Ritual Humiliation in the Context of Dating at Centre

By Anne Burchett

While Centre maintains a strong tradition of producing marriages or permanent partnerships amongst students, public declarations of “dating” required the couple, especially the man, to participate in ritual humiliation. This ritual humiliation took on different forms and traditions throughout the years from 1960s to 1990s, ranging from fairly benign to more intense forms of humiliation. This meant that if people wanted to participate in more casual relationships, the tendency was to maintain an element of secrecy or at the bare minimum a reluctance to admit to a relationship. This ritual humiliation can be seen as an attempt to demasculinize the man, a punishment for declaring intentions for a commitment, commitment meaning the end of bachelorhood and understood as feminine or domestication. Visibility is key here, and before 1990s there was very little inclusion of the LGBTQ+ community in any of these conversations surrounding formal dating relationships. Moreover, there is a marketable shift in both the types of relationships that were experienced at Centre from the 1960s to 1980s, which was supplemented and coincided with increasingly intense methods of ritual humiliation.

While dating life and the complexities of how gender was experienced on Centre’s campus did not begin in the 1960s, there is some correlation between the full integration of Centre College and the Kentucky College for Women which occurred in 1962. Centre College had been considered co-education since the official merge in 1926, however largely women did not move onto campus until the year of 1962. This transitional period which garnered increased interaction between male and female students was a continuation of traditional finishing-school-esque expectations of elite white women attending college to find a husband; which was a reflection of the time. Mary Clyde, who attended Centre in the early 1960s, reflected on her time, “Oh, I think that there was a lot of expectation [45:00] that you would come out with an M.R.S. degree. It was kind of, you get married or you become a teacher”[1]. This reflected in the type of relationships experienced during the 1960s, which were public and promissory - but still occurred on a campus that since the 1800s was dominated by an emphasis on the masculine. Sara Jane Montgomery[2]who developed her graduate thesis on the culture of Centre College from 1865 to 1915 reported that “Centre was a man’s world, and a less sanctioned component of the fraternal orders gave expression to the more aggressive nature of the undergraduate.” This fraternal order and dominant culture meant that there were consequences of being in a relationship even in the 1960s had social sanctions. 

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From The Cento, October 28, 1961

Peggy Carthrae[3]who attended Centre College in 1962 described how, “I was trying to think, I know whenever a girl will get pinned, a fraternity pin, you know, the fraternity brothers would come and serenade her at her dorm.” This is an example of ritual humiliation but on a much lower scale of intensity that began to build through the 1970s and 1980s. Serenading was a highly popular method of humiliation in terms of both women and men, instances of both occurred through the 1960s and has continued until today.

However, lastly the publicity of these relationships were formalized and documented through the photographs taken by students themselves[4]. These types of formalized a public relationships didn’t disappear after the 1960s, as reflected by Mary Seelbach[5], “So many people in my years married Centre men, and are still married to the Centre men, quite a few of us are.”

In the 1970s, the United States and Centre College was undergoing a cultural shift that revolved around the disintegration and resistance towards traditional date-to-marry relationships, as well as punishment for sexual behavior. The students certainly felt this shift, Crit Luallen[6]describes the shift from the 1960s, “Yeah, so I think there's another example of something that was changing[7]. You know, when...when I arrived at Centre”“And we sort of had that mindset, that that's what was expected. But it all sort of fell apart during the time I was there”. This was in line with and a result of a “sexual revolution” that had begun in the 1960s and 1970s, and converged with the legislative liberation of women through increased access to birth control as well as abortion. In fact, “There also was sexual liberation, which had something to do with women liberating themselves in the bedroom, too, but had as much to do with loosening norms around sex. In 1960, half of 19-year-old women who were unmarried had not yet had sex[8].” In this way, this “sexual revolution” not only changed sex practices, but was rewiring the dynamics of relationships; which I would argue both allowed and put pressure on college students to engage in casual sex. Within this societal change, people at Centre, who were in relationships during this period were subject to increasingly intense acts of ritual humiliation - as they were navigating this period of new sexual liberation - to be in a committed relationship was to go against the movement of society. An example of what occurred largely within the fraternity demographic is explained by Jackie Kingsolver[9]who attended Centre in 1971, “One--this was more fraternity thing, but one ritual was to always find somebody's car and carry it over and put it on the steps of Young hall...one year it was, in fact, my boyfriend's Volkswagen Beetle, that wound up there one day so. So that was definitely routine.” While this sort of ritual humiliation or prank was fairly benign in terms of physical harm to the person, this began to shift significantly in the 1980s.

During the 1980s, relationships were fully shifting out of the public and promissory quality of the 1960s and before; the sexual revolution reaching a pinnacle in terms of emphasis on casual sex. In an interview conducted concerning her time at Centre during the mid to late 80s, Molly Newell[10]provides an explanation of what relationships largely looked like - or rather they were not seen at all as Centre became fully entrenched in non-official dating culture, ““that sort of formal dating didn't happen...And even if you did have a serious boyfriend girlfriend, it just was very low key”. The consequence of this change in the type of acceptable relationships at Centre, meant that if people did desire to be in committed or serious relationships the social sanctions required to articulate this to the public increased in severity, especially within the fraternity social scene at Centre.

