Cornhuskin' Rule Changes
| "There was a lot of concern throughout my four years that there were some pranksters in each class who would do some potentially damaging things. I know there was um, I don’t know somebody put salt in somebody’s stereo system. There was some meanness that seemed to be personally directed and so there may have been rules that were written to uh do that. We used to have, the week of Cornhuskin, there used to be a lot of water fights in the courtyard and there was an old bell an old like a kitchen bell that was no longer mounted on a pole or anything but it was on the ground right down beside the dining hall and the big deal in the water fight was to capture the bell, which meant you were the last person clinging to that bell. Um, I know that sometime during my time here as a student, some students um put hot water that they were throwing on people, so there may have been rules written to prevent that. There was a lot of toilet paper that got wasted in the trees. Which is a lot of fun if you’re doing it but not so much fun if you had to clean it up. I think that, I think there were rules that were written shortly after that era, that cut down on some of the personal vindictiveness that could come. I know I was freshman class president, my freshman year, well that’s when you would be, wouldn’t it. And a group of sophomores kidnapped me, Thinking this would be great fun to see what my class would pay for me. Well my class didn’t take any notice but I thought I was gonna lose my life against the vending machine over in Faircloth because there was a really enthusiastic sophomore who had me by the neck. And I thought this is nuts. So I think rules were written to prevent things that from happening."-- Dr. Jean Jackson, Class of '75 |
| "It’s actually I’d say it’s not only grown in complexity and ingenuity um, the dancing and singing weren’t present at all when I was a student. It went through a rather dark patch I think in probably the early 80s where the class competition got so intense that the set of regulations and the points for good behavior were initiated, and I can give you an example. I had to take my son to the emergency room because he shut his finger in a car door and there were actually 2 Meredith students there with injuries from Cornhusking. They had been out late at night and one had, we used to have around the courtyard a low chain fence and she had caught her, she had been running in the dark, and tripped over that, and from the looks of her face had probably plowed up about 6 feet of the courtyard and another had broken her wrist and it was from another running in the dark episode, I think she had fallen down the stairs. And then the worst thing that happened, I sort of boycotted it for awhile because I thought it was quite out of a hand. A student spying on another class fell through the ceiling of Jones auditorium because she was trying to see what was going on. Somehow maybe she didn’t quite fall through the ceiling, almost fell through the ceiling, but it was a serious, could have been a really serious and tragic thing. So the regulations governing participation and giving points for good sportsmanship came around about that time."-- Dr. Betty Webb, Director of Study Abroad and Class of '67 |