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"A World To Suit Themselves": Student-Constructed Narratives And The Hidden History Of College Life, David M. Brown

Theses and Dissertations--Educational Policy Studies and Evaluation

An individual’s years in college are a time of trial and transformation. This dissertation examined college students’ self-created accounts of their time in college in order to identify students’ significant meaning-making activities during those years. Four primary areas of student life were investigated: the rules that students were expected to adhere to, the ways in which students and their class cohorts antagonized one another, hazing, and class competitions.

A comparative historical approach was used to analyze student-created accounts of college life in the years 1871-1941. Archival research at a geographically diverse sample of fourteen colleges and universities provided primary source …