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This Week in Princeton History for November 25-December 1


In this week’s installment of our recurring series bringing you the history of Princeton University and its faculty, students, and alumni, the football team defeats Dartmouth in hurricane force winds, a student writes home to complain about the food, and more.

November 25, 1950—Despite 108-mile winds at kickoff, Princeton and Dartmouth still play their championship game in Princeton’s Palmer Stadium. About 5,000 fans attempt to watch the game in person, but an estimated 25,000 ticket holders simply stay home to wait out the storm. Most of those who do attend seek refuge in the dormitories.

The 1951 Bric-a-Brac‘s report on the 1950 Princeton-Dartmouth football game.

November 27, 1805—William Rawle of the Class of 1807 is called before the faculty and charged with “keeping a noisy and disorderly room and threatening some of his fellow students who had informed one of the tutors” and “intemperate drinking.” The faculty minutes record, “He confessed that he had threatened his fellow students, but not with any particular kind of vengeance, and that some person had brought spirituous liquor into his room and that he had been drunk there—whereupon he was sentenced to be admonished before his class.”

November 29, 1994—The Daily Princetonian announces that an Asian American Studies course will be offered for the first time in the fall.

Student protest flyer, ca. 1994. As noted here, the 1994 Asian American Studies course was a response to student pressure. Asian American Student Association Records (AC423), Box 1.

November 30, 1781—Peter Edmund Elmendorf, Class of 1782, writes to his mother to complain about the food in Nassau Hall: “We eat rye bread—half dough and as black as it possibly can be, old oniony butter and sometimes dry bread, and thick coffee for breakfast. A little milk or cyder, bread, and sometimes meagre chocolate for supper. Very indifferent dinners, such as lean, tough, boiled fresh beef with dry potatoes, and if this deserves to be called diet for mean ravenous people let it so be stiled [sic] and not a table kept for collegians!”

For the previous installment in this series, click here.

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