It took charge of the college social calendar, worked out (1951) a plan to evaluate the effectiveness of teachers, and pressed to have the Rhees Library opened longer each day (a goal achieved in 1955). To invigorate corporate feeling, the constitution of the Students Association of the College for Men was twice drastically revised (1947, 1950), and a Senate set up, comprising the officers of the Students Association, the vice president and three other men of each class, and the chairmen of committees. With the arrival of women students on the River in 1955, somewhat more gentlemanly behavior prevailed, though in 19 intercollegiately-prevalent "panty raids" were staged, and the Anderson statue and the sphinxes behind Morey were periodically smeared with paint. Blockaded by student cars, the fire trucks could neither withdraw nor emergency vehicles get through-a potentially dangerous situation later roundly condemned by students and public alike, and the Students Association set up a special faculty-student judiciary committee to take appropriate disciplinary action.
The next spring several false alarms were pulled, bringing to the campus virtually all the firefighting equipment in the southern section of the city. A young administrator, attempting to retrieve it, was mistaken for an undergraduate and thoroughly doused resulting student sympathy for his plight was an aid in quelling the melee. Firemen, arriving on campus, had their hose seized by the rampaging students. During a rambunctious outbreak of animal spirits in 1953, a false alarm was turned in. With the advent of spring, youthful exuberance tended to overflow into pranks and fracases of one sort or another. Despite the usual defeat of the freshmen that year, the rule that they must wear beanies until Thanksgiving was done away with. There two greased poles were erected, pennants on top, and the arsenal on both sides became more imaginative, more horrific (animal intestines, rotten tomatoes, fuel oil in plastic bags). In 1961 the flag rush was mercifully removed from the Eastman Quadrangle, and the sight of all, to the baseball diamond. Four years later, the student newspaper reported freshman hazing virtually non-existent. By the autumn of 1955, however, student opinion was beginning to frown on hazing columns in the Campus urged "less terror" on the part of Chi Rho, the sophomore group most active against "errant frosh," and rules governing the flag rush were revised. In delayed retaliation two years later, eighteen hapless freshmen were "taken for a ride" and deposited late at night at varying distances from the campus, to return as best they might.
The sometimes hazardous Frosh-Soph flag rush reappeared in the fall of 1951 Freshmen scored an upset, their first victory in many years (and only the fifth in half a century). Later years brought a "push-cart derby," canoe races on the Genesee, faculty-student baseball games, a "color girl" (1957) at the annual military review, street dances in front of Todd, and intersorority as well as interfraternity song fests. An interfraternity song contest and a Dandelion Dance at the Palestra, for which Prince Street girls were given twelve o'clock permission, brought the day to a glorious conclusion. In the afternoon a Frosh-Soph tug-of-war was staged-the "battle of Red Creek"-and intercollegiate baseball and tennis matches, followed by a banquet (the one event women did not attend) at which more awards, alumni trophies to stellar athletes and "R" blankets to those holding letters in three sports, and Terry and Dutton prizes to Senior campus leaders were given out. In the form it possessed in 1954 (the first coeducational Dandelion Day), the student holiday was marked by suspension of classes, an awards assembly at Strong, an NROTC review on the Eastman Quadrangle, and a box lunch on the Todd lawn or in Genesee Valley Park.
To provide needed respite before the onset of final examinations, Dandelion festivities in 1951 were expanded into an annual Dandelion Day-usually the first Wednesday in May. Todd Union committees arranged coffee hours and suppers, along with the management of union affairs in general. After a lapse of five years the traditional pre-Christmas Boar's Head Dinner was roused from its wartime hibernation, Dad's Day, including luncheon at Todd and a football game, was revived, and a "Night of Sin" with all manner of gambling devices (played with imitation money) initiated. A renewed Spring Weekend brought a spate of activity, with games, sometimes a water show, dances, and worship at college chapel. After World War II, that part of collegiate education which lies outside classroom, library, and laboratory rapidly regained its traditional character and scope, despite sometimes fragmentary participation by the returning veteran.
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