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The year 1911 witnessed the demise of the Hot Feet, a student organization whose annual public coronation of its "king" was a piquant ceremonial. The coronation at the southern end of East Range was preceded by a procession around the Grounds, with the king at the head followed by the queen, court poet, wizards, chancellor, archbishop, pages, musicians, cupbearers, guards, jesters and chamberlains. After the formal induction of the king into office, the public was invited to partake of royal viands in the somewhat unkingly precincts of Randall Hall.
A metal insignia worn by
Hot Feet members
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All this came to an abrupt end when the Hot Feet behaved in such cantankerous fashion as to draw down upon themselves the wrath of the administration. One of their more raucous nighttime performances consisted of removing the stuffed animals, snakes and other varmints from the Cabell Hall basement, where they were stored, and stationing them behind the professors’ classroom desks and in front of their residences on the Lawn. This assemblage, which included a kangaroo, a tiger, an ostrich, a moose, boa constrictor, three-toed emu, and other animals, fowls and reptiles, greeted the dumbfounded citizenry on Easter Sunday morning.
On top of this, some well-lubricated Hot Feet bulled their way into a student’s room, roughed him up and carried off a beer stein. He complained to President Alderman. Four of the miscreants were expelled, four more were suspended for a year, and the University administration proclaimed: "The Hot Feet Society has been, on the whole, very detrimental to the University’s welfare, and it is, therefore, unanimously resolved that the existence of the Hot Feet Society, and all other organizations which promote disorder in the University, shall be forbidden."
—Excerpted from Mr. Jefferson’s University,
by Virginius Dabney (Col ’20, Grad ’21)
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