Every year at midnight on Halloween, students cram into Sayles Hall to listen to the University organist (often dressed as the Grim Reaper) play eerie music on the largest remaining Hutchings-Votey organ in the world. Armed with sleeping bags and pillows, students carve out spaces for themselves and their friends often hours in advance. They repeat the midnight tradition on the Sunday before Reading Period begins in December, this time to listen to performances (often holiday-themed) from each of Brown’s myriad singing groups.
School songs
Most students eventually learn this Brown Band song, a staple at varsity athletic contests:
Ever True to Brown
(Traditional version by Donald Jackson ‘09)
MP3 version:
We are ever true to Brown,
For we love our college dear,
And wherever we may go,
We are ready with a cheer,
And the people always say,
That you can’t outshine Brown Men,
With their Rah! Rah! Rah!
And their Ki! Yi! Yi!
And their B-R-O-double U-N!
It is also good to know the words to the Alma Mater, which is played and sung after many sports victories and also during Opening Convocation and Commencement Weekend:
Alma Mater
(By James A. De Wolf, class of 1861)
MP3 version:
Alma Mater! we hail thee with loyal devotion,
And bring to thine altar our off’ring of praise;
Our hearts swell within us, with joyful emotion,
As the name of Old Brown in loud chorus we raise.
The happiest moments of youth’s fleeting hours,
We’ve passed, ’neath the shade of these time-honored walls,
And sorrows as transient as April’s brief showers
Have clouded our life in Brunonia’s halls.
Traditions at Brown have ranged from the inspiring to the practical to the absurd. Here are a few from the past and the present that will help you understand the mind of the average Brown student throughout the years.
Our most significant tradition is the opening of the Van Wickle Gates. This is done only twice a year: inward toward the campus on the day of Opening Convocation, and outward down the hill on Commencement Day. Superstition tells that any male student who walks through the gates more than twice as an undergraduate won’t graduate, and a female student won't ever marry (a reflection of more sexist times at Brown). The same superstition applies to students who step on the Pembroke seal carved on the stone stairs entering Pembroke quad on Meeting Street.
Professors are applauded after particularly inspiring or interesting lectures, and at the end of the last lecture of the semester.
Starting in 1960, Brown replaced a traditional Junior Dance with a Spring Weekend concert on the college's main green, which has, in the past, brought in acts such as Bob Dylan, Ella Fitzgerald, Bo Diddley, Peter, Paul and Mary, James Brown, Janis Joplin, Ray Charles, Bruce Springsteen, U2, REM, Afrika Bambaataa, Elvis Costello, George Clinton, The Fugees, Sonic Youth, and Brown alumna Mary Chapin-Carpenter. Recent acts have included Bela Fleck & the Flecktones, Joan Jett & the Blackhearts, Jurassic 5, Reel Big Fish, and Sleater-Kinney.
Candles traditionally have been lit in the windows of University Hall on Christmas Eve, Reunion Weekend, Commencement, Rhode Island Independence Day, and the anniversary of the coming of George Washington to the University in 1790 to receive an honorary degree.
One of our most enduring traditions is the celebration of the spirit of Josiah S. Carberry. Carberry is Brown’s mythical traveling professor of psychoceramics (the study of cracked pots) and is a frequent contributor to campus publications. He humbly refused the 18th (and every previous) presidency of Brown; was referred to as a consultant on protocol for the Nixon administration in 1974; received the 1991 Ig Nobel Prize in psychceramics, an award issued by MIT and the Journal of Irreproducible Results; and appeared in a student production of “Desire Under the Elms“ (listed as a tree). On Friday the 13th – and on February 29 – students may throw change into cracked pots in the Rockefeller Library. The money collected is contributed to a special library fund, which to date contains more than $10,000.
Starting in 1907, first-years were required to wear brown Eton caps. Any unfortunate first-year who was caught on campus grounds without one was forced to endure any number of bizarre punishments, usually administered by sophomores. At the end of the year the freshmen organized a parade that ran through the streets of downtown Providence, eventually converging on Lincoln Field where the hats were burned in a bonfire. Don’t worry, you are no longer required to wear Eton caps.
When you are in need of some good luck, wander over to the John Hay Library and rub the nose of the statue of John Hay. This charm supposedly has been effective since 1910.
These are some of our traditions at Brown: the rest you'll find out about when you get here.