Donated by Dr. Joan Cunningham, '57

Accession No. HP-2007-002

If there are pictures of classmates wearing the caps, they would have been in the Flambeau or perhaps Smoke Signals if any copies of them still exist. I remember some publication did a spread of freshmen “beauties” in the fall, but I don’t know if any of the women was wearing the rat caps.

I suppose having to wear them was the closest thing to hazing available then. Freshmen in the fall of 1953 were to wear them at all times outside the dorm except to church. (At that time there was sufficient campus housing to require all freshmen—men and women—to live in dormitories.) My memory of the conditions of wearing them is fuzzy, as you might imagine after 54 years. The handout we got at the 50th Anniversary of the Class of 1957 indicated we wore them for six weeks, but I doubt that. It seems as if there was some athletic competition as I had mentioned to Linda between freshmen and sophomore teams. If the freshmen won, which our team did, we got to ditch the caps. Perhaps being identified by the caps as a freshman meant that the upper classmen could single us out to do something silly, like sing the fight song, but I’m not sure. I was dating an upper classman at the time, and he was embarrassed to see me wearing the cap, so I think I cheated some on the rules.

-Dr. Joan Cunningham, '57