Funny story about my family. I’ve been going to Northwestern football games all my life. During one game, one of my sisters decided she was going to act like one of the students. She took my dad’s car keys and leaned over the edge of the railing, jangling them before a kickoff. She, of course, dropped the keys over the side, leaving us all terrified of punishment as my dad traipsed the few miles home to get the spare set. And so I had my first exposure to Northwestern traditions.
We have a lot of them, and they take a while to get used to, so I thought I’d help you out and give you a little heads-up of what you can expect when you get to campus.First of all, as much as the football team might disappoint on various occasions, it’s still great to go out and support our team. How do we do it? The student section has two main activities during every game (besides singing along with the band).
The first is jingling your keys before every kick. It signifies that even if we lose the game, the students at the Big Ten state schools will still end up being our valets one day thanks to our education. It might be really snobby, and it’s based on crude stereotypes, but it’s still tradition.
There’s also the Wildcat growl. During every defensive play, students stick out their hands in a claw position and growl, trying to distract the other team’s offensive line. Yet another case of, “Who knows where this came from, but let’s do it anyway!”
Other traditions at the school are not so centered around football and other sports. Northwestern has a huge affinity for rocks, and you’ll notice it on your first walk around campus. Obviously there is The Rock (seen on the cover of this issue). The Rock is a Northwestern landmark and has been so for generations. In the 1940s, a few students painted the rock as a prank, and now it is the accepted way for student groups to advertise themselves. It’s repainted almost every day. The Rock is so popular that the university installed a Webcam in University Hall overlooking The Rock so that anyone can tune in and see what it looks like today.
Other rocks on campus don’t have the same notoriety but still have a story behind them. There’s a rock outside Kresge with the inscription, “On this date in 1897, nothing happened.” There’s another one outside of University Hall that is dedicated to Princess Diana.
And of course, the famous rocks are the ones along the Lakefill. Students have been painting the different rocks there for years with various messages scrawled on them. Some are just tributes to groups of friends who have long since graduated, while some are a bit more creative. Some alumni have even proposed by painting the message on the rocks by the Lakefill.There’s another popular tradition among Wildcats called the Primal Scream. As freshmen will soon discover, the quarter system can be a bit stressful. It’s eight weeks of very intense classes, and that’s a lot of material to cover for exams. To make it easier on studying the university created Reading Week
In the week between the end of classes and finals, Weinberg cancels all its classes, leaving students with much more time to study. At the end of all that studying, though, students need to let off some steam. At 9 p.m. on the Sunday of Reading Week, the day before exams start, students across campus lean out their windows, run out of the library or do whatever they have to do to get outside, and everyone screams for about 15 seconds.
So there you have it, a small introduction into the world of Northwestern. It’s quirky, and it doesn’t always make sense, but you learn to love the school and all of its traditions.
Reach Emmet Sullivan at [email protected].
