Collins Unbound

Men sign up for the 1949 Homecoming beard growing contest.

It is “No-Shave November,” an annual event which raises awareness and money to fight cancer. Here in the Archives & Special Collections we thought it would be an appropriate time to touch on a fun Puget Sound tradition from days past that involved shaving (or rather, not shaving!) and beards.

In the 1940s and 50s, male students would participate in a beard growing contest, hoping for a chance to be crowned Homecoming King. The November 3, 1953 issue of The Trail reads, “Strangers to the CPS [College of Puget Sound] campus would immediately notice that about half of the school’s male population are growing shrubbery on their chins. The person sporting the longest and bushiest beard will capture the Homecoming King crown for his great efforts.” The beards were judged by the sorority presidents and the women running for Homecoming Queen. Prizes were also awarded for the reddest beard, the best trimmed beard, the longest beard, and the scraggliest beard.

The Soc Hop, 1954. The Soc Hop was a
Homecoming event at which the beards of aspiring
Homecoming Kings were judged.

Many Puget Sound men entered this competition; the only rule was that the student had to be clean shaven when they registered. The competition lasted for most of October and at the end of the month the winners for all of the categories were announced and the winner of “Best Beard in Show” became Homecoming King.

The Archives & Special Collections has drop-in hours on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday from 11:00 AM to 4:00 PM or is open by appointment.

By Rowan Coates

Have you seen the beautiful paper cranes installed in the front of the library? The cranes were created by Clarissa Sligh, an African American artist and essayist who combines photography and text into powerful narrative artworks, artist books, and installations that explore memory, identity, transformation, and perception. Sligh’s website describes her experience at age 15 as the lead plaintiff in the 1955 school desegregation case in Virginia (Clarissa Thompson et. al. vs. Arlington County School Board). Sligh writes that “from that moment forward, her work as a student and as a professional…takes into account change, transformation, and complication.”

If you are interested in seeing more of Sligh’s work, the Archives & Special Collections holds six of her artists books: Transforming Hate: An Artist’s Book, What’s Happening With Momma?, Reading Dick & Jane with Me, Wrongly Bodied: Documenting Transformation from Female to Male, It Wasn’t Little Rock, and Voyage(r): Tourist Map to Japan.

A page from “Transforming Hate” by Clarissa Sligh.

The book Transforming Hate evolved from a project in which Sligh folded paper cranes from the pages of white supremacist books for an exhibition organized by the Montana Human Rights Network in 2008. Wrongly Bodied tells the stories of Jake, a contemporary white male imprisoned in a woman’s body as he transitions from female to male, and of Ellen Craft, a 19^th century black slave woman who escapes to Philadelphia from Georgia by passing as a white male slave owner. Reading Dick & Jane with Me was created by Sligh to interrupt the authority of elementary school textbooks from the 1940s and 50s known as “The Dick and Jane Readers,” which portrayed a white upper middle class suburban family. As a young girl reading these books, Sligh felt that these depictions must mean that her family was an aberration outside of normal family life in America.

If you’d like to see Sligh’s artists’ books, please visit us in the Archives & Special Collections.

The Archives & Special Collections has drop-in hours on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday from 11:00 AM to 4:00 PM or is open by appointment.

By Laura Edgar, Assistant Archivist

Halloween is right around the corner, so here at the Archives & Special Collections we thought it would be a good idea to dive in and see what the ghosts of students past did for this spooky holiday.

In 1979, some students in Alpha Psi Omega, an honorary dramatic fraternity, offered their services for Halloween makeup to raise money to put on one-act plays directed by students in the drama department. Students could throw on a costume, get their makeup done, then head on over to the Halloween Dance in the Great Hall. The dance even promoted a pumpkin contest with a $25 first place prize and if you were really feeling brave, on Halloween night students in the Langlow House (1218 N. Alder) put on a yearly haunted house!

In a Trail issue from 1988, students dedicated three pages of the issue to provide ideas on what to be for Halloween as well as more information about the Langlow Haunted House. Langlow, the Honors Program house, was bought by the University in 1962 from the Langlow family.  Originally the Kappa Sigma Fraternity house, it was later given to the Honors Program and for many years it was turned into a haunted house for those brave enough to enter the building. The haunted house theme in 1988 was “A Nightmare on Alder Street.” It cost students $1 to enter and all the proceeds went to Oxfam, an international hunger relief organization. This haunted house was just one of the ways that students who lived in the house worked to “be a part of the community.”

The Archives & Special Collections has drop-in hours on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday from 11:00 AM to 4:00 PM or is open by appointment

By Rowan Coates

University of Puget Sound has a long history of journalism and the Archives & Special Collections is currently working to explore this intriguing aspect of our school. From journalism courses of the past to The Maroon and The Trail, Puget Sound students have always been young journalists.

As one of the Archives & Special Collections Peer Research Specialists, I am putting together an exhibit that explores our history of journalism, specifically the many changing shapes of our campus newspaper. From 1897 to 2019, the exhibit will cover how our newspaper has evolved, both physically and culturally.

At the moment, Puget Sound has ceased publishing a student-run newspaper. This exhibit will hopefully contextualize this lapse in publication, and potentially inspire journalistic change. The exhibit will be up in the coming weeks. Come by to learn about the history of student voice and get inspired to be a part of the future of campus journalism!

The Archives & Special Collections has drop-in hours on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday from 11:00 AM to 4:00 PM or is open by appointment.

By Julia Schiff