Longtime campus rumors confirmed and rejected
Nick Tabor
Issue date: 3/27/08 Section: Features
With such a constant community turnover, college campuses furnish the perfect conditions for keeping rumors alive.
So it is at Hillsdale College.
The Collegian debunks - or verifies - some of Hillsdale's classic tales, from
campus antics and budgeting rumors to Nazi memorabilia and soft pornography movies.
Rumor: Hillsdale College was featured in one of Playboy magazine's annual rankings of the nation's top party schools in the 1970s.
Fact: Playboy never had an annual "top party schools" ranking. They've only compiled such lists three times: Jan. 1987, Nov. 2002 and April 2006.
Hillsdale College never appeared in any of those lists.
Still, Wertz said, the college truly did maintain a crazier atmosphere during the '70s.
"It was a lot looser back then," he said with a grin.
Check out all three lists:
www.snopes.com/college/admin/playboy.asp
Rumor: Mossey Library once owned a collection of Nazi memorabilia, which prompted a faculty member to quit.
Fact: In the early 1980s, the library was given a collection of books, pamphlets and newspaper clippings focusing on "extremist political, economic, religious and racial topics, including a significant amount of anti-Semitic material," Library Director Dan Knoch said in an e-mail to The Collegian.
Knoch said he didn't know if the materials dealt with Nazism but that some of the anti-Semitic material almost certainly "reflected Nazi sentiment."
He said the library doesn't collect pamphlets and newspaper clippings, and they were not allowed to divide the collection, so they gave them to an institution that did collect such materials, the University of Kansas.
Knoch said he couldn't remember any faculty member quitting because of the collection's short-term presence at Hillsdale.
Rumor: When a student dies, his roommate automatically receives a 4.0 GPA that semester.
Fact: This is a classic urban legend that's circulated in colleges throughout the country.
So it is at Hillsdale College.
The Collegian debunks - or verifies - some of Hillsdale's classic tales, from
campus antics and budgeting rumors to Nazi memorabilia and soft pornography movies.
Rumor: Hillsdale College was featured in one of Playboy magazine's annual rankings of the nation's top party schools in the 1970s.
Fact: Playboy never had an annual "top party schools" ranking. They've only compiled such lists three times: Jan. 1987, Nov. 2002 and April 2006.
Hillsdale College never appeared in any of those lists.
Still, Wertz said, the college truly did maintain a crazier atmosphere during the '70s.
"It was a lot looser back then," he said with a grin.
Check out all three lists:
www.snopes.com/college/admin/playboy.asp
Rumor: Mossey Library once owned a collection of Nazi memorabilia, which prompted a faculty member to quit.
Fact: In the early 1980s, the library was given a collection of books, pamphlets and newspaper clippings focusing on "extremist political, economic, religious and racial topics, including a significant amount of anti-Semitic material," Library Director Dan Knoch said in an e-mail to The Collegian.
Knoch said he didn't know if the materials dealt with Nazism but that some of the anti-Semitic material almost certainly "reflected Nazi sentiment."
He said the library doesn't collect pamphlets and newspaper clippings, and they were not allowed to divide the collection, so they gave them to an institution that did collect such materials, the University of Kansas.
Knoch said he couldn't remember any faculty member quitting because of the collection's short-term presence at Hillsdale.
Rumor: When a student dies, his roommate automatically receives a 4.0 GPA that semester.
Fact: This is a classic urban legend that's circulated in colleges throughout the country.
Viewing Comments 1 - 3 of 3
Brendan ('93)
posted 3/27/08 @ 2:55 PM EST
Note for Correction: The bowling lanes were removed during the 1989-90 school year while the current location for the bookstore was completed in the fall of 1990. (Continued…)
Hans Zeiger
posted 3/27/08 @ 3:02 PM EST
Full disclosure: I am the unnamed student who was caught with Dean Simmer's key. The penalty for that unfortunate tour of Central Hall was a $100 fine and ten hours of community service. (Continued…)
Scott Fischer--Class of '85
posted 4/08/08 @ 6:44 PM EST
Unconfirmed Rumors from the '80s:
SAGA stood for Soviet Attempt to Gag America
Hillsdale County had the highest incest rate in the State of Michigan. (Continued…)
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