Odd university traditions?

[Teebs]

My university exams start tomorrow and for each one I have to dress in a black suit with white bow tie, wear a gown and carry a mortarboard. Uniforms for taking exams is a somewhat odd tradition and I was wondering what sort of weird and whacky traditions people had had at their universities/colleges/schools?

[erik_t]

Do you mean odd traditions of the university, or odd traditions of the student body? This thread could go in very different directions depending on the answer.

[Knife]

How odd. I view University as a business transaction; I pay them to teach me stuff and they do. Such oddities like a dress code for tests would shock me and probably make we want to bitch at the administration for such things when all I'm paying them to do is teach me.

[Phantasee]

Yeah, but you'd probably not be going to the sort of University where tradition is so clearly important, and you'd be looking instead at things like graduate employment rates, tuition and other fees, and commute distance. People who go to schools with weird traditions are either going to old schools or are pretentious gits.

[Captain Seafort]

People who go to schools with weird traditions are either going to old schools or are pretentious gits.

Or, in Teebs' case, both - this is Oxbridge for fuck's sake.

[tim31]

Yeah, never forget that England is full of the English.

[Mayabird]

Oh man, I could go on for days about this. Georgia Tech (my alma mater) managed to start all sorts of crazy traditions despite not being very old (only a bit over 100 years old, in fact). Some of it had to do with Tech's quasi-military bent in the early days, with a touch of stress relief and possibly trying to ape the traditions of older established respectable universities like the Ivy League schools. Stuff like the RAT cap were originally institutional but aren't so much anymore because of anti-hazing laws, although they're still maintained by the student body - well, actually just the marching band, which I was in. The band was highly traditional; by that I mean the band's traditions consisted of drunken debauchery, kleptomania, shenanigans, cultish behavior, and ensuing hilarity. Nobody else was really into it anymore and everybody thought the band was weird anyway. They were right and it was awesome.

But I've got pages of these stories at Librium Arcana if you're really interested.

[RedImperator]

At Penn, the spectators throw toast onto the football field during the third quarter of home games, while they sing the school fight song. There's a line in the song--"raise a toast to dear old Penn!"--and that's when twenty thousand pieces of toast are hurled from the stands.

Villanova, meanwhile, has a tradition of making the NCAA tournament and advancing to the later rounds, something the other schools in the city used to do but have now apparently forsworn.

[erik_t]

At Arizona State, we frisbee'd tortillas onto the field after every score. This was officially frowned upon, and a great deal of thought went into getting the tortillas in (ASU students are searched at the gate like the hooligans they are) and how to throw them well.

As it happens, tortillas are ill-suited to throwing. They are floppy and tend to rip. However, laying them out on the ground allows them to dry out and become much stiffer. In this manner, one can reach ten yards into the field from midway up the upper deck.

Uh, so I have heard.

[Silver Jedi]

Oh man, where do I begin? Like Georgia Tech, a lot of Texas A&M's traditions can be traced to our military past, and are still most rigidly enforced in our Corps of Cadets. Wikipedia has a nice overview of the more popular traditions here, but that's hardly an exhaustive list.

One of I think our most involved is the tradition of yells at football games and other sports. Rather than have cheerleaders who hold up signs for us to say something in unison like "go-team-fight" we have Yell Leaders. There are five of them (3 seniors and two juniors) and they are elected by the student body. At various times throughout the game (whenever someone scores, at kickoff, in response to a bad call, during a lull in play, etc.) they lead yells. It stars with hand signal to tell the crowd which yell it is, which is "passed back" through the stands. The crowd then "humps it" (leans forward with out hands on our knees, which is supposed to help us yell louder) and follows the sometimes complicated yells in unison, directed by hand signals from the yell leaders, which end with a "wildcat" (short yell specific to your class year). Instead of pep rallies, we have yell practice at midnight the Friday night before the game, where a few thousand people crowd into the stands and literally practice the yells, the yell leaders tell motivational stories, etc.

Also, at the end of football games, if we win, all of the fish (freshman) in the corps rush the field, tackle the yell leaders, carry them across campus and dump them in a fountain. Then the dripping wet yell leaders lead a "victory yell practice" on the site the tradition started.

My favorite tradition, and arguably our most infamous, is Aggie Bonfire. A lot of places build bonfires, but none like ours. An annual tradition since 1909, by the 60's, the bonfire was a huge (but entirely student run) engineering project. Bonfire starts in early october, with students going out to cut down trees by hand every weekend until the middle of november. The "stack" is then constructed almost entirely by hand (except for a few cranes to lift the logs up to the upper tiers), and the whole thing was traditionally burned one or two nights before the game with our arch rival, university of texas. After the stack collapsed during construction in 1999, the university stopped officially recognising Bonfire, and a non-profit organisation was set up by students to continue the tradition. At it's tallest, The Bonfire was 111' tall, in 1969, and was made up of thousands of logs.

[Jonen C]

My university exams start tomorrow and for each one I have to dress in a black suit with white bow tie, wear a gown and carry a mortarboard. Uniforms for taking exams is a somewhat odd tradition and I was wondering what sort of weird and whacky traditions people had had at their universities/colleges/schools?

Hm. I think the way it goes here is that, should you have to resit an exam ten times, the tenth you should not only dress up (as in tuxedo), but also bring and light a candle.
That might just be the engineers, though.

EDIT: Ovveråål!.

