top of page

Work Hard, Play Hard

 

Land-grant colleges across the country served as a means for many young men and a few women to move up in the social ladder. They could either return to the farm to improve efficiency or move into the city and take jobs requiring special skills. While the elite schools in the East continued to educate the sons and daughters of the upper class, becoming more and more exclusive during the Gilded Age, land-grant colleges like MSU welcomed the common man with cheap tuition and few prerequisites(4). Since the Gilded Age was the bloom of a more scientific era, MSU required all students (male and female) to take bacteriology, chemistry, and physics regardless of major. The curriculum eventually did not require all students to take Latin and Greek since the classes were seen as less practical in nature. MSU also continued to grow in acreage during this time, not unlike the bigger-is-better mentality of the robber barons.

 

 

Annual Campus Parade circa 1911. Courtesy of the MSU Museum.

Yearly campus barbeque, 1915. Burning couches seems miniscule in comparison. Courtesy of the MSU Museum.

All students were expected to contribute manual labor to the college. Every student, male or female, was required to spend three hours doing farm chores daily(2). Each class of students had a set schedule beginning with a wakeup call at 6:00am, followed by classes between 8am and noon.

 

Class rivalries were intense at M.A.C. during the Gilded Age. College men were expected to prove their manhood in what were fairly violent activites such as "flag rushes", football, and wrestling. Every year older classes would challenge younger classes to various competitions including a tug-of-war across the Red Cedar.

The class of '20 trash-talking class of '19. Courtesy of the MSU Museum.

bottom of page