Beware, Frosh! (And be thankful...)

It is the Wednesday afternoon before Thanksgiving break--many students are visibly excited about going home for a few days to see their families, to catch up with friends from high school and to have a few days off from papers, projects and studying. First year students (whose connection to home is stronger since they haven't even been at Ripon for an entire semester yet) may be the most thankful for Thanksgiving break. This excitement though, cannot match that of the class of 1928 when they and the rest of the country celebrated, "the three hundred and fourth commemoration of the manifestations of divine goodness experienced by the heroic
founders of our glorious nation." Thanksgiving to them meant the end of a series of rituals and rules enforced upon them by the school's "soph-o-mores." Current first year students should commemorate the divine goodness of the lack of these rituals in 2008.

The text of the poster reads:

Who is the big man in the picture? He is a soph-o-more. What
is a soph-o-more? A soph-o-more is one of the guardians of the
[?] entrusted with the caring for the morals and the upbringing
of freshmen. What is the soph-o-more in the picture doing? He is
administering punishment to a naughty frosh who has disobeyed
one of the commandments laid down below:

1. Commencing instantaneously and enduring up to and in-
cluding the three hundred and fourth commemoration of
the manifestations of divine goodness experienced by the heroic
founders of our glorious nation. All members of the freshmen
class shall embellish their persons as follows:

(a) Each and every female adherent of the class of '28 shall
accomplish the encompassment of the left humerus with the des-
ignated encirclement.

(b) Members of the sex masculine of the same class shall de-
posit upon their brain pans the ordained cerebellum confines.

2. Suitable deference and humility shall be manifested to
members of the faculty and upperclassmen through the
medium of an industrious and sedulous rapping upon the crimson
protuberance provided for in sections (a) and (b) of 1.

3. The herbaceous and verdant accretion embellishing the
campus shall be sacred from the encroachments of the
members of the frosh class.

4. Abstain from chasing on campus.

5. The confines of thy domicile shall undeviatingly limit thy
inhalation of the vapor of the wicked weed. The sole per-
missable container for the noxious vegetation shall be one man-
ufactured from the chaffy axis of the fruit of the maize.

6. Venerations and respect shall be manifested at the termi-
nation of each chapel excercise by the entire freshman
class remaining seated until all faculty members and upper class-
men shall have left the confines of the edifice.

7. Do not provoke your instructors unnecessarily by utiliz-
ing the arms of the lecture room chairs to cut your teeth
on.

The Consternation Administering Class
1927