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Essay On Life As A College Student In The 1920's

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Life as a college student in Alabama in the 1920’s was very different from the previous generation and this cohort started the change that shaped the way college students are today. Three important changes that defined life for students during this time were dating, obtaining alcohol, and the interference of the Klu Klux Klan. Lisa Lindquist Dorr’s “Fifty Percent Moonshine and Fifty Percent Moonshine” describes the life of college students in Alabama from 1913 to 1933 compared to the generation. College students during prohibition rebelled against their parents’ generation and established the basis for “college life”. The dating scene at Alabama and Auburn during this time is very different then the dating culture we have today. There were …show more content…

The reading states that “one humorous comparison of male and female students noted that both drank, cussed, flunked exams, and got caught in autos.” Dorr stated that the women did not just politely sip, some would apparently get “tight.” “Tight” is a 1920’s euphemism for drunk (Dorr 60). Due to prohibition, alcohol was illegal so students would have to get it bootleg. Boys had a better change of getting a bid from a fraternity if their father was a bootlegger, so they could have easy access to alcohol. The alcohol consumption of the Alabama college students not only would get them in trouble, but it also caused problems for University of Alabama President George Denny and Auburn University President Spright Dowell. The reading states that “rumors about a drunken female student being carried into a fraternity house at Auburn caused such a scandal that they reached the governor’s office” (Dorr, 59). Students continued to drink even though they were repeatedly scolded for doing so, a group of students were publicly chastised for attending a dance visibly drunk and called it “a very offensive and disgraceful thing to do” (Dorr, 61). The illegal drinking and rowdiness of the Alabama college students of the 1920’s are not so different from the students in …show more content…

This “second” Ku Klux Klan was all about moral regulation. Dorr states that the KKK was “Concerned not only bootleggers, prostitution, and derelict husbands, the Klan also sought to put an end to new social practices taken up by middle-class white youth” (Dorr, 63). These KKK members were like moral police officers for the students and for Alabama youth in general, in 1926 and 1927 they raided couples parked on dates on the well-known lovers’ lanes in Birmingham (Dorr, 64). Alabama students feared not for the police but of being caught by member of the Klu Klux Klan. One member of the Klan said that “If the mothers of the town did not prepare to look after their daughters the Klan would” (Dorr, 64). Dorr stated that the Klan was “making their efforts to return to a time when men and women, blacks and whites knew their places all the more imperative” (Dorr, 64). We can only assume that the member of the second Klu Klux Klan was suck in the past, fearful of modern culture and social

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