Flashback
50 years ago
A slice of student life
One of the biggest fads during the late 1950s was the Hula Hoop, modeled here by the UB football team. Perhaps the Bulls’ Hula-Hooping skills contributed to their highly successful 1958 football season when UB won the Lambert Cup. Released by Wham-O (which also brought us the Frisbee) in 1958, 25 million Hula Hoops were sold in the first four months and more than 100 million in the first year.
In 1958, the full-time enrollment at UB was less than 7,500 and undergraduate tuition was less than $400 per semester. Count Basie, winner of two of the first Grammys (the Grammy Awards were established in 1958), performed at the Alpha Phi Delta Winter Dance. Other annual student activities included Stunt Night, Kampus Karnival and the Silver Ball.
Bowing to pressure from students, the physics department was forced to lower its standards after 65.2 percent of students enrolled in its courses the previous year either failed or dropped out.
—Karen Walton Morse, University Archives
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