Tag Archives: college

Scripps College Library Tradition

Age: 22

Text: A. told me about a Scripps College tradition where the doors that look like the main entrance to Denison Library only open twice a year. They open during freshmen orientation, where you walk through the front of the library and sign your name and hometown in a book that has all of your peers and classmates in it. Then you walk out through the library and out through the side onto the lawn wher eyou just connect more with your peers and your endless new space for your college life. And you don’t walk through the doors again until your graduation day where you’re in your green robe. You walk in through the side of the library out to the front and then onto the lawn to graduate.

Context: It’s meant to be a very nice metaphor that when you get to Scripps, you walk into the library and gain all this knowledge over your four years and then when it’s time to leave your library, you go into the real world. It’s symbolic how Scripps provides you with all these opportunities and knowledge while you’re there and when it’s your time to leave you take this knowledge and spread it!

Analysis: This is a rite of passage for Scripps students and symbolizes their college experience through institutional folklore. The opening of the doors is turned sacred and the fact that the experience happens at the beginning and the end of the college experience, like bookends, makes this ritual symbolic of personal transformation. It only happens in liminal spaces, where you cross over from different phases of life. Additionally, the signing of the book lets students forever be a part of the community and a shared experience. The meaning is constantly evolving with each new class.

The UCLA Fountain Legend

Students at UCLA have a tradition where they touch their hands into the inverted fountain on campus, which is twelve feet wide and five feet deep, during their freshman orientation. The informant told me about this tradition over a phone call, and it said that if you touch your hand into it again before you graduate, you will be cursed to spend another quarter at UCLA and graduate late. This story has been passed down from the older generations of grades to the current generation. The informant is a student at UCLA in his junior year, and he is apart of a fraternity. He heard this legend from an older student at his fraternity.

AGE: 21

DATE: February 18th

Language: English

Nationality: White

Occupation: Student

Residence: UCLA

ANALYSIS: I believe that this story was made to both bond students together during orientation to participate in a tradition that is specific to the campus and UCLA, and to also act as a superstition that can scare the freshman into not touching the fountain. It is apart of the culture at UCLA, and the story is also a way for the students to make a memory during orientation when it is their turn to touch the fountain, as well as when they graduate and get to partake in the tradition again before they leave.

Character is what you are in the dark 

Age: 59
Language: English

Text: Character is what you are in the dark 

Context: The participant believes he heard this saying on a show (“Buckaroo Banzai”) while he was in college. In the show, the main antagonist is addressing his followers (who are aliens) in a speech, and recites this phrase while trying to rouse them to work harder so that they can all return to their planet. Despite the fictional context of the show, the participant found great importance in truly considering and adhering to this phrase. It is a phrase he says he uses frequently to hold people responsible for their actions – in arguments, critiques, or even in jest.      

Analysis: This saying refers to one’s actions, and how they are a reflection of their true personality or character. It alludes to how your actions – even when performed in “the dark” or out of public view – are seen as a testament to the kind of person you are. Even though one might say they have good intentions, this categorization is wholly performative; one’s character can only truly be measured by what they do when no one is around to see. This proverb is very similar to others that speak to moral qualities and character such as “Actions speak louder than words”. By grappling with this idea of conscience and character, this saying should be taken as encouraging good behavior and morals even if one is not in public or being rewarded for doing so.

College Ghosts

Age: 19

Date: 12/3/24

Language: English

Collector’s Name: Lia

Nationality: American

Occupation: Student

Primary Language: English

Residence: United States

Subject: I haven’t personally experienced any ghost stories myself, but there is a story in my dorm about some freshmen with spirits. Would that work?

Interviewer: Definitely. Could you tell me a little about it?

Subject: Sure. Okay, in August of the 90s, three freshman guys were roommates. Two of the guys were trying to join a fraternity, and the last roommate was a little bit different from the other two. Let’s call him Jake. Jake spent a lot of time in his room alone, was not that conversational, and secluded himself from the other roommates. One night, Jake randomly invited the other two roommates to partake in a haunted ritual to connect with spirits. The roommates were excited that Jake might finally begin to open up, so they agreed. 

Interviewer: Wait, so there wasn’t any sort of hesitation from either of the roommates about a haunted ritual they are only just hearing about? 

