Tag Archives: college campus

Kiss the Ring to Graduate

Folklore:
Don’t step on the emblem at California Baptist University or else you won’t graduate. You can break the bad luck by running as fast as you can to the ring statue and kissing it.

Map of the University from the Emblem to the specific Ring Statue

Context:
The informant is a freshmen at Cal Baptist University, where he learned from his First Year Experience Leader this folklore. There is a specific emblem placed on campus where if you step on it, he was told he won’t graduate unless he runs to a ring statue nearby and kisses it. His friends were forced to do it after they stepped onto the emblem. The informant noted it likely was to show respect to the university and a possible hazing ritual from upper class man to lower class men. It showed they were a part of the community.

Analysis:
The story and superstition is shared within the community and specifically shared from upper class men to lower class men. The experience helps build camaraderie between the students and create a distinctive identity for its members. It also on a practical level, helps discourage disrespect against the university and encourage attention to detail and care for the campus and its members. The bad outcome being failing to graduate also emphasizes the communities interest in education.

The Vanishing Footsteps

Age: 19

Context: I interviewed my best friend who is currently attending school in Ohio. When we were catching up she told me about a strange incident that happened a month before when she was walking home at night. 

The story:

It was late at night, around 12 when I was walking back to my dorm after a long chemistry lab. I had headphones on. While walking down this street I could’ve sworn I heard someone walking behind me. I quickly took them off and checked to see if someone was there. Maybe it was my own feet I’m hearing. The footsteps I had heard immediately stopped. I was like okay cool just me. I go back to walking this time without my headphones on and I hear them again, this time sounding louder and louder. So I stop again, just to confirm to myself, really that I’m just hearing things. This time when I stop I still hear them. And they’re getting closer. I look all over the place, and I can still hear them, but I can’t see anyone. I get a bit freaked out, so I start walking faster. I still hear them walking behind me and it’s like they’re gaining on me. Eventually I stop and I wonder if I can let whatever this is pass so I stop. When I stop I can physically hear them next to me then go in front of me. I looked across the street and all over the place wondering if maybe that was an echo of some kind. I walked down the street many times before, but maybe this time for whatever reason it had just echoed strangely. But no, I didn’t see anyone anywhere near me. After that it seemed to promptly vanish. 

Informant’s view: She thinks that it might have been a ghost or some sort of spirit. All the obvious explanations didn’t explain away the footsteps she heard so she’s open to the possibility of other worldly things.  

My view: I think this might have been a case of serious sleep deprivation. I know around that time period she was going through midterms and not getting enough sleep. She’s never had an incident like this but I feel like this was her brain having a freakout after having to work so hard with no rest.

UC Davis “Undie Run”

Nationality: American
Age: 24
Occupation: Actuary
Residence: San Diego, CA
Performance Date: 4/27/20
Primary Language: English

Background: The informant is an American UC Davis 2018 alumni who currently works as an actuary in San Diego, CA. He learned the tradition while attending university in Davis, CA, but never partook in it himself. 

Context: The following piece was collected in a brief, casual over-the-phone interview.

Piece: 

Informant: “So around finals, usually like the Wednesday of finals week every semester there was an ‘undie run.’ So everyone uh, if you were going to donate your clothes would just strip off whatever clothes you were going to donate, leave them there, and then just run around the campus in your underwear.” 

Collector: “Wait so there’s like a clothing drive?”

Informant: “Uh, there was at some portions er like at some of them like as I was going there it seemed like it was becoming less and less popular.”

Collector: “But people still took off their clothes and ran around in their underwear?”

Informant: “Yeah in like a big group, a big mob. They’d run through all the dorms, all the like cafeterias so you’d be like out getting cookies and there’d be a bunch of people just acting like drunk idiots.”

Collector: “Would they be drunk?”

Informant: “I’m sure some people were drunk but not most of them.”

Collector: “Was it during the day or at night?”

Informant “Mostly at night. Anyone who wants to go can it’s like a Facebook event.” 

Analysis: I have heard of a similar tradition at USC in which seniors run across campus half-naked and swim in each of the fountains before graduation. This tradition differs in that it is open to all UC Davis students and occurs more than once in an academic year. Finals week is a transitory period in which the results from a semester’s worth of classes is still largely undetermined. It is usually a very stressful time for students, so the undie run provides a brief liberation from traditional social expectations. It’s important that it happens in a group so that the act becomes more publicly acceptable. If it were just one individual, it is possible that they would get arrested for public nudity, whereas a larger group performance assures the unlikelihood that law enforcement would be able to punish every individual. It would be interesting to examine more colleges across the country to see how many have an underwear run tradition.