Here are a few items from the Muskie Archives and Special Collections Library and elsewhere on campus, and our thoughts about what they are and what they mean.
On Key
Each new Bates president receives a set of keys, symbolizing the authority of the office, at their installation ceremony.
The current set was created for the inauguration of Elaine Tuttle Hansen on Oct. 26, 2002. Clayton Spencer received the keys on Oct. 26, 2012, and President Garry W. Jenkins will receive them at his installation ceremony on May 4, 2024.
Hoops Heroines
The Class of 1910 women’s basketball team won the inter-class basketball championship in two of their four years.
The team’s stars were Nellie Barker (top left) and Grace Archibald (lower right). In the 1909 title game vs. the sophomores, The Bates Student noted how Barker, “not satisfied with a long shot into the basket which she made in the first half, apparently deliberately turned her back to the goal and tossed the ball over her head into the basket.”
Meanwhile, Archibald made five baskets from the floor in the 18 to 8 victory.
Gomes’ Good Life
This silver chalice by Shreve and Co. belonged to the late Rev. Peter Gomes ’65. His friends purchased the chalice at his estate auction in 2012 and donated it to Bates to honor the naming of the Bates chapel in memory of the beloved preacher, author, and Bates alumnus.
It is inscribed “Good Life December 2002” (the title and publication date of Gomes’ book about moral traditions) and monogrammed “PJG.”
Hair Raising
The Edwardian hairstyle for women was the pompadour, a style worn here by Gladys Burgess Spear for her Class of 1906 yearbook portrait.
In that era, women rarely wore their hair down, and when they did it was mostly in private. The accompanying photo shows Bates women in such a private moment with their hair down, having a “midnight party” in Rand Hall in 1908. While it looks like they’re smoking cigarettes, they’re having a midnight snack, probably Welsh rarebit.
Held at boarding schools and colleges, food-fueled midnight parties were popular at the time among women. (A midnight party figures in Virginia Woolf’s A Woman’s College from Outside.)
Bates Bib
Until the 1960s, first-year Bates students were obliged to wear certain clothing items marking them as freshmen. Men wore black and garnet beanies, whereas women wore green hair bows and bibs, oftentimes adorned with embroidery.
Found in a scrapbook created by late Muriel “Swick” Swicker ’42 for her freshman year is her bib, surrounded by personal commentary on her smock. Her comments:
- “That’s me!”
- “Palsie”
- “Now — we know who’s who!”
- “Yes — ties and caps sure get ’em! (Hope we do some getting)”
- “Excuse dirt! But — weren’t bibs made for spilling?”
- “Can I sew?”
- “So fetching! (especially with silk dresses)”
- “It keeps my neck warm!”
- “Got rather attached to you — I miss you — Bib!”
- “With my own little hands”