Subject: No, not at all, really. They are teenage boys who likely felt invincible and thought the whole thing wasn’t real. Jake started telling them about how to perform the ritual, which needed to take place in the haunted dorm room of the college. The three roommates walked over to this room that nobody stays in anymore, and messed with the lock to get in. Jake instructed them on how to begin the ritual, where each person would stand in one corner of the room with their eyes closed, leaving one corner of the room vacant. In increments, all of the boys would switch corners. They repeated this process on Jake’s command until being told to abruptly stop. Jake told them all to slowly open their eyes and shift their heads to the vacant corner. They all did as he instructed, and in the corner was a boy, one that looked just about their age. He was a little bit translucent, and his eyes had been scratched out from their sockets. There was dried blood all over his hands. The most notable thing about him, they say, is just how silent he was. His presence could take noise away from anything around him and leave this empty silence. Until he began to scream. He screamed the loudest any of the boys had ever heard, and all of the roommates covered their ears with their hands. He continued to scream with his piercing, angry voice and then started to walk towards the roommates. Immediately they all ran out of the room, closing it behind them. They returned to their dorm, trying to find somewhere that felt safer. They locked themselves inside of their room and sat down trying to catch their breath. Slowly, one another looked at each other, noticing that each of their eyes had scratches around it, and were slowly starting to swell. 

Interviewer: Did anyone else in the dorm building hear any of this?

Subject: It is a very well-known story, but that night nobody but the three roommates heard anything. Now, people who have a dorm room near the haunted one claim that every once and a while they will hear screams through their wall, but only one room can hear it at a time. Nobody really knows who that boy is, or what his story is. 

Club Initiation Ritual

Main Piece

“[A club I joined this semester] has certain traditions and rituals that we have to undergo before we are onboarded slash, um, official members of the club – not on paper, but in the eyes of the members already. So…what they did is each new member or “newb” was blindfolded and led into a room where we were distracted and sc–I wouldn’t say they ‘scared’ us but they would like yell “BOO!” in our ears and scare us while we were blindfolded, but it never got too out of hand, it was never too scary, they were never too mean – just light, playful, pranks on us. And they would read–they read the constitution of their organization to us at hyper-speed while we were getting lightly hazed slash pranked and blindfolded by other members, and when they were done, we were taken back to our meeting room and we were each assigned — or they told us, in a big form of display, who our “Big” of the club was. We have “Bigs” and “Littles” — basically a new member is mentored by a past member, a member that has been reoccurring on the board — and they kind of take them under their wing to lead them throughout the club and the motions of the club, and we can come to our Bigs for advice, etc. And each of our Bigs ripped off our blindfolds and they would be standing right in front of us with their arms outstretched, ready to give us a hug. And we each had to go to different corners of the room with our Bigs and we were given 2-3 other members of the club as “delegates”, and we were all given champagne bottles. And each Little-Big pairs, along with their committee/chosen few delegates, had to chug the champagne bottle, and the first to finish got to pick karaoke for every other group.

I know that their tradition tends to wave and flow based on the constraints or number of new members that they get, but they always have traditions of light hazing, a grand Big-Little reveal, a reading of the constitution, and something where there’s a drinking competition.”

Interpretation

Informant’s Interpretation: Informant added context that this ritual happens at the beginning of the semester, and found it to be a fun tradition that unified the group. They also noted that it was hyped up to be a much more jokingly-frightening affair than it was in practice, and that partaking in it made them excited to be a part of a fun group. It also “broken down any of [their] nerves about being ‘new’ in the space.”

Personal Interpretation: While I believe hazing rituals sometimes take harmful forms on university campus, this one seems much more lighthearted and welcoming–particularly as recounted by informant, and with the knowledge that informant and peers were given context beforehand. Most importantly, the fact that it was something they were willing to share openly means no implication of absolute secrecy was present, which can often be a manipulative tactic for more intense hazing rituals. On a more analytical level, this reads as an initiation ritual–a way for new members to symbolically cross a boundary into being part of a group–and officially establish their ties to it. It also serves a purpose as a means of community bonding, and creates an experience only people part of the group have experience.

Background

Informant is a 21 year old college student who was raised in North Carolina and attends school at USC. They are mixed race (Pacific Islander and white), and identify as queer and fem-presenting.