The madman cries for pride and tradition
Monday, Apr. 28, 2008 @ 11:00 pm
I walk around the Quad with a lantern and cry incessantly: “University of Nevada tradition is dead. UN tradition remains dead. And we have killed it.”
Tradition never used to be this unimportant. The consequences were harsh for UN freshmen in 1949 who didn’t abide by university tradition.
“The penalty for not participating in the painting of the ‘N’ will be 25 swats or a half a day of work,” The U of N Sagebrush reported. “A first offense on any of the other traditions will be 3 swats; a second-offense, 5 swats; a third, 10 swats; a fourth, 15 swats; and on the fifth violation, the offending freshman will have his head shaved!”
These penalties were given for using the steps of Morrill Hall, refusing to wear university-sanctioned hats and sitting on the senior bench (which I believe is the bench near Manzanita Lake and Clark Administration Building).
But when World War II veterans started enrolling at UN, the swatting and shaving stopped. The hell if people who risked their lives for your country were going to be punished for sitting on a bench!
The university today has a different culture. Along with unavoidably being students of our time, we shrug at university tradition. Painting the “N,” growing mustaches for Mackay Week and Wolves Frolic are hardly followed anymore. Some students last semester tried resurrecting the Sundowners, a ragtag student drinking group, to no avail. This week’s Mackay Week is a desperate attempt to bring back the traditions that once populated UN students’ lives.
The dying traditions come from lackluster pride for the university. Recent UN graduates answer the question, “So what school did you go to?” as casually as if they were asked, “So where’d you go for dinner last night?” When you don’t have pride for your school, you’d rather get obliterated at home with Popov instead of doing Moon-Offs or Tug-of-Wars at school.
We spend most of our time at UN taking classes and hanging with friends, so why not appreciate it? If we had pride for our school, tradition would follow. We would demand traditions to memorialize our years here.
If you look through old issues of the Sagebrush and Artemisia, you’ll quickly realize how historically rich our university is. Their pages drip with zeitgeist.
In 1963, for instance, controversy arose when female students defied their housing contracts and began wearing pants to the dining commons. Photographs show Lincoln Hall residents in the 1970s with gnarly sideburns and peace signs on their walls, and gossip columnists told of who pinned who and which couples were going steady in the 1950s.
I get pride for UN knowing that we’re the latest generation of students in UN’s history. We walk the campus today where epic snowball fights, pranks, dances and fashion of yesteryear occurred. Today’s Hilliard Plaza—once the site of our university’s football field—smacks of the ghosts of cheerleaders, enthusiastic spectators and game-winning touchdowns. It’d be a shame to kill past students’ enthusiasm for the university with our apathy.
So I continue lurching around the Quad. I consider throwing my lantern to the ground and calling out, “Have I come too late? Can we salvage the tremendous events of UN tradition?” The light of the stars requires time; this year’s Mackay Week, soon to be done, will require time to be seen and heard.
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© 2008 The Nevada Sagebrush
April 29th, 2008 at 10:06 am
I, too, lament many lost traditions of the past. Such is the price for modernity: loss of religion, changing gender roles and identities, and so on. But as old ways are forgotten, new ways spring up and the next generations take hold.
April 29th, 2008 at 3:08 pm
For once, I agree with Jordan. The University of Nevada - no comma, no Reno - is a university that has been marginalized in many ways. First of all a large percentage of students who come to the U of N is that they come from Las Vegas (I spent my high school time there) where Nevada as an academic and athletic institution is completely marginalized. Furthermore, Reno is portrayed as being more akin to Fernley than to the actual state of affairs here. Therefore, consciously, or subconsciously, these students come up here with a negative mind set and it takes a lot to change that. I’m guilty of this, I came up here expecting Fernley and wound up loving this city, university, and the people involved. It basically allows for an easy cop-out when you come up here with a predisposition relative to the city and university.
Another problem is the down-looking Californians viewing Nevada as a lesser entity and making fun of the university. One of the most confounding things about this is the simple fact that THEY GO HERE. Have some pride.
And a third is local apathy. A lot of people have grown up here, Nevada has always been here, and they just grow apathetic to the university as just being here. 53% of Nevada’s 16,000 undergraduates are from Washoe County.
Now of course not all of these cases are absolute and cover 100% of those described, but more or less my personal observations.
Hats off to the Flipside/ASUN folks for putting on that campus rail jam, that was rad and had a great turnout. More events need to be held like that instead of ‘root beer’ pong tournaments and things of that sort.
April 29th, 2008 at 7:25 pm
If I had 5 cents for every time I heard someone complain that “tradition is dead” or “Nevada is an apathetic campus” I would be able to buy enough “free” food to put on a campus wide BBQ. If I had 5 cents for every student I know who is involved in an organization that works towards ending apathy, getting students involved, and/or making a difference on campus we could pay off the student union and have free room reservations into perpetuity.
This campus is just as involved, dedicated, and prideful as it has ever been, and there are many instances over this past year to prove this case. Tradition as a whole hasn’t died in the least. Certain events have been modified and others have died, but if you take a look through our archives there is one common theme – traditions are continuously being modified, killed, and created. What we have to come to grips with is that this isn’t a problem.
I’m certain that if you look through other campuses archives you will find the same thing. I think some of us are suffering from the grass is always greener on the other side (or in another time or on another campus) syndrome. The problem isn’t the tradition, it’s the complaining. I’d say if you’re going to complain you ought to go out and do something about it, but you probably already are and not taking notice.
May 4th, 2008 at 10:07 am
The problem is… if you look at those old archives there is one common thing…. ALCOHOL…. and lots of it… Bring alcohol back and you bring tradition back
May 5th, 2008 at 4:00 pm
^ drunk ^