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A SALUTARY INFLUENCE they would be kidnapped and left some miles away to return to town on foot (1920, 1921). From time to time, there was what one College spokesman called "unnecessary roughness," which brought borough police or the faculty into the act. Despite attempts to end it, this form of rivalry continued until the banquets passed out of fashion in the later 1920s. Although there were scattered references before 1904 to specific written rules which freshmen were expected to follow, it is only in the Gettysburgian for February 28,1906 that one finds firm evidence such directions did exist and were to be taken seriously.362 The writer claimed that these rules had been in force for one year, but it is not clear whether he meant that they had begun in the fall of 1904 or of 1905. "It suffices to say," he concluded, "that the rules, in some measure, have restrained those likely to be carried away by the first liberty of college life until a more sober view of the surroundings could form a basis for proper conduct." It is evident that these rules were adopted and announced to the freshmen with the least possible notice to the faculty. When that body met on October 18, 1906, its minutes record that the members had learned "that a joint meeting of the Senior and Junior classes, a motion prevailed that the Freshmen should be ordered to wear a special kind of cap." The faculty directed that the presidents of these two classes were to be informed "that such assumption of authority will not be tolerated." In spite of this strong faculty decree, freshmen customs at Gettysburg College had begun, and they continued in force long after 1945,363 Sometime in the spring, some appointed or self-appointed committee would draw up a list of rules for the freshmen of the next year to follow. The list was then published in the G-Book and sometimes the Gettysburgian. The first item was always the earliest custom: that the freshmen wear the regulation cap or dink for that year.364 There was much variation in the length of the lists, some 362See the Mercury (October 1898), pp. 139-140. The Gettysburgian for October 24, 1906 printed the freshman rules then imposed at Bucknell and Dickinson. 363With a fine disregard for the facts in the case, later students defending customs often claimed that they had existed at Gettysburg for many years, even since 1832, and that one reason for upholding them was to please the alumni. In a letter published in ibid, for April 26, 1922, Trustee Charles Baum of the class of 1874 told President Granville that existing customs were unchristian, un-American, and tyrannical practices which were discouraging some prospective donors. "When I was a student," he correctly observed, "no such 'traditions' were to be found." 364Dinks came in different designs, sizes, and colors. The first ones were black, with a green button. From 1909 through 1912 they were green with a yellow button. From 1913 through 1923 the cap was blue and the button orange. From 1924 through 1937 the colors were red and green. The orange dink with its blue button appeared in the fall of 1938 and became standard thereafter. For a brief period in the 1920s a woolen cap served as a winter dink. 67