SUperfreak

I was recently perusing Syracuse University's timeline of key events in the school's history. Don't worry, I was doing this for research for an article; not to satiate my overwhelming thirst for all things orange. Here are a few gems:

1874
A need for spittoons in the Hall of Languages is announced by The University Herald, forerunner to the Daily Orange.

1898
The student handbook warns freshmen "not to conclude that the University can't get along without you. It certainly can."

(zing!)

1906
One hundred spectators are injured and one is killed when bleachers collapse during a Syracuse-Colgate football game at New Star Park, the team's temporary home.

(the first of several tragedies that SU fondly remembers in its timeline)

1910
The Daily Orange holds a three-day editorial campaign to promote campus friendliness.

(Has it improved yet?)

1918
Twelve students die, emergency hospitals are erected in dormitories, and the campus is quarantined for more than two-and-a-half October weeks because of a Spanish Flu epidemic.

(if I had been here 90 years earlier, perhaps I could have been an emegency nurse in one of the clinics, thereby fulfilling my sick desire to be a civil war nurse in the south, Gone With the Wind style.)

1921
Dancing is banned for the final two weeks of the spring semester by Chancellor Day, who says, "We are close upon examinations and have no time to dance."

1930
A Daily Orange story declares college is a waste of time for women: "For an average girl who intends to make marriage her chief business, to waste four precious years that ought to be devoted to romantic adventure seems tragic."

1947
The Goon Squad is created to enforce the wearing of freshmen beanies, which are supposed to enable upperclassmen to easily spot freshmen and offer them help and guidance. Instead, beanies become a way to harass freshmen. Architecture students of the forties are particularly harsh on beanie-less freshmen-they're carried off to be dunked in a sink. Beanies become obsolete after the 1970 student strike.

1960
Use of the Alpha Tau Omega cannon, fired after SU touchdowns in Archbold Stadium since 1922, is indefinitely suspended after an accident injures five students during the Penn State game.

(seriously?)

1966
Men are required to wear socks in dining halls.

1985
More than 73 years after the Daily Orange first addressed the need for a student union, the Schine Student Center opens.

(always so timely in addressing students' needs)

Syracuse University... proud of its nearly 150 year of ridiculousness.