A “kegger” in a residence hall on a Friday night was not an unusual occurrence on the University of Idaho campus in the early 1970s, said Dean of Students Bruce Pitman.
Gem of the Mountains 1973 | Courtesy
Students relax at The Blue Mountain Festival in 1972, Blue Mountain was a 24-hour rock festival in the early 1970s.
“It was very common place to have a keg, because it was legal,” Pitman said.
From strict dress codes to excessive drinking, University of Idaho has seen the extremes of campus culture over its 125-year history.
Pitman said when he arrived at UI in 1973, as the Greek Adviser on-campus social activity surrounded alcohol, because the legal drinking age in Idaho was 19.
Moscow Police Lt. David Lehmitz said large parties, fist fights and excessive drinking were a regular affair in Moscow. He said Moscow used to have approximately 26 bars before Idaho raised the drinking age — most of them along Main Street and Sixth Street.
“Huge parties, really huge parties … there were huge fights, I mean 15 to 20 people,” Lehmitz said.
Lehmitz said the Alpha Tau Omega fraternity, a fraternity that left campus in spring 2013, used to host a large party called the “Tin Canner.” He said ATO would line the trees with fishing nets and throw beer cans up into the nets all night.
Pitman said UI’s campus culture changed dramatically after Idaho raised the legal drinking age to 21 in 1987. However, the change was not fully implemented until 1989 because of a grandfather clause attached to the bill. He said the Idaho State Board of Education phased in restrictions on alcohol consumption on-campus in the early ‘90s.
“It was putting toothpaste back in the tube, because going from a social environment that was not only permissive but legal, to engage in a wide range of social activity that involved alcohol,” Pitman said.
Pitman said the annual spring rock festival, “Blue Mountain,” was a prime example of the relaxed on-campus culture in the early ‘70s. He said the 24-hour festival took place in the UI Arboretum and attracted people from all over the Northwest.
“It was a mini Woodstock … and had all the stuff that came along with it in the ‘60s and ‘70s,” Pitman said.
But even the relaxed culture wasn’t always present on UI campus. The university used to enforce strict social policies just years before the widespread cultural change of the early ‘70s, Pitman said.
Pitman said until the mid-1960s, women were required to wear dresses to class unless the temperature dropped below a certain degree.
“I’ve been to alumni events where the alums talk about how they had to call the Dean of Women’s office to find out if they could wear pants to class,” Pitman said.
Pitman said curfews and limited visiting hours in residence halls were other examples of rigid social policies set by UI.
The 1967 UI Student Handbook — which was updated to the current code just two years later — stated that men caught on the fire escapes of women’s residence halls or sororities could face expulsion or suspension.
“This was a very tightly structured place up through the middle ‘60s, and then when social change swept all across American higher education campuses, all of those rules got swept aside, within just a couple of years,” Pitman said.
Ryan Tarinelli can be reached at [email protected]