The Price of a Waltz at Whitman College
A student is suspended for defying her dean to attend a forbidden dancing school, while her Tacoma companion escapes with a month's confinement to campus.
WALLA WALLA, Feb. 8.—For attending a dancing school in Walla Walla in defiance of the orders of the dean of Reynolds Hall, Whitman College, and for refusing to return to the hall when peremptorily summoned by telephone by that official, Miss Mona Noben of Clarkston, Idaho, has been suspended from the privileges of the institution. Miss Bessie Shields of Tacoma accompanied Miss Noben to the forbidden resort, but was let off with a lighter sentence. She is forbidden to set foot beyond the limits of the college campus for a period of one month. Miss Bertha Shields and another college girl were also at the dancing school, but returned to the hall before the dean had located them. Miss Noben was a popular girl in the academic department, and had spent one year at Whitman previous to the present. She has already left for her home in Clarkston.
“She is forbidden to set foot beyond the limits of the college campus for a period of one month.”
Colleges in the early 20th century functioned as moral guardians, strictly policing students' social lives, especially those of women. This conflict over 'forbidden' dancing schools underscores the era's obsession with domestic discipline and institutional control over youth, themes that feel archaic yet mirror modern debates about campus culture and the bounds of personal autonomy.
From readers
No comments yet. If you know something about this story — a correction, a family memory, a source — it belongs here.