Dick, Yes, I did a little participant observation of watering holes in my salad years. Also, my folks built a house in Portola Valley in the late 1950s and I used to drive by Rosotti's now and then. But I suspect that there was a big cultural divide between the college culture of the 1930s and 1940s, which may explain some of the foreignness you may see in the passages I posted from the 1936 FORTUNE article. The 1930s, I suspect, saw the undergrad population winnowed by the Great Depression, so that the elitist tradition of PRE-post-WWII mass higher education became further distilled down to an even more privileged few. The 1940s -- or at least the post-WWII '40s -- on the other hand, saw the burgeoning effect of the GI Bill and the breakdown of a long tradition of class privilege. One of the most interesting articles in my FORTUNE file, BTW, is titled "The Servant Problem" (March, 1938). Good help, the article laments, was getting almost impossible to find. Like many FORTUNE articles, this one is laced with statistics drawn from a subscriber social survey of the domestic service topic. Tantalizing assertions are sprinkled throughout, including, e.g., "...<more than half> of the persons who have no servants today had at least one in 1929" (p. 114, col. 1). (FORTUNE is a treasure trove for social history in part because of its commitment to survey studies, even when the sampling approach was not all it might have been.) Also, I think the college life article I quoted from had its focus on eastern campuses, which may have differed from Cal and Stanfurd. Anyhow, I'd say let's cut the article a little more slack, Dick! Ron ---------- From: Dick B <[log in to unmask]> To: [log in to unmask] Subject: Re: history of drinking at college -- rusty memory Date: Thursday, February 12, 2004 4:46 PM Yes, Ron. It is delightful but not factual. I can speak from my pre-Army fraternity experience at Berzerkely in 1943, my post army experience at the same watering hole 1946-1948, and my law experience at Stanford where my law review gang (and that included Sandra Day and Bill Rehnquist) were working too hard to fit the pattern. However, the legendary Rosotti's and other Stanford drinking holes more than sufficed for Stanford. In other words, the academic arena writes good poetry and bad history. By the way, I think you must have stumbled on some of the drinking spots, the fraternities, and the campus excitement of the 1940's. I don't imagine you are that old, but I do believe anyone around Berkeley knows the legends and the facts - both. Dick B. -----Original Message----- From: Alcohol and Temperance History Group [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Ron Roizen Sent: Thursday, February 12, 2004 1:12 PM To: [log in to unmask] Subject: Re: history of drinking at college -- rusty memory Beth -- Are you still there? My file of alcohol-related FORTUNE articles turned up, and I'm afraid my memory was less than trustworthy. The article I was vaguely remembering, "Youth in College," appeared in the June, 1936 (v. 13, starts at p. 99) issue of FORTUNE. It provides an engaging mini-ethnography of contemporary undergrad life, but offers, unfortunately, not very much on drinking practices per se. Still, what is offered is delightful. Regarding male students: p. 101: "<Liquor and sex> used to be part of the great triumvirate of campus topics that included religion. Today economics is to the fore as bull-session pabulum, with religion playing a minor role. Liquor as a conventional topic is passe. Less flamboyant drinking is the present day rule; there is no prohibition law to defy, hence one can drink in peace. As for sex, it is, of course, still with us. But the campus takes it more casually that it did ten years ago. Sex is no longer news. And the fact that it is no longer news is news." p. 102, col. 1: "At six o'clock an infinitesimal number of undergraduates may serve cocktails (gin and lemon juice) in their rooms. But the typical student will go from his sports straight to dinner." p. 102, col. 2: "Between ten-thirty and twelve-thirty the campus subsides into sleep. A few independent drunks, who care little for the Friday or Saturday night tradition, come roaring in at three, but the average undergraduate doesn't get tight until classes and study are over for the week. Weekends are not so frequent as they used to be, the obvious reason being that money has not been plentiful. But one does not have to go far away from college to drink. The stages of college inebriation are ranked as follows: high, tight, looping, stinking, plastered, out. Some would put tight after looping. But regardless of the grading of intermediate philological degrees of drunkenness, most of the drinking undergraduates think high is the desirable state of glow for a weekday night and even for the ordinary weekend. At spring house parties and at the football games the student can proceed to the tight and looping (or looping and tight) stages without causing any particular commotion." There's more, on females, but nothing specifically on drinking -- unless I missed it. Ron