SOME STUDENTS WEAR THEM TO HIDE A BAD HAIRCUT. OTHERS USE THEM TO MAKE A STATEMENT. STILL OTHERS WEAR THEM BECAUSE THEY DIDN'T SHOWER THAT DAY. THESE ARE BUT A FEW REASONS WHY COLLEGE-AGE STUDENTS HAVE IMMERSED THEMSELVES IN...

Manuel S. Varela '94 knew he made a mistake when he got a haircut from someone who wasn't is usual barber. He just wonders when he'll stop suffering from his blunder.

"I went to certain place of haircutting and I got a very bad haircut. I've endured many, many a nickname for it," says Varela. Who has answered to such epithets as "monk" and "Friar Truck" for his grave error.

Varela's Quincy House roommates tried to rectify the situation with an electric device--but they ended up removing most of the hair from the sides and back of his head.

"At this point, it was no longer an issue of whether this was salvageable, but how we could get it even again," Varela says.

The only solution for Varela, as it has been for other students who are follicularly challenged, is the base-ball cap. Varela says he has been wearing his Baltimaore Orioles hat since the unfortunate turn of events--and in encouraged by the speed at which his hair is growing back.

Varela is just one of the legions of Harvard students, mostly men, who wear baseball caps. While many of those students say they wear caps because of hair mishaps, other cite a variety of reasons for their added apparel.

Some students have a political bone to pick. For others, the hat has religious significance. Some are intent on telling the world where they came from. And a few just show support for their favorite sports teams.

For all these reasons--and more--the baseball cap has become as permanent a part of Harvard life as memorial Hall.

Hat History

The baseball hat had humble beginnings. In 1851, the New York Knickerbockers, a band of poorly paid ballplayers who rarely travelled outside Manhattan, began wearing straw hats to keep the afternoon sun out of their eyes.

"That didn't last too long," says Gary Van Allen, a researcher at the National Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York. "It was considered impractical."

After the Civil War, many teams used mohair caps with perfectly flat tops. In the 1890s, the so-called "Chicago style" or cake-box shape cap emerged--a form that the National League's Pittsburgh Pirates used again for their own caps in the 1970s.

Fans did not begin wearing caps until the 20th century. The "Boston" style cap, with a close fitting crown and button top, became the standard by 1910, and that is essentially the baseball hat that is worn in Harvard classrooms and dining halls today.

But all of that has little to do with the reasons why Stephen B. Sadoski '95, sitting in the Quincy House dining hall, sports a white hat with blue rim and "Florida" written in orange.