Click above for an audio feature including interviews with Jackson College alumni about their memories of Tufts.
Today hazing is a term generally associated with underground fraternity rituals, overzealous drinking and stern bans by colleges. But there was a time when hazing was not only tolerated, it was encouraged.
Until the late 1960s and early 1970s, life for freshmen at Tufts was chock-full of tradition, discipline and freshman initiation.
From 1902 until 1970, freshman men were hazed by the sophomores in the Sword and Shield Society, a group of honorary tradition-keepers who were in charge of orienting the freshmen to their new surroundings. At the now-extinct Jackson College for women, sophomore members of the All Around Club filled a similar role.
Upon their arrival at Tufts, freshmen received hazing booklets with everything they needed to know about their responsibilities as new Jumbos — from fight-song lyrics to dress-up dates to a complete list of regulations that only applied to the newly matriculated students.
Freshmen were not allowed to walk on the grass, and they were required to say hello to everyone they encountered on campus. Other requirements included special attire, such as brown and blue beanies and the occasional Huckleberry Finn costume, the wearing of nametags the size of poster boards and participation in traditional hazing activities. During one such activity, called "pray-for-rain night," freshman men were ushered to the women's dorms to request a downpour from the ladies' windows.
"[The freshman men] would yell, ‘We want rain! We want rain!' and we would dump water on them," Sondra Szymczak (J '59), recalled. "The women enjoyed it tremendously. The freshman men did not exactly enjoy it."
Other activities included mock air raids.
"We had to carry our books in a pillowcase," Szymczak said, "and if [an upperclassman] went by and yelled, ‘Air raid!' we had to dump the books and pull the pillowcase over our heads."
Freshmen also had to know the song of the day and they could be quizzed at any time. Students who did not follow hazing rules were given demerits, and those who received too many demerits were punished at the baby party — an annual orientation gathering in which the freshmen were required to dress up as toddlers. In some cases, freshmen who had disobeyed rules could also be spanked with paddles.
And in the spirit of getting to know their classmates, one night each year the men would raid the women's dorms, a tradition called "panty raids."
While hazing today is usually a term paired with pain and suffering, many of the students in the 1950s and 1960s felt that the experience brought them together and created a friendlier, more intimate campus.
"None of the hazing was done to be embarrassing or painful to anyone," Norma Caserta (J '62) said. "It was mostly — at least anything I experienced — so that you would branch out and get to know other people."
Still, hazing wasn't the only aspect of life on campus that was unlike today. Sunny Breed (J '66), who attended Tufts not long before the dorms became co-educational, explained that being a woman on campus was infinitely different.
"Women could not live off campus in apartments, and we couldn't have telephones in our rooms, and we couldn't wear … slacks or pants to class or on the Hill," she said. "One of the things that we accomplished was that during finals [and] studying for finals, women could wear pants in the library and be comfortable and study, and it sounds stupid now but it was a big deal then."
Girls had strict curfews; their dorms were locked around 10 p.m. on most nights, and they were only allowed a certain number of later outings per week.
Dating was also restricted on campus. Men were only allowed to visit the women's dorms during courting hours, and even then visiting was restricted to the lounge of the dorm.
"If someone needed help in getting a heavy object brought upstairs or something like that you'd have to yell, ‘Man on the floor!'" Caserta said.
Women were allowed to enter the men's dorms, but again there were restrictions.
"In the men's dorms … there was a regulation that the door could not be encased in its frame when there was a woman in the room," Breed said. "So the guys would throw a towel over the door and then slam the door, so technically it wasn't encased in the frame — but it was close."
And while men didn't have dorm curfews and restrictions like the women did, the university may have found other ways to keep them in check.
"There were all kinds of rumors about various things being placed in the food — especially in the men's dining halls — in order to keep the men's romantic impulses under control," Allen Potvin (E '65) said.
As Tufts approached the 1970s, student protests and uprisings gradually wiped away many of the traditions that undergrads took for granted.
"I was working in admissions … and parents brought their daughters to see Jackson Tufts in the fall and through the winter, and then in about January, I think, or sometime in that time frame, [Tufts] opened up dorms to co-ed living," Breed said. "So the parents brought their daughters to a very different campus than they'd seen when they were looking at Tufts as a place to come."
