Tag Archives: school

Onomastic – Massachusetts

Nationality: Caucasian American
Age: 22
Occupation: Student
Residence: University of Southern California
Performance Date: April 20, 2011
Primary Language: English

The informant presented me with the following account of an onomastic name for a statue at her high school:

“This is about the penis statue at Phillips Academy Andover. Um, I did not name it that—I just wanna say that first of all—I didn’t even start calling it that until I almost left, even though I had been there. Essentially it was this statue that . . . it looks, it looks like . . . yeah, it’s pretty—it looks like a penis! But its, um, its appropriate name is the Bicentennial Statue, and it’s, um, it was actually to c—um, I guess, sculpted to commemorate the combination of, of I guess Phillips Academy with, um, Abbot Academy down the street. Um, Phillips academy was at the time an all male school, and, um, Abbot Academy was an all-female school. Um, and then they combined in 1978, I’m pretty sure.”

She says of the statue’s epithet, “Um, it was kind of just used all the time, like, ‘Oh, I’ll meet you by the penis statue,’ or just—that’s what it’s called, no one called it the Bicentennial statue.”

When asked when she would call the statue by its onomastic name, the informant said, “I wouldn’t, generally? Other people would just—um, in general you try not to, um, tell that to, um, people who are visiting the school and are prospective students, you kinda just . . . you call it that to other students. You might mention it to a teacher, but that’s a little more—what? What’s it called? I, I wouldn’t, personally, but some people are a little more loose with that kinda thing?”

The informant doesn’t entirely approve of the statue’s onomastic name: “At first I just thought it was really stupid and immature, and, um, kind of as the years went on I started realizing—first of all I figured out which statue they were actually talking about. And when I actually saw it, I was like, ‘Okay. I guess I could see that.’ But like, it’s just really curious to me, like, why . . .”

There’s a kind of poetic justice in the marriage of a girls’ school to a boys’ school being celebrated with a statue that looks like an erect penis, and that may be part of why, aside from the statue’s shape, the students gave it that particular onomastic name. If one subscribes to the theory that high school students are immature, then there’s that explanation, too.

Ritual – Massachusetts

Nationality: Caucasian American
Age: 22
Occupation: Student
Residence: University of Southern California
Performance Date: April 20, 2011
Primary Language: English

The informant speaks below about an annual ritual held at her high school:

“This is ‘Head of School Day.’ It’s, um, something we have at Phillips Academy Andover and, um, essentially, um, we were on the trimester system. So in the winter trimester, it’s just, it’s . . . if you’ve ever been to Boston in the winter, it’s not a very fun place. So I guess kind of it’s a way to, like, as a kind of way to help out the students they’d have what you call ‘Head of School Day,’ where the head of school would just randomly call off a day the night before, so—probably at 7 or 8 o’clock so that most kids had gotten most of their work done, so that, like, if you didn’t sleep in you could actually have, like, a full day off. What’s really interesting about it is that, um, how she would announce it was that she would walk into the, um, the what’s-it-called . . . the cafeteria? We had, like, four cafeterias, places, and she would walk in with a hockey stick and she would raise it up and everybody would just go crazy and it was just, it was just this huge thing where everyone was just like, ‘Oh, when is it going to be?’ And y’know, people had, y’know, theories of like they could nail it down to the exact day, or like if, y’know, it was supposed to be like negative twenty out, then she would call it then so she wouldn’t have to call it a snow day, because they didn’t have snow days. Even if there was three feet of snow there wasn’t a snow day.”

“I liked it. I thought it was a bit of a cop-out because, like, they wouldn’t have snow days and people would be driving for, y’know, 45 minutes and have a good drive in like 3 feet of snow and like, that was like their snow day. But I liked it.”

This school must have been a boarding school for the Head to be able to talk to the students directly in the evenings. I wonder how the poor parents would feel about this ritual if it were not a boarding school, having to make plans at 7 or 8 in the evening for their kids to be taken care of the next day during deep snow. This calendrical ritual, like the winter solstice holiday, clearly didn’t take place on the same date every year. The holiday, aside from keeping teachers from having to drive in deep snow, seems like a way to celebrate the idealized Western idea of childhood—children should be able to go out and play once in a while.