was an even more dramatic version of the story.
A student might supposedly remove the loop—or have it torn off by a romantic partner—as a public sign that they were no longer available.
It’s a wonderfully strange piece of fashion folklore.
But there’s an important caveat: the tradition was never universal or consistently documented.
Its meaning appears to have varied between campuses and social groups,
and much of what we hear today survives as college lore rather than a firmly established rule.
Still, the
