Cornelliana
Though Slope Day has gone through many reincarnations since its inception in 1901, in recent years focus has shifted to live musical performances open to the Cornell community and a select number of guests.
Recent performers include Ben Folds, Snoop Dogg, Kanye West, The Game, O.A.R., Dilated Peoples, Rusted Root, Fat Joe, TV on the Radio, T.I., Flo Rida, and A Boogie Wit da Hoodie.
Slope Day is often criticized for the excessive drinking and drug consumption that many students participate in before, during, and after the scheduled events.
[8] A "Hot Truck Dictionary" was published in the form of a small booklet listing novel names of menu items and creative yet odd terminology for toppings.
One undated copy believed to have been collected during the mid-1980s shows menu items such as RaRa (roast beef sub with pepperoni and mozzarella), ReRe (roast beef sub with sausage and mozzarella), and Sep Pep (Double PMP, garlic, mushrooms, and pepperoni).
Win, lose, or tie, the hockey team in Carnelian and White salutes the Faithful at the end of every home game before leaving the ice.
[15] The Cornell Big Red Pep Band leads the Faithful through a rendition of the Alma Mater at every hockey game.
Begun for the Class of 2005, all incoming freshmen and transfer students were required to read a book chosen by the university.
Other books have been Guns, Germs, and Steel ('05), Frankenstein ('06), Antigone ('07), The Trial ('08), The Great Gatsby ('10), The Pickup ('11),[16][17] Lincoln at Gettysburg ('12),[18] The Grapes of Wrath ('13),[19] Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
('14), Homer & Langley ('15),[20] The Life Before Us ('16),[21] When the Emperor was Divine ('17),[22] Clash of Civilizations Over an Elevator in Piazza Vittorio ('18),[23] and Slaughterhouse Five ('19).
[24] In 1918, at the urging of the Director of Women's Physical Education, Cornell began requiring that all female students must pass a swim test before graduating.
When the women's swim test was transferred to the Olympic length pool in Helen Newman Hall in 1963, the number of laps was preserved.
This disparity continued until 1970, when Trustee Robert Platt raised the issue of why women were required to swim twice as far as men to pass the test.
Sung by Cayuga's Waiters to the tune of Billy Joel's "We Didn't Start the Fire", this is one of the best known and popular a cappella songs in the Ivy League, and makes light of Cornell's reputation as a "safety school" for Harvard University applicants.
The statues have never switched places, shaken hands, or danced; Cornell's tour guides maintain this is because the bells do not ring at midnight.
[30] The widow of Willard Straight made several reportedly unsuccessful attempts to contact her late husband through mediums.
Hiram Corson (1828-1911), a Professor of Anglo-Saxon Literature, was purported to have had posthumous conversations with Robert Browning and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.
During its days as the Residential Club, Ecology House suffered a fatal fire, whose victims are credited for strange lights and voices.
[32] One campus legend says that the first person to hit a home run out of Cornell's baseball field was former U.S. president George H. W. Bush while he was a student at Yale University.
The second person to achieve this feat was Columbia University student and future baseball hall-of-famer Lou Gehrig on April 21, 1923.
[34][35] Another legend says that if a couple walks around the entire perimeter of Beebe Lake while holding hands, the two are destined to be engaged.
President Lincoln wrote out a manuscript of the Gettysburg Address, at the request of George Bancroft, a historian, in April 1864.
This copy remained in the Bancroft family for many years until it was donated to the Carl A. Kroch Library at Cornell University by Nicholas H. Noyes and can be viewed by anyone who asks.
Much to their embarrassment, a reporter for The New York Times got a hold of this story and discovered that Frye was the creation of Lester Blumner and Edward Horn, two editors for The Cornell Daily Sun.
The society met in a crypt in the cellar of the Chapter House and prior to the Cornell-Yale football game the Mummy would be Swaddled in a shroud, placed in a casket, and be driven around campus in a hearse to Schoellkopf Stadium.
In the first part of the 20th century, male freshmen at Cornell were required to follow eleven strict rules published in the freshman handbook.
One student, Frederick Morelli 1924, was chained to a tree for two hours and dunked in the lake for refusing to wear his cap, thus earning Cornell the name "Lynch College".
[43] When Andrew Dickson White returned to the United States in 1894 from his post as the minister to Russia, he brought back a 361-pound church bell.
[45] Theodore Zinck was a saloonkeeper in Ithaca, and his pub, the Hotel Brunswick, was a popular gathering place for Cornellians in the 1890s.
