Claim:   Authors Dr. Seuss and Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. were college classmates and belonged to the same fraternity.

Status:   False.

Example:   [Collected on the Internet, 1999]

Dr. Seuss and Kurt Vonnegut went to college together. They were even in the same fraternity, where Seuss decorated the fraternity house walls with drawings of his characters.

Origins:   This is another example of the spurious items that circulate widely on Internet-based lists of "facts," and — like many of them — is easily shown to be false with a minimal amount of investigation.

Theodore Geisel, later to become famous as Dr. Seuss for his unique series of children's books, was born in 1904. He attended Dartmouth College 1922-1925, and after graduating headed off to Oxford to obtain a doctorate in literature before abandoning his studies to go on a tour of Europe.

Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., was born in 1922 and attended Cornell University beginning in 1940 before leaving in 1943 to join the army. After World War II, Vonnegut spent a couple of years at the University of Chicago as a graduate anthropology student.

In short, Geisel was Vonnegut's senior by eighteen years, and he had already entered college by the time Vonnegut was born. They never attended the same school, either at the same time or at different times. There isn't even any evidence that the two ever met.

Don't believe everything you read on the Internet.

Last updated:   12 July 2007

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