What are your campus Myths/Legends/Traditions?

[qwe]

our buildings are shaped like things. the library is shaped as a stack of books which is clearly seen from the an aerial view. the pool building is shaped like a big pool. i forget what other buildings are. i dont get out much.

 

[shroom]

I think a popular myth about Rutgers is that it is the #1 STD school in the country... we need better myths.

Gotta love those slutgers chicks Asia Carrera the porn star was a Slutgers grad.

As for other myths and Legends @ Rutgers there's the theft of a cannon from Princeton University in 1875. Princeton retaliated by breaking into the Rutgers armory and stealing a few muskets. The events were reported nationwide in the papers and eventually after much debate the items were returned to the respective universities. To ensure there would be no more theft Princeton buried the canon underground in cement with only a few feet of its butt rising above ground. To this day Rutgers students paint the cannon scarlet red to claim ownership of the canon.

Also from the wikipedia about rutgers:

* The College Avenue Gymnasium, built on the site where the first college football game was played, hosted New Jersey's 1947 and 1966 Constitutional Conventions.

Selman Waksman (1888-1973)— RC'1915. While teaching at Rutgers, he developed 22 antibiotics, including streptomycin, which earned him the Nobel Prize for Medicine in 1952.
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Selman Waksman (1888-1973)— RC'1915. While teaching at Rutgers, he developed 22 antibiotics, including streptomycin, which earned him the Nobel Prize for Medicine in 1952.

* In 1810, a book of 104 rules and regulations are published to guide student down a moral path. Among these rules were prohibitions on dancing and fencing schools, billiards, cards, dice, beer and oyster houses, firearms, powder, and public ball alleys; and further, no student was to "disguise himself for the purpose of imposition or amusement," "speak upon the public stage anything indecent, profane, or immoral," or "employ a barber on the Lord's day to dress his head or shave him."

* In 1879, Mark Twain, the famed American author, accepted an honorary membership into the Philoclean Society at Rutgers, but failed to make the customary monetary contribution.

* In addition to being the "birthplace of college football," Rutgers has given birth to discoveries and innovations such as Cheez-Whiz, water-soluble sustained release polymers, Tetraploids, robotic hands, artificial bovine insemination, and developed the ceramic tiles for the heat shield on the Space Shuttle.

 

[Belisarius]

The old campus of UTSA has some of the ugliest, International Style architecture imaginable (it was built in the late 60s). It's like a bunch of concrete boxes and pillars. This has led to two myths:

1.) That the campus was designed to be easily transformable into a prison, if it ever lost its university status.

2.) That the campus was designed with walkways and lanes wide enough for cars, tanks and/or anti-riot machinery, given the time frame it was built in. This story seems at least a little plausible, though I still doubt it.

At the dorms I lived in my first year, there was a story that the one kitchen for the whole building used to be a regular room, until someone trashed it so badly that they decided to turn it into a kitchen instead of trying to restore it as a room. I call hooey, of course.

There was fatal shooting on campus several years ago--a lover's quarrel, I think--and it's still vivid in the local imagination. There's a humorous story one of my profs told me when it happened; first of all, this particular professor is one of the most hated on campus, even though he really is a nice guy. After it happened, he got a call from a former student who asked if he was okay; since he'd heard that someone had gotten shot, he wondered if it had been the professor.

 

[wizekrak]

In Tache Hall a residence at my University it's rumored that one of the mess halls is haunted, and that one of the dorm rooms is haunted.

 

[Yesterday]

When I was at Syracuse University they told all of the Freshman that Nostradamus or someone predicted that year that there would be a massacre in a cross shaped building on a hill overlooking a cemetary on halloween night. Coincidentally, Day Hall (my dorm) was a cross shapped building overlooking a cemetary and supposedly it was one of only 5 buildings in the entire world fitting that description.

Needless to say on halloween the only thing that was being massacred was the opposing team in beer pong until some jackass pulled the fire alarm and my drunk ass had to be carried down 8 flights of stairs by some huge guy named Oren.

 

[Yesterday]

dude I heard that 80% of the Rutgers campus has HPV

 

[soph1a]

dude I heard that 80% of the Rutgers campus has HPV

I dont think that true.... least not through my experiences (my sister goes there, and im always visitng her). she often refers to it as "slutgers" though.

 

[eric987235]

I think a popular myth about Rutgers is that it is the #1 STD school in the country... we need better myths.

They told us the same about Purdue, which wouldn't surprise me as we had about 40k students.

 

[dankstersauce]

theres a statue of a teacher holding an apple at SUNY Oswego. it's said that when the apple drops from the teaches hand a virgin graduated
similar to a few other schools

 

[TheLoveBandit]

That albino squirrel, aside from being a little freaky, is friggin hilarious. I can't say I'd model for the t-shirts, though.

 

[sput]

At the University of Texas in Austin (HOOK 'EM!), we have quite a few.

