Whiskers
In January 1911, inspired by the bearded countenance of popular professor of Biology Robert S. Breed upon his return from Europe, senior men decided not to shave. The senior women were not impressed. They cut chapel and posed wearing white bows and carrying signs reading, “Our beaux are trimmed.” They refused invitations to class functions and would not allow their hirsute counterparts inside Hulings Hall. Their motto was “Lips that have whiskers can never touch mine.” The men replied, “Verily he that groweth a beard is greater than he who maketh many dates.”
The national press reported the beard problem at Allegheny. The men announced they would not shave until Washington’s Birthday dinner. Each Wednesday the men published Whiskers, a penny broadside that caught the eye of the Youth’s Companion. “Consider the whisker, my son, how it grows!” it quipped in mock Biblical style. “Yet Dr. Crawford in all his glory is not arrayed like one of these.”
The rage for facial hair spread to neighboring campuses and even to the battleships U.S.S. Georgia. The beards appeared in full force at the banquet as the seniors had vowed and the next day they were gone. One “farewell edition” of Whiskers was published and its $7.13 profit donated to the Athletic Association.
[Excerpt from "Through All the Years: A History of Allegheny College"
by Jonathan E. Helmreich, Emeritus Professor of History and College Historian]
