What were evangelical colleges for? As I argue in my new book, evangelical and fundamentalist schools promised to do lots of things at once. Thanks to alert SAGLRROILYBYGTH DW, we have new evidence of two of those things from Indiana Wesleyan University.

As DW discovered on a recent campus visit, Indiana Wesleyan (former Marion College) recently posted these dining-hall rules from 1946. They are more than just a nostalgic goof, though. As did the interdenominational conservative evangelical colleges I focused on in my book, back in 1946 Marion’s leaders were trying to accomplish two deadly serious goals in their dining hall.

First, many evangelical colleges needed to introduce their students to middle-class social norms and aspirations, as I note in my book. As one student at Chicago’s Moody Bible Institute remembered, back in the 1920s many MBI students

were raw farm boys, you know, and so on and so forth. If you’d had a smattering of education: fully high school or not, never mind, as long as you were really on fire for Christ, you know. And some who didn’t know very much about etiquette and that kind of thing.

For many evangelical students, especially Bible-institute students, the middle-class norms expected of college graduates had to be taught explicitly and enforced rigorously. Clearly, at Marion College, some students needed reminders, as rule number 9 points out,

It is considered proper courtesy for the gentleman to allow the lady at his right to serve herself before he serves himself; the lady in turn should receive this courtesy with lady-like appreciation.

Plus, at all evangelical colleges in the period, and in fact at almost all colleges in the period, social interactions between men and women were rigidly policed. Administrators needed to be able to assure parents that no hanky-panky would be going on.

Mealtimes, at most schools, offered students a rare opportunity to interact with the opposite sex, and all college administrators worked to prevent students from taking advantage. That’s why the final rule on this list is very clear:

All men are expected to leav [sic] the dormitory immediately following the meal excepting after the evening meal when they may stay in the parlor on Wed. evenings until 7:30 and on Friday evenings until 10:30.

These rules might seem like quaint relics these days, but they are more than mere quirks. They show us how higher education combined many functions. In addition to academic instruction, students were supposed to pick up religious zeal and upward social mobility, all while being rigidly controlled. At the time, parents expected college students to learn more than just a profession; at conservative religious colleges especially, parents wanted children to learn how to mingle in society politely, and above all, safely.

Thanks, DW!