* Spotting an albino squirrel on the way to a test means good luck. (We had the ORIGINAL ASBS, thank you very much! http://www.albinosquirrel.com/texas/about.html)
* A statue of an angel at a church on the west side of campus on Guadalupe Street will fly away if a virgin every graduates from UT.
* One legend goes that the name 'Bevo' supposedly was created after some fuckin' Aggies branded '13 - 0' on his hide, and the longhorns then masked the brand by completing the name 'Bevo' on the brand. That one isn't true though. The branding by A&M did happen, but a student newspaper editor in the 1900's named Bevo long before the branding after a popular near beer.
* When it comes time to 'retire' each Bevo, he's bbq'd and served to a select group of alumni. I am so not kidding.

 

[indelibleface]

At Cal State Northridge, we are known for our fairly large orange grove in front end of the campus. It's said to be haunted. That's about it. State schools aren't much for historic urban legends.

At Cambridge University, where I most definitely do not go (I wish), there's a great story about a student who invoked a little known, very archaic (medieval era) law regarding exams, where examinees have the right to one glass of ale before a test. The examiners checked the old books, discovered he was right, and grudgingly ran down to the store to give him his ale.

Frustrated, the examiners went back to the books, and found another archaic rule to enact their revenge: they fined the student a large sum of money for taking the exam without his sword.

%)

 

[THeRaVeToY]

University of Connecticut:

Tradition:
-At women's basketball games, everyone in Gampell Pavillion stands until the Huskys score.

-Spring Weekend! First, Kill-A-Keg at Carraige House, then Celeron, then X-Lot. Kegs-and-Eggs is in there somewhere.

Myth? Truth? I dunno, they're rumors I heard.
-Rub the nose of the mascot statue (Jonathan the Husky) for good luck.

-The psychology building was designed after a multi-level rat maze.

-When they built the new library, they didn't account for the weight of the books. When everything was moved in, bricks started popping out of the facade... everything was removed and the building renovated.

-The new Chemistry Building is slowly sliding into the pond it's built next to. And by next to, I mean one wall of the building is in the pond (fuck regulations about building next to wetlands!)

-The Puppet Museum is haunted. And if it's not, it's still creepy as hell, espeically after dark.

-The Depot Campus (down the road from the main campus) was either a mental health facility, or an old corrections facility before the school bought it (for really cheap). It's haunted, too. There's a modern prison across the street from it.

 

[PGTips]

Frustrated, the examiners went back to the books, and found another archaic rule to enact their revenge: they fined the student a large sum of money for taking the exam without his sword.

I can imagine some of the older fellows doing that, particularly if they were in a History exam. No doubt there are dozens of somewhat odd rules no longer enforced but technically still applicable.

One tradition, or rather rule, of ours which I'm sure many people wouldn't like is that exam resits are forbidden. You may only sit a Tripos exam once.

 

[bowdenta]

2 major traditions. we cannot walk through our sallyport (big ass arch) in the direction away from the academic quad until our graduation ceremony.

once a year around march we have beer bike. everyone wakes up at 6am and gets shitfaced drunk (except some of the bikers). there is then a campus-wide water balloon fight and it culminates in a bike relay race where people have to chug 24 oz of beer between riders. i always took adderall and ran around like a wasted fool. the next monday after my freshman year apprantly it was going around that i seemed more than just wasted - I just played it off that i was irish and could handle my alcohol, and i was on the track team so running wasn't a problem

 

[prozac NO tion]

TheRaveToy- lol about puppet museums, I hate those devilish little dolls....yuck.

Our school is built on an old, old wooden Fort where Buffalo Bill Cody used to hang out, so we have a ton of legends about cowboys, indians, soilders, etc.

A cool tradition we have is Oktoberfest (most of the town is Volga german) which is basically a drunk fest where you have to look out for the "White vans" that contain Undercover cops.

Apperantly our school also has the most alcohol consumption per student in a division 2 school...

lots of stories about people throwing themselves out of windows in dorms so thats why certain floors are closed, etc....

 

[Atlantis]

Supposedly in one of the dorms, in a tiny room with one tiny window (the room literally is like a prison cell) on the 5th floor, a girl hung herself, and although that room is no longer open to students, people on the 5th floor claim to hear and see supernatural things.

Then there's the stroy of the guy who was arrested and placed in an ambulance b/c he was injured, with handcuffs, and as he was crossing a bridge over the Hudson River (Upstate NY here, people), he allegedly jumped out the back door and jumped off the bridge into the water, thinking he could swim to freedom. Sucks for him that it was low tide, so instead of swimming to freedom, he got splattered on the rocks. Supposedly this is a true story. Not associated with the college, but my school is only 2 city blocks from the river, so we can see the bridge from campus.

 

[AcidRain]

I heard a myth that universities used to be places of fun & social gathering, rather than a means to get a higher paying job.

Sure there's the odd free spirit studying what they love. . but all the stories my parents tell me of 'back in the day' bear no resemblance to modern day.

 

[sunset117]

there are a few traditions, but i really dont know them. except that some dead guy was buried under the main long ass steps on campus (black panther that was shot on campus was thrown into the cement while they were redoing the steps, and they did some xray shit or something and found something in ther, or so I was told during orientation), everyone runs around campus in ther underwear the day before finals week of each quarter, and screams at midnite each nite during finals

legends? USC is for gays, but thats not really a legend, more fact