Bona's looks back: rules and regulations
Amanda Klein
Issue date: 5/1/09 Section: Features
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Assistant Features Editor
Imagine waking up every morning at 5:30, going to mass at 6, only having an hour of free time per day and then going to bed at 9 p.m. Communication with anyone outside the university is strictly prohibited, all your spending money must be deposited with the treasury department, and you can't leave campus without the president's permission. Glad it's only in your imagination? It wasn't for the first students on campus in the 1800s.
The first students could not go into others' rooms, and students in bed were not allowed to sit or lie on the blankets, according to "The First Bonaventure Men" by Walter Hammon. The university allowed noise only during an hour of free time.
Thankfully, students were not expected to follow these rules later in Bonaventure history.
Classroom Rules
In the 1960s, classes were held six days a week, with classes being dismissed at noon Saturdays, Peggy Burke, '69, dean of the school of education, said.
Students also had to dress up for class.
"Men had to wear jackets and ties to class," Burke said. "Some people weren't too fussy; other people would kick them out if they didn't have them on."
Professors allowed three absences per class before failing the course, and being kicked out for not having the proper attire counted as one, Burke said.
"As a result, some of the young men had some pretty strange outfits," Burke said. "They had shirts that didn't go with anything with horrible jackets and ties because they technically complied, but they certainly didn't look like fashion plates."
The men didn't look fashionable with their coat and ties, especially after four years.
"We all had one coat that we wore," Marv Stocker, '65, said. "By the time we graduated, everybody had patches in their sleeves, mustard stains and everything else on their coats."
Not only were students supposed to dress nicely for class, they had to polish their shoes for ROTC, which was mandatory for two years.
"There was a tremendous amount of discipline you learned in that because it was Drill and Ceremony," Robert Crowley, '71, said. "If your shoes weren't polished right, they were all over you."
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