After a couple of weeks to get acclimated to life as a college student, we were treated to what the upper-class folks called “Freshman Customs.” The dink was an ill-fitting beanie that freshmen were required to wear around campus and to tip to passing upperclassmen. (I thought it was odd to call them “upperclassmen,” since it was a two-year campus.) If discovered without a dink, a freshman could face a student tribunal, be quizzed about Penn State, or be required to sing the alma mater in public.

Freshmen would always be on the lookout when walking up from the parking lot or leaving the Student Union Building. Being a small campus in a wooded area, there was always a tree or bush to duck behind, and getting from building to building was a quick sprint.

I’ve kept my dink all these years—55 total. It reminds me of simpler times when one felt that the worst thing that could happen was being caught without it. -Joe Zoshak '73 Edu

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