That wasn’t the case with Oberlin or many other LACs/small universities I know of even back in the '90s.
Especially considering the not insignificant numbers of international students would have had serious issues as the Thanksgiving holiday is too short to allow many of them time to travel home and back. And most back then weren’t in a financial position to afford staying in local motels/hotels.
That and for many colleges, Thanksgiving weekend is only a week or two away from the start of finals/final seminar/colloquium research paper due dates.
Even some native-born American students like yours truly and the college classmate who graduated from an earlier class at 17 with high honors opted to spend Thanksgiving week on campus to put in study/research paper/senior thesis time rather than head back home.