{"id":1128,"date":"2010-04-21T16:21:43","date_gmt":"2010-04-21T16:21:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/hub-dev.bates.edu\/magazine\/?page_id=1128"},"modified":"2017-09-06T11:38:53","modified_gmt":"2017-09-06T15:38:53","slug":"scene-again","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/magazine\/back-issues\/y2006\/fall06\/departments\/scene-again\/","title":{"rendered":"Scene Again"},"content":{"rendered":"

Seen here is the 1970 edition of the Bates shoe toss \u2014 also known as the shoe date \u2014 on the lawn in front of Alumni Gym during orientation.
\nIn a nod to modern times \u2014 women\u2019s lib! \u2014 the traditional roles were reversed in 1970, with women grabbing from the pile of men\u2019s shoes.<\/p>\n

\"\"

Each half-shod woman was sought out, and the result could be anything from a future marriage to a painful day of uncertain conversation.<\/p><\/div>\n

For most of its existence, which dates to the 1930s, the shoe toss was held not on campus but off, during the entering class\u2019s Stanton Ride to the countryside. It went like this: Each woman tossed a shoe into a pile. Then the guys held a race to the pile and grabbed a shoe, doing so with high zeal if they had scoped out a specific shoe belonging to a specific foot. Each half-shod woman was sought out, and the result could be anything from a future marriage (see \u201cA Lady\u2019s Day,\u201d page 32) to a painful day of uncertain conversation for those on the shy side.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe poor guy who found my shoe was small in size, stuttered, and was feeling more out of place than I was,\u201d recalls Florence Dixon Prince \u201952, who came to Bates from a small Cape Cod town. \u201cHe left Bates after a year.\u201d What a way to find a solemate.<\/p>\n

In its first issue in September 1970, The Bates Student noted that the first-year males already had long hair and that both sexes had a \u201csophisticated\u201d air. The freshmen got along easily, the reporter noted, adding that even a longstanding tradition like the shoe toss \u201cseems unnecessary.\u201d<\/p>\n

The scribe was prophetic. The 1970 toss was, in fact, the final one.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Seen here is the 1970 edition of the Bates shoe toss \u2014…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":221,"featured_media":0,"parent":1108,"menu_order":5,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","template":"","meta":{"_hide_ai_chatbot":false,"_ai_chatbot_style":"","associated_faculty":[],"_Page_Specific_Css":"","_bates_restrict_mod":false,"_dimp_site_id":"","_dimp_override_contact":false,"_table_of_contents_display":false,"_table_of_contents_location":"","_table_of_contents_disableSticky":false,"_is_featured":false,"footnotes":"","_bates_seo_meta_description":"","_bates_seo_block_robots":false,"_bates_seo_sharing_image_id":0,"_bates_seo_sharing_image_twitter_id":0,"_bates_seo_share_title":"","_bates_seo_canonical_overwrite":"","_bates_seo_twitter_template":""},"class_list":["post-1128","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1128","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/221"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1128"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1128\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11232,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1128\/revisions\/11232"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1108"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1128"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}