Mid-Winter Ball

Yates Snyder, class of ’39, was not only a bright scholar as a member of the Harman Literary Society, and heavily involved in extracurricular activities, including chorus, athletics, and Greek life, but was also noted as an extraordinary campus beauty.  Her senior year she was crowned Queen at the Midwinter Ball and during her four years at Dickinson, “graced the pages of the beauty section of the Microcosm,” perhaps setting an example for future female students that it is possible to have beauty and brains.

The Mid-Winter Ball was an annual college event, where a "queen and her attendants are elected by the student body." The highlight of the dance was the actual crowning of the queen. The queen's responsibility was to "rule over the ball." In 1951, Ann Prescott won the title of queen at the Mid-Winter Ball.

 

 

 

Instead of presenting campus queens or Varga girls in the features section of the 1952 Microcosm, the staff chose to highlight social events from the year. They chose five events, including Homecoming, the Christmas season (which comprised a Nativity Play and a Doll Dance, among other activities), the Mid-Winter Ball, the Inter-Fraternity Weekend, and the Follies.

While the 1949 Microcosm gave the task of judging the year's campus queens to the student body, the yearbook of 1950 returned to the practice of outsourcing the judging. In 1950, Conrad Thibault, a radio and concert singer, had experience as a judge of the Miss America Beauty Contest. He chose Joan Davisson as the Queen of Dickinson College and Ann Frescott as the runner-up. Other female students selected as "The Unusual Six of a Kind" included: Lois Jane Barnard, Patricia Bradley, Barbara Neilson, Alice Rogers, Grace Wiest, and Frances Scott.

Christine Crist (Class of 1946) describes the only dances that took place at the college during the WWII period. In December, the school hosted the Doll Dance in the gym (now the Weiss Arts Center). The Doll Dance was a formal dance for which attendees would bring dolls as a donation to disadvantaged children. The men used this opportunity to "look over the...newest freshmen girls...so we all got a big rush." The Mid-Winter Ball, held in January, was the last dance the college hosted for the duration of Crist's academic career.