dress traditions
These traditional caps were donated to the College of Business Historic and Cultural Textile and Apparel Collection by the Nichols family, whose relative, Benjamin Nichols was a freshman at Agricultural College in 1917. Nichols earned a degree in mechanical engineering in 1919 and went on to earn an M.S. in 1932. Between 1934 and 1953 he worked as faculty in the electrical engineering program at State College.
The orange tasseled cap has a Meier & Frank department store label. The orange felt Agriculture College cap is similar to a traditional orange fez pictured on the Benton County Historical Society and Museum's .
The green felt "rook cap" was required daily attire for freshman males (women wore hair ribbons) in the early 1900s when the tradition began.
The wearing of rook caps and ribbons lasted until 1960s, when it was required only on Wednesdays (“School Traditions at OSU #3, 2012). See Fig.1 for a picture of one OSU freshman wearing a rook lid in 1969. These green caps or “lids” as they were called, were useful in identifying freshmen to upperclassmen.
In addition to conspicuous head wear, freshman were required to “carry at all times the ‘Rook bible,’ a small book giving information of interest and value to the newcomer at the college,” including information about school traditions, names of deans and Associated Student officers, organizations, publications, school songs, and so forth (The Beaver 1926-27, 44). “Rooks had several rules which, when violated, earned discipline carried out by the sophomore class” (, 2012). For example, at the University of Georgia in Athens, punishments for not wearing freshman caps included cleaning toilets, being paddled, or other forms of condoned hazing (Hunt-Hurst and Blanco 2013, 3).
Back in Corvallis, freshman would “burn their green [caps] . . . at the annual Junior Weekend held at the end of May, signifying their advancement into the sophomore class. In 1961, OSC had become , and “the Burning of the Green had moved to Homecoming in the fall” (, 2012). Freshman caps are a form of symbolic communication, expressing group “membership in the larger university community, and marking the student as a new — and therefore less meritorious — member of that community” (Hurst and Blanco, 2013, 2). Rook “lids” appear to have fallen out of use by the OSU student body in the late 20th century.
Works Cited:
Hunt-Hurst, Patricia and Jose Blanco, 2013. “Georgia History in Pictures,” Georgia Historical Quarterly 97, 4: 447-475.
State College felt cap, 1923. Benton County Historical Society and Museum .
“The Rook Green,” (2012). School Traditions at OSU #3, Retrieved from Special Collections and Archives Research Center,
Historic & Cultural Textile & Apparel Collection
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The College of Business Historic and Cultural Textile and Apparel Collection is a scholarly resource dedicated to the preservation, documentation, and interpretation of apparel and textile material culture.
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