From the Library Archives...Or You Thought You Had it Tough!

Nancy Matthews has been busy this summer reorganizing the Coker College archives. She has found some really interesting items, including an article about Ralph Nader's sister, who attended Coker back in the late 1940s.

Her latest find is a list of offenses from the 1920s that could have resulted in suspension or expulsion from the college. Take a look:

• Taking two or three steps in the parlor with a young man

• Wearing colored shoes downtown

• Making humming noises during meditation

• Washing face after light bell

• Wearing blue skirt and white middy* to dinner

• Impertinence to a council member and general ill attitude toward student government rules

• Threw tin cans and glass bottles over the railing on 3^rd floor to the 2^nd floor

• Bathing during study period

• Visit the drugstore two times in one week

• Talking to a young man on campus without permission

• Brushing teeth in hall after light bell

• Talking to a young man in drugstore

• Riding with boys morning and night without permission

• Singing and attracting attention on Richardson Porch at night

• Called before the executive board for smoking cigarettes in the college

• Restricted to the campus for 6 weeks for meeting and talking to young men at friend’s home on Sunday night

• Cutting breakfast, dinner, church…

Keep in mind that Coker was a women's college until the 1960s, although men were allowed to take classes on campus in the 1940s.


*The painting above is titled Young Girl in a Middy Blouse by Martha Simkins (1910). Thanks to CarolinaArts.com for the picture. I wasn't sure what a middy was either. I wonder if a blue middy would have been acceptable at dinner?