Floppy Hat Day - CARLI Digital Collections Featured Image

The following is a gently-edited transcript of an exchange of comments about this week's featured image.

EC: Because academic life tends toward staidness, I like the idea of a fun, whimsical event that brings campus together.  The UIS collection uses another photo from the 1971 Floppy Hat Day as its thumbnail image, but I prefer this image's focus on the hat and its quirky papercraft construction.  The "SSU" (for Sangamon State) shows school spirit, too.

MR: I'd like to see a picture of Professor Gus Stevens, the inspiration for this event per the image metadata. Okay, I guess I really want to know more about the whole incident. What was the context of Stevens wearing a hat among ladies, with a state senator around to make snide remarks about it? The senator's criticism seems anachronistic in 1971, the middle of the hippy era. The ladies must not have been students.

EC: Your wish is my command! Here's a pic of Prof. Stevens at the event.

As to the flap over floppy hats, state senator G. William Horsley refused to sponsor an appropriation bill for SSU due to "radical activities" and "scandalous behavior" taking place on campus, citing an incident in which "Stevens did not remove his hat while taking photographs during a university function at which women were present."^[1]

Bear in mind that SSU had only begun offering classes in the fall of 1970.  A conservative politician like Horsley--a Republican, Lincoln enthusiast, and sponsor of a 1967 anti-homosexuality bill^[2]--would likely have regarded the faculty and students of a brand-new university as a bunch of upstarts and whippersnappers.

I should add that I love Stevens's comeback: "It's not what we wear, but what's under our hats that counts."

MR: Stevens was Professor of Political Studies – how appropriate! I see there is also one of Stevens unintentionally reprising the infamous episode.

So SSU began with an ideal of non-traditional experiential learning. For example, students could opt to take pass/fail courses instead of being evaluated with grades the usual way. Hence Horsley's frustrated comments: "I'm sick with what's going on out there. They don't want any grades, honors, anything to justify their graduation"^[3] … which he rather inexplicably correlated with hat chivalry.

EC: Hat etiquette is complex!  When to don or doff or tip…

It's interesting, though maybe less so due to the unconventional campus atmosphere, that university administration supported Floppy Hat Day.  That article goes on to note that SSU President Robert Spencer participated not only by wearing a hat and marching around the classroom "pit" but also by judging and handing out prizes to those with the best hats.  This rebellious gesture leads me to suspect that there was much more prior political friction between the university and the state legislature.

Perhaps it's coincidence, but SSU adopted European-style "floppy hats" in place of mortarboard caps for its 1972 commencement.

Returning to our image, you can actually read the newspaper text on his/her hat!  (I'm fairly certain it's the Illinois State Register.)

MR: I did notice that you could read the text! I zoomed in to see it. Most of it is a gossipy article ("Elliott Gould watches her chew") about celebrities.

There's a fragment of an article at the very bottom, titled "Three Minutes a Day," that includes this sentence: "Essential to the art of listening is 'the ability to suspend moral judgment or at least to suppress the urge to voice moral judgments,'" which seems apt on the symbol of a reaction against a voiced moral judgment.

EC: You read more closely than I did! I wondered whether there was any significance to the articles on display. That line about moral judgments says it all.

Written by Ellen K. Corrigan, Assistant Professor, Cataloging Services, Booth Library, Eastern Illinois University with Mary Rose, Metadata Librarian, Southern Illinois University Edwardsville

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