[Thanas]

I love old university traditions. They always remind me that it is more than learning.

[Falkenhayn]

We had a few good ones at Union.

We were expected to run naked around the Nott Memorial, fingerpaint the "idol", which was an authentic chinese lion sculpture, smoke weed in Jackson's Garden, run barefoot through a 12' storm drain, and have sex on the "U" painted in the middle of the football field.

During the Campus Crawl, Campus Safety could only discipline students if they could see alcoholic beverages in the cups they were carrying. I used a duct taped SoBe bottle, and a friend of mine rinsed out a Folger's can.

When playing RPI in Hockey, during the line in the national anthem "and the rocket's red glare...", RPI scream "RED" because that was their color. So whenever we played them, the Union crowd at Messa Rink sang "and the rocket's RED SUCKS..."

[FSTargetDrone]

The thing is, most of the wackiness you guys are talking about sounds like it happens during football or other games or during other events outside of class. That's no big deal. However, Knife objects (not unreasonably) about nonsensical stuff happening during a test. With so much to worry about preparing for an exam, the last thing I'd want to be bothered with is dressing up before taking the test.

Villanova, meanwhile, has a tradition of making the NCAA tournament and advancing to the later rounds, something the other schools in the city used to do but have now apparently forsworn.

Yeah, it's... awful. The sad thing is, Villanova isn't really even in the city, but I guess we have to latch onto something.

[Phantasee]

I think that was what Howedar was saying: most of the examples listed are weird traditions of the student body, not of the university itself.

[FSTargetDrone]

I think that was what Howedar was saying: most of the examples listed are weird traditions of the student body, not of the university itself.

Okay, who else here had craziness during class itself? My in-class experiences at Penn State were pretty "normal." No dressing up.

Also, Howedar is now erik_t? I'd no idea!

[Silver Jedi]

Yeah, I can only think of one tradition we've got that actually affects what happens in class (not counting stuff that takes up time you should be in class). The person in charge of our mascot (a border collie) is supposed to keep her with him 24/7. If, during class, the dog barks, it means that the professor has bored her, and traditionally they're supposed to let class out early because of it.

[Death from the Sea]

Yeah, I can only think of one tradition we've got that actually affects what happens in class (not counting stuff that takes up time you should be in class). The person in charge of our mascot (a border collie) is supposed to keep her with him 24/7. If, during class, the dog barks, it means that the professor has bored her, and traditionally they're supposed to let class out early because of it.

With some of the more recent bark happy Reveille's this tradition has been not recognized as much.

[Steel]

However, Knife objects (not unreasonably) about nonsensical stuff happening during a test. With so much to worry about preparing for an exam, the last thing I'd want to be bothered with is dressing up before taking the test.

Its just to prevent the female students cheating in finals by turning up wearing basically nothing to distract the male students. Sounds like something only needed in some scummy second rate universtiy though

[Silver Jedi]

With some of the more recent bark happy Reveille's this tradition has been not recognized as much.

Yeah, I knew a couple of the mascot corporals for Reveille VII; she was by all accounts an untrainable bitch. I've got high hopes for Rev. VIII though.

[Teebs]

Its just to prevent the female students cheating in finals by turning up wearing basically nothing to distract the male students. Sounds like something only needed in some scummy second rate universtiy though

Do Cambrige do sub-fusc in exams too? I thought they got rid of it, being somewhat more modern (I'm making assumptions based on your location).

[Davis 51]

Many in our department have a tradition of wearing tinfoil hats to exams. Supposedly, some professors can read minds. This was done not to ward off the evil brainwaves, but to amplify them, so some of their intelligence would rub off on us...or something.

God we're a bunch of geeks.

[Steel]

Its just to prevent the female students cheating in finals by turning up wearing basically nothing to distract the male students. Sounds like something only needed in some scummy second rate universtiy though

Do Cambrige do sub-fusc in exams too? I thought they got rid of it, being somewhat more modern (I'm making assumptions based on your location).

There arent any dress restrictions that I'm aware of. It might still be on the books that you still have to wear something posh to a viva in a subject where the only professor died in 1267, but no exam requires white tie.

[Fleet Admiral JD]

Here at BU, it's tradition to go to the statue of Harry Agganis outside of the hockey arena and squeeze one of his ass cheeks for good luck on exams.

If you walk across the seal in Marsh Plaza, you'll supposedly never graduate from BU.

After each and every hockey game we win, the pep band (a group of truly amazing individuals, really) sing "Hey Baby" and are joined by the bulk of the student section.

Regardless of who we are playing, the traditional songs (school fight song, "Eat 'em Up" or "The Song") all contain the cheer "BC SUCKS!" despite possibly playing someone else.

We also have a tradition of an amazing hockey team and no football team. Go figure.

[darkjedi521]

We had a few good ones at Union.

When playing RPI in Hockey, during the line in the national anthem "and the rocket's red glare...", RPI scream "RED" because that was their color. So whenever we played them, the Union crowd at Messa Rink sang "and the rocket's RED SUCKS..."

At least you didn't go to Clarkson.... RPI alum here. Can't think of too many Institute traditions other than a general lack of caring among the student body. In the last few years, most attempts by the administration to start "traditions" have been met with very lukewarm response. Lots of Back in my day.... stories, but I really can't think of anything that stands out in the 10 years I've been at this lovely place first as a student and then as an employee.