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From article titled "Centre Valentines"
Advocate Messenger, February 8, 1988

To demonstrate seriousness there were a series of levels that involved fraternity members and the man declaring his commitment a series of acts which began with designating a shirt that would have the fraternities letters on them, followed by being lavaliered; where you received their lavalier[11], and lastly you would be pinned - a remnant of earlier traditions of commitment from the 1960s. However what became popularized in the 1980s was the tradition of being tree-ed which followed being “shirt-ed”. Again Molly Newell describes witnessing someone being “tree-ed”:

"When they even shirt-ed somebody, they would get tree-ed. And so what would happen is they would strip the fraternity member down, tie him to a tree and he knew it. He knew that this happened. So that was also sort of his declaration. He was willing to get through this...They would time to a tree and then just throw stuff at him. And God only knows what it was, rotten tomatoes, urine, beer, just nasty... they would just have these garbage cans. And you're just like, I have no idea what that is. And it's like hitting him. I mean, it was horrible, actually horrible."

While the intensity of ritual humiliation to this point, was witnessed by students and faculty, and resulted in administrative backlash and pushing against this form of hazing violence; tree-ing is no longer. However, practices such as shirt-ing, serenading, running the flame have remained local traditions - the segregation of these activities through the lens of gender have diminished - both women and men participate in them equally, and not in the context of beginning a relationship.  Moreover, while the social sanctions placed on public relationships resulted in public humiliation during this time period were profound, the social sanctions placed on those in the LGBTO+ community during this time was essentially erasure and lack of visibility. For example, Molly Newell, in her interview, discusses how, “God bless the LGBTQ community back then because, it was sort of not talked about.” This lack of visibility for the LGBTQ+ community and forced visibility for heterosexual couples on Centre’s campus is both a reflection of the changing social relational dynamics happening within the United States, and the dissolution of formal relationships has remained somewhat firm up until today.

Footnotes

[1]Mary Clyde, Oral History Interviewed by Ava Allen, 2021. (Mary Clyde met her husband at Centre College.)

[2]“Rackyte Cax, Cowax Cowax: The Student Culture of Centre College”, Sara Jane Montgomery, pg. 153.

[3]Peggy Carthrae, Oral History Interviewed by Aspen Waldron, 2021.

[4]These two pictures were taken and curated by Jack Haddox and collected into a scrapbook which documented his time at Centre in the early 1960s. Jack is pictured with Dorris, his girlfriend; as well as documents another couple, Ida Mae and Jody. But the location of Jack and Dorris’s picture in front of Old Centre, demonstrates the visibility and seriousness of relationships during the 1960s.

[5]Mary Seelbach, Oral History Interview by Daniella Hudgens, Centre College, 2021.

[6]Crit Luallen, Oral History Interview by August Crow, Centre College, 2021.

[7]In reference to dating culture at Centre.

[8]The Sex Freak-out of the 1970s”, Sally Kohn, CNN, 2015.

[9]Jackie Kingsolver, Oral History Interview by Elena Wiltgen, Centre College, 2021.

[10]Molly Newell, Oral History Interview by Anne Burchett, Centre College, 2021.

[11]Lavalier is a pendant necklace that often has the Greek letters of a specific fraternity on it, to be “shirt-ed” was a similar practice in that a fraternity member would give the person they were interested in dating a shirt with their Greek letters on it.

Bibliography

Crit Luallen, Interview by August Crow, March 11, 2021. Centre College Digital Archives, Grace Doherty Library, Centre College, Danville, Kentucky.

Jack Haddox, “Scrapbook: Picture of Jack and Dorris, Picture of Ida Maw and Jody.” 1963. Centre College Special Collections and Archives, Danville, Kentucky.

Jackie Kingsolver, Interview by Elena Wiltgen, March 6, 2021. Centre College Digital Archives, Grace Doherty Library, Centre College, Danville, Kentucky.

Kohn, Sally. “The Sex Freak-out of the 1970s.” CNN. Cable News Network, July 21, 2015. https://www.cnn.com/2015/07/21/opinions/kohn-seventies-sexual-revolution.

Mary Clyde, Interview by Ava Allen, March 8, 2021. Centre College Digital Archives, Grace Doherty Library, Centre College, Danville, Kentucky.

Mary Seelbach, Interview by Daniella Hudgens, March 9, 2021. Centre College Digital Archives, Grace Doherty Library, Centre College, Danville, Kentucky.

Molly Newell, Interview by Anne Burchett, April 7, 2021. Centre College Digital Archives, Grace Doherty Library, Centre College, Danville, Kentucky.

Peggy Carthrae, Interview by Aspen Waldron, March 4, 2021. Centre College Digital Archives, Grace Doherty Library, Centre College, Danville, Kentucky.

Sara Jane Montgomery, “Rackyte Cax, Cowax Cowax: The Student Culture of Centre College”, pg. 153. 1996. Centre College Special Collections and Archives, Danville, Kentucky.