Concordia College Freshman Beanie Caps

The blog I'm Learning to Share has an interesting post that explain's Jughead's hat.

I never had noticed before that a similar hat was worn by Goober Pyle:

Anyway, while reading about Jughead's hat, I was reminded that every year Concordia College's freshmen wore beanies on campus until the Homecoming football game. At some point during or at the end of the game, all their freshmen threw their beanies into the air, thus signifying that they were considered henceforth to be respectable students.

After that game and even on the following days, we neighborhood kids would search under the bleachers and collect the beanies from the ground. Then we would wear them around, acting like grown-up college students.

The Seward Concordia beanies looked exactly like this:

I remember these beanies only from the first few years when our family lived on Faculty Lane -- the first years of the 1960s. Then at some point the freshmen stopped wearing them, but I don't know why.

I found a webpage that recounts the history of the beanie tradition at Concordia College in Moorhead, Minnesota.

All freshmen were to wear their beanies from the start of school through Homecoming. During Homecoming, freshmen and sophomore students would engage in contests to determine whether or not the beanies were to be worn for an additional two weeks. The Green Cap Rules specified that the contests were to be a boys' tug of war, a girls' foot race, and, in the case of a tie, a boys' foot race.

The Green Caps were to be worn from 7:45 a.m. until 7:45 p.m. every day except Sunday, and until 6:30 p.m. on Saturdays.

While sophomore students enforced these rules, upper classman were encouraged to vow their moral and physical support if needed. ....

First-year orientation clubs were introduced in 1954, and, in 1955, incoming students first received the gold and maroon beanies common today.

This beanie tradition continued until 1965 when incoming and upper-class students refused to participate in the tradition. ....

The length of beanie stays has changed over the years. When the gold and maroon beanies were adopted, students were expected to wear them until the first Cobber touchdown each fall. This regulation was then changed so that beanies were to be worn until the pep rally immediately prior to the Moorhead State and Concordia Crystal Bowl game each fall (now called the Power Bowl game).

If the developments were similar at Concordia College in Seward, then perhaps the beanie tradition was terminated in Seward too in about 1965. Perhaps the tradition was discouraged by the Synod.

Another memory from those beanie years was that some of the freshmen wore black and white saddle shoes.