Exhibit - Freshmen Beanies
At Michigan State, freshman males were required to wear beanies to signify their class status. Often called “caps” or “pots,” the only time freshmen were exempt from wearing them was on Sundays or if they were married. The design of the beanies changed over time: The original pots of the Michigan Agricultural College era were small brown caps with a visor and a green button while later pots were green with the Michigan State College insignia embroidered on the front.
Every year starting in 1906, an event called “Cap Night” was held during commencement week. All of the students would gather in front of the Library and line up according to class. The band would lead the procession, followed by seniors, then juniors and sophomores, and finally freshmen. The seniors would carry their course books while the freshmen, clad in their nightshirts, would wear their beanies. They would all proceed to a spot on campus dubbed “Sleepy Hollow,” where a large bonfire was burning. Speeches were given, fight songs sung, and fireworks were set off as part of the ceremony. The seniors would then burn their course books and the freshmen would burn their caps. The annual event attracted spectators from all over the Lansing area. The only years that the caps were not burned was during World War I, when the beanies were donated to the Belgian Relief Organization to help the war effort.
This tradition of “Cap Night” continued until 1933. Beanies were still worn into the mid-1940s, but there was no longer a ceremonial burning. As the burning of the caps was a well-loved tradition, hardly any of the early beanies survive to the present day. The one beanie from the early days that exists in the collection of the University Archives was found stuffed into the back of a student scrapbook. A beanie from the Michigan State College era is also in the collections, but as these were not burned, they are more common.
Written by Sarah Bicsak. Content originally created for the online exhibit "Hats Off! Beanies of the Big 10" (https://library.osu.edu/site/beanies/).
Exhibit created by Megan Badgley-Malone.
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