This semester, Special Collections & University Archives hosted art history and museum studies undergraduate intern, Bella Glastra van Loon, class of 2025, to curate a physical and digital exhibition on a topic of her choice using USF archival materials. After a productive semester, Bella is excited to share her work and reflect on her internship experience.
In recent years, long-standing traditions of hazing and initiation rituals have come under increased scrutiny. While hazing is often associated with fraternities, sororities, and athletic teams, it was once a common feature of many school-sanctioned initiation weeks. The University of San Francisco and Lone Mountain College/San Francisco College for Women were no exception. During the mid-20th century, humiliation rituals were deeply embedded in freshman orientation, often involving dink hats, menial chores, and absurd dares. These initiation weeks stirred feelings of dread, anxiety, and shame, yet also created a sense of camaraderie and connection to campus life. As school spirit slowly rebounds in the wake of the pandemic, institutions like USF are reexamining how to build inclusive communities that support both academic and personal growth without the harmful legacy of hazing. This research project reflects on a time of college optimism while critically examining the violent and traumatic aspects of freshman initiation once seen as essential to student life.
While browsing digitized copies of The Tower, the San Francisco College for Women student newspaper, I came across an amusing yet unsettling collection of diary entries published in September of 1948. Written by a freshman, the entries detailed her first weeks on campus through brief, candid reflections. What began as lighthearted observations soon took a concerning turn. The freshman orientation she described seemed less like a welcome and more like a form of hazing. The entries painted a picture of late September at Lone Mountain as a time rife with danger. As I continued reading, I found several other articles in the same publication addressing freshman orientation. Some promoted mixers designed to help students meet one another, while others described the “Freshman Follies,” a mandatory annual showcase where new students were made the object of campus-wide spectacle.
The mix of emotions in these articles—and the emotions they stirred in me as a reader—highlighted the fine line between community building and harmful initiation. Yearbook photos from that era suggest a strong sense of school spirit and camaraderie, yet it’s clear that this bond was, at times, forged through shared discomfort or even trauma. How can the University of San Francisco today foster genuine connection after years of isolation, without reviving the outdated and harmful rituals of the past? The answer isn’t obvious, but looking back at our institutional history may offer insight into what helped, and what hurt, along the way.
After focusing my research on this issue of hazing, I began looking into examples of freshman initiation at the University of San Francisco. Here, I found a host of articles, photographs, and ephemera that shed light on the institutionally sanctioned hazing practices. Combining my research from Lone Mountain College/San Francisco College for Women with research from the University of San Francisco, I began to create a picture of the history of hazing on what is now the University of San Francisco’s campus.
Pictured above: Freshman chores, San Francisco Foghorn, Vol. 39, No. 1, (September, 1950). “Push Em’ Up, Tony!” San Francisco Foghorn, Vol. 17, No. 2, (August, 1937). Ken Gray’s freshman initiation, San Francisco Foghorn, Vol. 46, No. 1, (September, 1954).
Curating this exhibition case began with a careful selection process, narrowing down my collection of research to the most visually engaging, thematically relevant, and emotionally compelling objects. The extensive archive of newspaper clippings I compiled during my research was distilled to a core set of documents that best captured the tension and emotional complexity of this freshman orientation environment. While photographs were relatively scarce, those published in the USF student newspaper, The Foghorn, and the Women’s College yearbook offered significant visual interest. With the instrumental assistance of University Archivist Annie Reid, I also included a set of 1960s photographs featuring freshman students wearing traditional “dink hats.” To add a three-dimensional element, Annie directed me to a box in the University Archives containing original 1960s dink hats, which I incorporated into the exhibit. Additionally, the exhibit features a 1948 Women’s College yearbook, El Faro, opened to a spread showcasing the freshman class along with a list of their class activities.
Pictured above: Students with dink hats, ca. 1950s, USF Archives Photograph Collection.
One of the most difficult aspects of this internship project was the time limitation. At the beginning of the semester, I committed to 30 hours of work based on the credit hours of my associated internship class. As one might imagine, the long list of tasks involved in putting on an exhibit, even a small one, exceeded this 30-hour limit. I would not have been able to work through all of my questions, dig into the research, or navigate the University Archives without the help of my supervisor, Annie Reid. Her assistance and mentorship were instrumental in producing this research project and also made the experience incredibly fulfilling. Despite the brevity of my internship, I found it to be deeply educational and rewarding. Beyond practicing exhibition production, I learned a great deal about the labor required to preserve university history and make it accessible to a wider audience.
To see this pop-up exhibit in person, head up to the third floor of the library, the case is located between the printing presses in front of the Rare Book Room. To visit the online exhibition, follow this link!