Dances and Queens

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(above) Homecoming Queen Miss Cindy Rogers holding her scepter, 1960

By the 1920s, all formal campus dances featured the selection of a Queen and her "royal court." 

For women involved in high society this was a great honor, and the Queens were featured prominently in the Hatchet yearbooks.  In many ways this paralleled the long standing St. Louis tradition of selecting young women as the "royal court" for the high society Veiled Prophet Ball. 

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(above) Homecoming Queen and her Court, November 1945

Other yearly dances gave their own unique crowns. 

The Junior Prom gave a crown with cherries and hatchets, symbolizing the folk-tale of George Washington chopping down a cherry tree, which was the inspiration for the yearbook title "Hatchet."  The Engineer's Ball Queen wore a modest circlet.

 

This tradition continued through the late 1960s, ending as a new generation of college students began attending in the 1970s.

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(above) Hatchet Crown, 1948
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(above) Crown, Homecoming Queen, circa 1940s