Despite the students’ apparent enthusiasm for the cause, it’s hard to determine definitively what they thought about woman suffrage, especially in the movement’s early days.

For example, in 1910, William H. Edwards 1900, marched in the alumni parade in a billowing suffrage dress and wielding a shield decorated with the “Votes for Women” slogan astride a horse. The Princeton Alumni Weekly¹ noted that this “Modern Joan of Arc” led the entire Class of 1900 costumed as suffragettes:

In the pee-rade on Saturday, the Class of 1900, costumed as suffragettes in an importation of gowns from the Rue de la Paix, were the admiration of man and the envy of woman. The cohorts were led by “Bill” Edwards mounted upon a fully accoutered palfrey. He impersonated Joan of Arc, the leading suffragette of her day, and his squire at arms was Bummie Booth², who as Annie Oakley appeared to have just galloped in from Buffalo Bill’s Far West Show to let the girls know she wanted a fair count of the ballot.

The crowd seemed to take the demonstration as a joke, but President Wilson caught the idea and referred to the important part women are playing in the world’s affairs in a speech he made on the Monday of Commencement Week.

Across the country, many male students followed suit, dressing in suffrage drag. To what purpose isn’t entirely clear. This postcard is another example, although only its date (1910) is known.

By 1914, the year after the Washington hike, students were apparently taking the woman’s vote more seriously. That year, the annual Princeton-Harvard-Yale triangular debate addressed the question of woman suffrage. The anti-suffragists won all three debates. Crowed the New York World: “That settles it. The woman suffragists might as well give up the fight.”

¹ “The Decennial Reunion,” Princeton Alumni Weekly, Vol. X, No. 36 (June 15, 1910), p. 614.

² In the 1900 Nassau Herald, Bill’s classmate “Bummy” is identified as Walter C. Booth