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A special gallery created by SportsShooter.com member
Matthew Hinton |
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Albert Lin, center, costumed as a Clockwork Orange character and HeeJoon Jo, left of Lin, dressed as a “Memoirs of a Geisha” character, run around the Arts Quad at Cornell University with fellow architecture students as the dragon burns Friday during the 105th anniversary of the first Dragon Day held in 1901 by Willard Straight.
There is no definitive history of the annual zaniness that takes place each spring at Cornell University, but the following summary, derived from a 2002 alumni publication, touches on its more well-known elements.
• WHAT: Dragon Day, an annual event celebrated every spring either on St. Patrick's Day, or just before spring break, has its roots in the antics of Willard Dickerman Straight, class of 1901, an architecture student who, from his early days as a freshman, developed a reputation as a class leader — and prankster. The idea was born of Straight's belief that there should be a distinctive College of Architecture Day. The first day was celebrated with the hanging of orange and green banners (orange to appease the campus's Protestant population), shamrocks, and other thematic decorations on Lincoln Hall, then home to the College of Architecture.
• Later, the theme of celebrating St. Patrick's mythical success in driving the serpents out of Ireland also became part of the day.
• WHEN: The first Dragon Day was held sometime between 1897 and 1901. How the first parade evolved into a rite of initiation for the freshman architecture class — ending with the burning of the dragon on the Arts Quad — remains unclear.
• CHANGES: Contemporary Dragon Day celebrations, with a dragon constructed by the first-year architects, and the associated ceremonies, began some time in the 1950s when the snakes previously used “grew up.” Previously, the holiday was still celebrated primarily as College of Architecture Day, and the theme was less focused around the dragon.
• RIVALRY: The rivalry between the College of Architecture and the College of Engineering students — who have in more recent history built a phoenix each year that greets the dragon as it passes the Engineering Quad — seems to have developed over time, perhaps as a means of expressing opposition to the architects having a full day for themselves.
— Cornell University
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