I don’t want to derail lingyi’s thread so I will post my own.
The topic of inappropriate activities got me thinking about my years attending university. I got my university degree in engineering in Canada during the 90s, and I am wondering how many of our activities are still permitted or considered to be appropriate.
Some examples:
Sanctioned mass consumption of alcohol. During frosh week we always held a Beer Olympics. Events included chugging beers (individual and team) and completing a centurion (drinking 100 ounces of beer in 100 minutes). These events were advertised in the student paper and held in the student lounge.
Cultural appropriation (toga parties)
Smoking and drinking in the student lounges (I know for a fact that my campus is now 100% smoke free indoors).
I can’t think of any specifics but, with 70%+ male student population, I am sure that there was a certain level of sexism going on.
Judging by the yearbooks from the 70s we had already made some significant improvements by the 90s. Apparently strippers were commonly hired to entertain the students during parties. Now that we are 20 years past when I attended I am wondering how tame things have gotten.
When I was in college in the 1950s, both students and teachers smoked in classrooms. Now smoking is banned inside all university buildings at McGill and they are working up to banning it on the entire campus.
Given that the Romans were one of the foundations of Western Culture, that would only be cultural appropriation if your ancestors were non-European/Middle Eastern/North African.
Smoking in the buildings wasn’t super common when I was at college, but it wasn’t unheard of. I used to study in unused classrooms at night and often another guy would be in there and he’d ask me if I minded if he lit one, which I didn’t. There was also a professor who’d often walk through the social sciences building after 5 with a lit cigarette.
When I was at Purdue, the Cary Quad Nude Olympics was still a thing. It has since been banned. Since I didn’t live on campus (I lived on the other side of the Tippecanoe River), I never witnessed it. I thought it was a hilarious, if somewhat insane, idea. In the grand scheme of things, it was also pretty harmless, unless nekkidity offends you.
Smoking in the classrooms. They even had paper ashtrays (foil on the inside ).
OTOH, drinking was legal for all but a few students. Because you could just go to the Rathskeller and order a beer, so no one felt the need to drink all at once. It was no big deal to go to a frat and have a glass or two.
I honestly do not remember anybody smoking on campus, although they probably did and nobody noticed. During break time in a 3-hour lab, we went to the Coke room, put a nickel in the machine, and drank Cokes out of green bottles. Drinking alcohol was also not done. If anybody had any alcohol in the dorms, I didn’t know about it. Maybe most importantly, that was an era in which people, even college students, were afraid to break the rules. But then I went to a state school, where there were no rich kids.
The last thing we did in my residence hall after my first year was: someone “borrowed” a long table from the cafeteria, and my buddy used it to host a day-long poker game in his room, with cash gaming, smoking, and liquor. The RA was in attendance. It was awesome.
When I started Grad school, there were ashtrays in the hallways. The story was that when the place was being built, the dean lit up and walked the halls, where he ashed is where ashtrays were installed.
Granted this was early 90’s, but it was Winston Salem, home of RJR. It was the first year that smoking was banned in the library. You know, with lots of paper, which burns. I saw people smoking in the grocery store…
My college was founded because of coors brewing so drinking has always been a major part of its history and a major part of the school song for that matter. The year before I was a freshmen was the first year Coors didn’t chain tapped kegs to every street corner on campus. Instead you had to go to the beer truck and show ID for your free beer. The Dean of students thought this encouraged drinking so by my senior year they had raised prices up to a quarter. I graduated college in 2006.
When I went to McGill from 2003-2007, smoking was allowed in some areas of the student building until 2005 I think, when a province-wide indoor smoking ban went into effect. I was glad, as I couldn’t stand cigarette smoke and I liked to hang out in the student bar (now you know one of my secrets, haha.)
I didn’t drink during my first year in university and didn’t go to my frosh, so I don’t know how much drinking went on at frosh. Though we did have pub crawls and other occasions where I’d drink too much. Ah, my misspent youth.
I am now as far separated from today’s graduates as I was from those graduating in the mid to late 70s. As I said in the OP, I was surprised at what the 70s students did/got away with. I guess there are not many young people on this board that that would be able to tell us what events from 20 years ago would be taboo today.
I am just glad that there were no cell phone cameras back then.
Smoking was banned indoors at my school (Texas A&M) by the time I got there in 1991. Drinking on campus was limited to 21+ year old students within the confines of their dorm rooms or those of other 21+ residents. In other words, I could go drink beer in my 21+ buddy’s dorm room and vice-versa if I was 21+ as well, but I couldn’t go drink beer in my 20 year old buddy’s room even if I was 21+.
From what I understand, schools have gotten a lot tighter about that kind of thing since then. And in general, they seem a lot less relaxed than they did when I was in school; stuff that got us an ass-chewing and formal reprimand back then would probably get us in serious trouble now, like the food-fight we perpetrated in one of the on-campus dining halls. (turns out we did several thousand dollars of damage to stuff). I also suspect that other students might not be as blase about everything as well; when we tried to ignite a propane/air bomb one time (didn’t succeed, and led a couple of campus cops through a keystone-kops style chase before we ditched them), nobody ratted us out. I suspect that might not go over so well with today’s youth.
