In the past 30 years, traditions
such as the One-Ton Sundae during
Winter Weekend and Ooze-ball in the spring, have become well
established. But in its 118 years, the University has seen a
variety of traditions - some playful, some dangerous, and some
downright demeaning. The latter were usually efforts to initiate
freshmen to campus life.
An activity that became known as the Horse Rush started in the
early days of Storrs Agricultural College in the 1890s, according
to Evan Hill, emeritus professor of journalism, in an unpublished
essay, "The Pig Roast, The Bag Rush, The Rope Pull, Cannoning,
Banqueting, The Pied Piper And Other Not So Great, Or Glorious,
Adolescent Rituals."
"It was a senior-junior tournament, with a single senior - a
single mounted knight - riding surrounded by the senior class
as foot-soldiers and the whole infantry class of juniors running
to pull him down," said Hill. The route was from a barn on Storrs
Road (now Route 195, it was a dirt road until 1916), going 300
yards up "The Hill" to the Main Building (located on the open
space between the Beach and Waring buildings). The object for
seniors was to get the horse and rider there, and for juniors to prevent it.
Shortly after the beginning of the 20th century, upperclassmen
thought the event beneath them and sophomores took over the
challenge. They started two new events: the Cannon Rush and
the Trip to Eagleville. In the Cannon Rush, sophomores would
sneak a cannon on to the campus and fire a round on a quiet
night - freshmen had to roust out of their dormitories, find
the cannon and capture it.
Also around this time, the annual Rope Pull was started, with
freshmen pitted against sophomores at opposite ends of a rope
stretched across either Swan Lake or Mirror Lake. It was held
46 times up to the 1950s. This was a contest of strength and
of will, said Hill, "for who really wanted to end up in the
slimy, muddy, and algal water?" Sophomores usually won - sometimes
because the night before a contest they would stamp out footholds
on their side of the lake.
The Trip to Eagleville was a punishment for freshmen who failed
to obey campus rules - like tipping your cap to faculty or failure
to carry matches at all times. Sophomores blindfolded the offending
freshman and walked him two-and-a-half miles to the train trestle
at Eagleville, then headed north up the Central Vermont tracks.
They lashed him to a post near the track "to await, sightless,
the wailing steam-whistle rush of a northbound train.
"He could feel on his face the pushing wind of the oncoming
locomotive and then he was drenched in the sound of clacking
wheels, spurting steam, rattling cars. Rarely did a disobedient
freshman make two trips to Eagleville," said Hill. The practice
was abandoned in 1920.
Around 1913 the Cannon Rush was replaced by the Freshman Banquet,
"an annual event that broke more heads, smashed more furniture,
wrecked more hotel dining rooms and lobbies, and sullied the
college's reputation more than any combination of previous class
contests," said Hill.
Hill quoted Andre Schenker, a member of the Class of 1922 and
a history professor until 1965. Schenker called the Freshman
Banquet "the worst ... of all the reckless enterprises and student
fights of olden days."
Like the Cannon Rush, the banquet pitted freshmen versus sophomores.
The incoming first-year class had to hold a banquet sometime
during a one-month period (later cut to 16 days) in the fall
semester and sophomores had to prevent it from being held. There
were rules: the freshman class president had to attend the banquet
and couldn't be held prisoner by sophomores for more than 24
hours prior to the event. The banquet had to be held within
65 miles of the Storrs campus, and 50 percent of the freshmen
class had to attend.
From the first day of the banquet period, "studying was practically
given up," said Schenker. "The two classes meant business. Around
the campus you would not see students, but groups of gangsters
with lead pipes or other weapons at their belt or under their
arm. |
"Sophomore spies everywhere, in New Haven, in Springfield, in
Providence. All the roads guarded. All nearby taxis hired in
advance. Never more than half the sophomores asleep at one time,"
said Schenker.
Kidnaping the class president was a key sophomore tactic, and
one year during Schenker's undergraduate days, they identified
the student (chosen by a committee - most freshmen also didn't
know who their class officer was until the banquet), and planned
a night-time attack.
Guarded by four classmates, the freshman president slept in
his barricaded Koons Hall room. The sophomores found a ladder,
and with a blanket muffling his cries, they carried the president
down to a car waiting near Gulley Hall.
By the time the freshmen guards discovered the kidnaping, the
class president was under guard in a locked hotel room in Norwich.
The sophomores also kept guard at Challenger's Windham Inn in
Windham Center, where they believed the banquet would be held.
Freshmen cut the telephone lines to Willimantic. Sophomores
set up a roadblock at the bottom of Spring Hill on Route 195,
searching every passing car. The freshmen, in a rented bus and
other cars, swung around the roadblock, but there were more
traps and obstacles, and the convoy broke up. As freshmen arrived
at the inn, Schenker said, "they were rudely handled, so much
so that several were weeks in recovering."
The banquet wasn't held, but the cheering sophomores were soon
silenced. The senior class president, who served as judge, "ruled
that because the sophomores had held the freshman class president
prisoner for more than the permitted 24 hours before the banquet,
the Banquet Fight was a draw." said Hill.
Mark J. Roy
Sources: "The Pig Roast, The Bag Rush, The Rope Pull, Cannoning,
Banqueting, The Pied Piper And Other Not So Great, Or Glorious,
Adolescent Rituals" unpublished essay by Evan Hill, emeritus professor of
journalism, from the University archives in the Thomas J. Dodd Research Center.
Fall Traditions - Part Two |
