Traditions of Your School or College

School - Throwing a horsehair pancake into a writhing mess off teenagers. The winner gets a gold sovereign.
Selling school diaries to Japanese tourists.

Undergrad - Not much unless selling snakebike and black for a pound in the university bar counts.

Grad - Buggy, find the smallest girl you can, strap her into a carbon fibre skate-board and push her up a hill before releasing her to freewheel as fast as possible

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3606/3455994736_0a61ff7a1f.jpg

snakebike sounds an ever harder drink than snakebite.

no tradition

I wasn't particularly good at the pancake scrum (known as "The Greaze"). The one time I did it I scrummaged for about 20 seconds then spent the rest of the time trying to pick up bits of pancake. If I had my time again, I know where my priorities would lie

School: silly spoof school song to be worked into all am-dram school productions
Uni: Pajama Jump (students drink all over Sheffield in their pajamas).

See I went to sheffield but never participated in pajama jump.

High school: whenever we beat the neighbouring WASP richie-rich suburb in basketball or football or ice hockey, cupcakes served to entire school district in populist 'let them eat cake' move.

University: it was said that the ice cream available every day in the dining hall was a philanthropic act/Fluxus art project by ex-student Yoko Ono. Also, Bacchanalia: drugs (weed/mushrooms) are bought in bulk and distributed to all students on last weekend before graduation for yay partytimes.

having attended a loathsome ivy league undergraduate institution, i was introduced to all kinds of traditions (many of which were shut-down during my tenure, due to an increasingly image-sensitive administration)

"University: it was said that the ice cream available every day in the dining hall was a philanthropic act/Fluxus art project by ex-student Yoko Ono. Also, Bacchanalia: drugs (weed/mushrooms) are bought in bulk and distributed to all students on last weekend before graduation for yay partytimes."
--suggest bánh mi (suzy)

Sarah Lawrence! Also, we had the Coming Out Dance, which was a social event for people to come out as queer, gay, bisexual or whatever but really most people came out as simply bizarre, goths, saran wrap dress aficionados, etc.

School: nipple patrol (i think this one actually ended up in that book lore of the playground); interacial warfare between white, pakistani and somali kids.

Undergrad:
http://photos-b.ak.fbcdn.net/photos-ak-snc1/v1979/214/41/512388660/n512388660_1412593_1390.jpg

Grad: play ultimate frisbee, be dork.

Saudade: what year did you grad? There are a couple of us here...

http://aagallery.aadl.org/gallery/d/5318-2/hashbash_300.gif

Ed's covered the most interesting school one(s) of mine (except maybe for the schoolyard take on Headers And Volleys, a sport for which we devised MANY peculiar rules, regulations, and points of etiquette, or perhaps the Compline, every Monday at 9, which scholars had to perform in the Abbey).
As for university, erm, well there is that drag pageant...

xpost pajama jump - I participated only once. What year did you graduate ed? I was there 91-95.

I was there 98-03

school: none that i remember, except for senior prank day, which was pretty typical hijinks.

undergrad:

the bike derby-- excellent mayhem.

drag ball-- uh, yeah, exactly what it sounds like.

and yeah, lots more, but hey.

No high school trads to speak of.

U Michigan: Naked Mile - During the last week of classes, before finals, people would assemble on one side of campus, strip down to their trainers, and run to the other side. This went on mostly unchallenged for many years, but in the late-90s, police started intervening b/c of the growing interest of online pornographers/voyeurs (my group and I used to smash cameras as we ran - great cathartic fun to lay waste to expensive things wielded by bad people, while naked in public). By the early 00s, it was gone.

Hash Bash - people gather in the Diag (central campus park area) and smoke weed, ostensibly for the purpose of promoting legalization, but mostly just as an excuse to smoke weed in public. Apparently this was actually good times from 70s-early 90s & authorities just looked the other way, but during my time there, the State Police were cracking down so hard that no one actually smoked in public view, thus seemingly defeating the purpose of the event. Additionally, it became populated primarily with t-shirt selling opportunists and the denizens of nearby backwater hamlets, hence becoming re-christened as "trash bash" and mostly avoided by actual students.

Trinity College, Dublin: There were many, but my favorite was the "Iron Stomach Competition," which took place on the main campus square each spring. Competitors would be fed a series of increasingly revolting food & non-food items until the last man vomited. If the competition reached its end with more than one man standing, competitors would have to race back and forth across the courtyard for the win.

my picture was of the first hash bash in 1971 -- the year before weed became illegal in ann arbor (right after john sinclair got out of prison).

the hash bash was a nightmare when I lived in ann arbor during the late 70s. teenage stoners would pour into town from detroit and I'd have to work extra shifts at the record store cause it was shoplifters delight that day.

the year before weed became legal LOL

Suzy: I graduated in 1999, when did you graduate?

Ah, apparently pyjama jump was banned the year before I arrived due to several students being hospitalised. Have to wonder why they never banned the snakebite and black.

Saudade: 1990. The shot in the LOL College thread is New Dorms circa 1987. Speaking of tradition, was the bullseye for suicides at the bottom of the stairs by Taylor A still being refreshed when you were there?

At the boarding school I went to, year 11s and year 12s lived in the same building and shared showers.The only tradition we had was the year 12s giving the year 11s awards for biggest and smallest penis. which is really O_o in retrospect.

Please tell me the handle 'wilter' did not come from this difficult phase in your life...

Ha no. I remember they gave the small award to this big jock arsehole which was pretty hilarious.

The all-male college/dorm i went at uni also had a pretty fucked-up tradition. The older guys awarded a first year student "Du<h35n3 l1450n 0ff1<er". who had supposedly "dogged the boys the most during the year" by spending all their drinking time chatting up women and not hanging with the lads or whatever.

(Du<h35n3 being the neighbouring all-female college btw).

The winner was fed a heap of beer/goon while having to sit nude in a tub filled with ice until he puked. Then he had to go to Du<h35n3's AGM w/ only underpants filled w/ ice then he had to get nude and run around inside a circle which the whole of the girl's college had formed.

Apart from this the place was pretty normal tho :^\