Statue of Sabrina

Sabrina (/səˈbraɪnə/ sə-BRY-nə) is a 300-pound bronze statue of the legendary British princess owned by Amherst College, and whose present location is unknown.

In 1857, Amherst College accepted a gift from Joel Hayden, future Lieutenant Governor of Massachusetts[1]—a bronze neoclassical sculpture by William Calder Marshall of Sabrina listening to her invocation from John Milton's Comus (1634).

Around 1860, an industrious Amherst student, in the first of many Sabrina-inspired pranks, stole a set of undergarments from one of the nearby female colleges and used them to clothe Sabrina.

This trickery resulted in a warrant being issued for the student's arrest, at which point he boarded a steamer for Europe to wait "for the excitement to die out.

[7][8] She remained in place until 1951, when members of the graduating class, suspecting the statue was in fact hollow, used a torch to detach Sabrina from her base and steal her again.

In the early hours of October 13, three masked students entered the hall, tied up the switchboard operator, and pried the statue loose.

[11] They were apprehended less than a month later, when campus police, having learned of their plan to fly the statue over a football game, staked out the local airports.

The class of 2008 stole Sabrina from the College after it was kept in a campus basement for several years, recasting the statue and attaching a new hand and foot.

[15] We may sing of our glorious college, Of the old chapel steps and the bell, Of the class-rooms just filled full of knowledge, Which all Amherst men love so well.