Time Honored Traditions...in Two Months

After 241 years of history, Boston College (BC) wants to establish a new set of traditions—and by as early as this May.

To cultivate these traditions, the college has established a task force to determine how American colleges and universities practice tradition.

“We have to establish, support, and promulgate traditions,” said Ben Birnbaum, head of the Student Traditions Task Force at BC.

While the college was established in 1863 and is one of the nation’s oldest Jesuit, Catholic universities, Birnbaum said students have moved onto campus relatively recently.

“We’ve only had 40 years as a residential college to build up our traditions, and we want to put this process on the fast track...I hope to have things in play by this year’s commencement. I am an impatient man,” he said.

Birnbaum, who is a special adviser to BC President William P. Leahy, said the drive to cultivate traditions sprung from the administration. He said the college plans to encourage students to help develop these traditions through publicity—banners, fliers and a website for the task force.

Sophomore Jayshree A. Mantani said she was one of six students Birnbaum invited to join the task force. An economics concentrator from Staten Island, she said she felt the college’s lack of traditions was a glaring problem, and one that could probably be fixed.

“I did a Google search under the keyword ‘college traditions’ to get a sense of what other American colleges and universities regarded as their traditions,” Mantani said, adding that Harvard was one of the schools she has researched.

But Mantani said that mimicking Harvard’s folklore wasn’t exactly what the task force had in mind.

“By creating traditions, we mean creating a class-based service project as opposed to rubbing the foot of a non-existent statue,” she said, referring to the statue of John Harvard in the Yard. She said another tradition she learned about from her internet search was a custom practiced at the University of Pennsylvania in which students “all walk around with canes” at a certain point before graduation.

Birnbaum said that the task force would embrace both rituals as well as symbols, including bells, gates, class gifts such as trees or benches and a statue of Ignacius of Loyola, who founded the Jesuit order.

“These things add a certain solemnity to events, and mark them at collegiate,” he said. “Bells in particular mark particular times of change, such as when students graduate.”

He said that the statue could serve to affirm the religious origins of their college, though he said he recognized that Ignatius of Loyola did not represent the same kind of figurehead as John Harvard does for Harvard.

President of the Crimson Key Society Erin K. Sprague ’05 said she thought promoting traditions was a good idea.

“I think we at Harvard are fortunate that we have traditions surrounding us,” she said. “Whenever I give a tour, I think that tradition differentiates our school from every other.”

Stephen P. Shoemaker, who is the head teaching fellow for Religion 1513, “A History of Harvard and Its Presidents,” also said that Harvard resounds with centuries of tradition.

“We’ve got to giggle at [BC] because we have more traditions than we know what to do with here,” he said. “But I can see why there would be a desire to have certain rituals or ongoing patterns at BC.”

Shoemaker added that from an outside perspective, Harvard’s traditions can appear strange as well.

“It was just as easy to make fun of Harvard for some of its ‘cheesy’ rituals, such as rubbing John Harvard’s foot for good luck,” he said. “This in particular is such a peculiar ritual, and one that strikes me as a tourist practice that was somewhat co-opted by the Harvard community.”

But these traditions are an integral part of the Harvard experience, said Sprague later on in an e-mail.

“The best traditions such as rubbing a statue’s foot for good luck or a naked run around the yard on a cold midnight in January certainly were not the ideas of a ‘committee,’” she wrote.

Shoemaker also said he wasn’t sure a task force was the best way to implement new customs.

“It seems a little contrived to develop a committee to do this, but I guess I could see the point. But I’ve never heard of this before,” he said.

—Staff writer Elena P. Sorokin can be reached at sorokin@fas.harvard.edu.