Life at AGGIELAND in the ‘40’s

The “drown-out” was the only retaliation against upperclassmen.  Every room had a large metal wastepaper basket.  The procedure was to get up in the middle of the night, fill the wastepaper basket with water in the shower, and take it to the offending upperclassman’s room.  You then dumped it in bed with him and ran as fast as you could. You were in serious trouble if he caught you.  Figure 19 shows a drown-out in progress. 

The room doors all opened inward.  A short flat board with a slot in it could be slipped over the doorknob to effectively lock the door from the outside.  This device was called a “---- stick” and was used to prevent a chase after a drown-out.  One freshman was the doorman after the other freshman completed the drown-out.  The doorman had to

be very fast!  I remember being the doorman one night when the occupant had suspended a beer opener (taped to prevent noise) behind the top of his door so that, after the door opened, it would not completely close again until the beer opener was removed.  Needless to say, I got caught!

The most complicated drown-out that I heard of was that of a sophomore on the fourth floor.  He was somewhat cowardly and effectively locked his door by opening both closet doors behind it and interlocking the closet doorknobs.  He then placed a footlocker behind the back one so it couldn’t be closed.  Then he balanced a large steel bowl (from the mess hall) on top of the combination so that it would fall and make a lot of noise when the door was opened.  The freshmen formed a team to drown him out. 

First, they went into his room when he wasn’t there and unlocked the window screen.  The weather was warm and the windows were kept open.  In the middle of that night, while the sophomore and his roommate were asleep in their bunks, the freshmen went up on the roof and one of them, with a rope tied around his waist for safety, climbed over the edge down to the window ledge and held the screen open for one of the others to go through the window and climb into the room.  He very quietly removed the bowl, moved the footlocker, opened the closet doors, and opened the hall door to his waiting buddies.  They placed rocks on the floor by the bed.  A trashcan full of ice water was carried from the mess hall and used to drown out the sophomore and a ----stick was placed on the door.  All of this took about two hours.  This sophomore seemed to be somewhat subdued afterwards.

Occasionally, there would be a drown-out of a sophomore from the window above the dorm entrance.  Doing this without being seen was tricky.  The freshmen drowned out the sophomores, the sophomores drowned out the juniors, and the juniors drowned out the seniors.  Upperclassmen could detail a freshman to drown out one of their own classmates.  If he got caught that freshman was exempt from punishment by announcing that he was “On detail”.  This excuse was never used improperly as lying was a very serious offence. 

            There was one sophomore who was especially hated by the freshmen in our company.  One night all of our freshmen were awakened by a classmate and asked to go to the crapper to urinate in a wastepaper basket, which was then used to drown out that sophomore.