beanies/646719/50 "2014-01-10T23:12:51Z")
> [@smithsb](#): > > Also the time for election of student body president. Political “parties” would sponsor candidates at rallies in the fieldhouse. Complete with beer and (no kidding) strippers :eek: In fact, forget the election! ---
**Author:** ![Kenm](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/bc79bd/32.png) [@Kenm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kenm)\ **Post date:** [January 10, 2014, 11:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-college-students-of-yesteryear-regularly-wear-beanies/646719/51 "2014-01-10T23:47:32Z")
> [@Senegoid](#): > > To my immature and juvenile (or maybe nasciently senile) mind, a “beanie” will always and only refer to that children’s headgear, a skullcap with a [little propeller sticking up on top](http://th06.deviantart.net/fs70/PRE/i/2010/073/2/0/Beany_and_Cecil_by_zombiegoon.jpg). From 1900 until powered heavier-than-air flight in 1903, beanies had dirigibles on top, which occasionally burst into flames, thereby bringing freshmen’s bald heads into vogue and creating the word “whoosh.” As is this post. ---
**Author:** ![Spavined\_Gelding](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/958977/32.png) [@Spavined\_Gelding](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spavined_Gelding)\ **Post date:** [January 11, 2014, 3:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-college-students-of-yesteryear-regularly-wear-beanies/646719/52 "2014-01-11T03:19:10Z")
I can tell you precisely when the freshman beanie tradition did in the Big Ten universities. It was at the beginning of the fall term in 1946 when the universities saw the first wave of GI Bill students. Those guys weren’t much for a lot of Mickey Mouse rules, including curfews and no booze in the dorms. Requiring a young man who had been through the Pacific War or who had been riding in bombers over Europe or who had walked across North Africa and Europe to wear a beanie was not a proposition that was going to get much respect. ---
**Author:** ![hajario](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hajario/32/171_2.png) [@hajario](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/hajario)\ **Post date:** [January 11, 2014, 3:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-college-students-of-yesteryear-regularly-wear-beanies/646719/53 "2014-01-11T03:44:24Z")
> [@Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](#): > > I think we got a similar line at my Revelle College (one of several undergrad residential colleges UCSD). But what they never seem to make clear is whether that included people who transferred to other in-house colleges, or to other universities, for any and all reasons one might have for doing that. I got an engineering degree at UCSD and was also at Revelle AND got an MS as well. There were 11 people in my suite in my dorm (one dropped out after one quarter and another guy took his place). Of the 11, only three of us graduated from UCSD (not just Revelle). I was the only one to get a graduate degree. I was in the dorms sophomore year too. Of the ten in my suite that year, only three graduated from UCSD. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-college-students-of-yesteryear-regularly-wear-beanies/646719.md?page=2)