"For Honor and Each Other": Collegiate Class Competitions as Meaning-Making Phenomena, 1880–1930

• In Event: Marriott Roundtable Session 16
  In Roundtable Session: Critical Shifts in Higher Education

Abstract

This paper uses a comparative historical approach to analyze interclass competitions between cohorts of male college students from 1880-1930. Whether they were “rushes” (fighting for control of some symbolic space or object), tug-of-war competitions, or one of the many other forms that class competitions took, cohorts of students challenged each other to assert their physical prowess in the name of honor. Using archival sources from a dozen colleges and universities, I argue that while these competitions were ostensibly about cohort-level camaraderie and bragging rights, a close examination of students’ self-created materials (letters, diaries, scrapbooks, etc.) shows that many students embraced these competitions at an individual level as important meaning-making activities in their own psycho-social development.

Author

• David M. Brown, Ohio University