Don’t walk on the grass. Don’t even think about wearing the brown-and-white school colors before Founder’s Day. Corduroy trousers and flannel shirts? Forget about it, unless the first-years win the majority of Founder’s Day sports. Such were the rules in 1906 for first-year students at Lehigh. Times have certainly changed.
Inspired by a “Lehigh Freshmen Through the Years” Special Collections display at the Fairchild-Martindale Library, we dug up the May 4, 1906, edition of The Brown and White that listed the “College Customs.”
By 1925, first-years were required to greet everyone they met as they walked across campus, according to information contained in the display. The “hello habit” was a long-standing tradition at Lehigh, but when it fell into disuse, it was codified into the rules for first-year students.
