Name/Title
Ward-Belmont Rushing Rules 1950-51Entry/Object ID
2023.114Tags
Ward-BelmontScope and Content
A document listing rules for the Ward-Belmont social clubs' rushing week and "Fag Day" for the 1950-51 school year. Rushing occurred in September. Seventeen rules are listed, along with instructions on club quotas and lists, regulations for Fag Day, and additional suggestions.Context
Ward-Belmont offered ten student social clubs, similar to sororities: the Twentieth Century Club (T.C.C.), X.L., A.K. (All 'Round), Osiron, Agora, Anti-Pandora, F.F., Penta Tau, Del Vers, and Tri K. Per a Ward-Belmont club pamphlet (2023.107), "the club system was introduced here because it was felt that national sororities had no place in a school such as Ward-Belmont. It was, therefore, to supplant the sorority plan with something that offered its advantages without the obvious disadvantages, that the club system was started." Like sororities, there was a week of rushing at the beginning of the school year, and new club members participated in an initiation.
"Fag Day" refers to a traditional day of informal club initiation activities held prior to the formal initiation. It was "that famous day of glee for the old girls and mild torture for the new. What will they think up next? Ingenuities were stretched to the utmost on this day […]. All over the campus early in the morning babies crawled on their hands; […] almost everyone bore throughout the day fearful lipstick brands on their foreheads." (Milestones 1937) New club members were to pay their respects to the seniors and dress up in various costumes such as animals, babies, clowns, pixies, or sailors. Initiates were kept busy "making beds, washing mirrors, writing letters, and doing other odd jobs designated by the old girls. […] But the bruised knees, accumulated through a day of 'bowing down' to the old girls, are only a sign of one more Fag Day spent in the traditional way." (Milestones 1943) Further context from the 1938 Milestones yearbook: "Of all the queer sights that our campus beholds during the school year, the most unusual comes early in the season when initiation for the various social clubs is underway. The stunts last from seven o'clock in the morning until after breakfast, and in some cases all day long. Fag Day, as this peculiar demonstration is called, is one of the highlights of the school year. It would astonish anyone to see the more dignified girls crawling on hands and knees, adorned with a baby bonnet and muttering an unintelligible lingo. The Hawaiian Islands are transferred for a few hours to the campus of Ward-Belmont, and strange hula girls, wearing skirts made of everything from slits of the home-town newspaper to laundry sacks, parade in gay contrast about the campus. Throughout the day the 'new girls' are being initiated! That night the cold cream is applied none too sparingly, when the pledges prepare for bed, so that the following day there are scarcely any traces of the previous day's celebration left on the bright and beaming faces of the new members."Collection
Harpeth Hall School ArchivesLexicon
Search Terms
Ward-Belmont, Clubs, Rushing, Rules, Fag Day, 1950, 1951
