40 Tremendous College Traditions - mental_floss List Show (Ep.220)

Hi, I'm John Green. Welcome to my salon. This is Mental Floss on YouTube

Did you know that every spring Cornell University students create a giant dragon

This has been going on since 1901, back when dragons still lived

And in 2013 the dragon was around 120 feet long. The event is called Dragon Day, and once freshman architecture students build the dragon

it's taken for a parade around campus. Anyway, that's the first of many weird college traditions, some official, some unofficial

that I'm going to share with you today. The annual bike race at Indiana University is named the Little 500, or Little Five after

the Indianapolis 500. Teams of four bicyclists race around a quarter mile track in a relay

style for 200 laps, totaling 50 miles per team. Barnard College has an event called the Big Sub in which sub sandwiches are lined up for

around 700 feet across campus, and then students eat them. Which reminds me that all of my

favorite traditions involve food. There's a kinetic sculpture at Gustavus Adolphus College

in front of the library that reads B.C.A.D., and apparently if you spin it before finals

it will predict your grade. That's all fine and good, but what about those of us who are going to fail? Many Princeton University students don't pass through the Fitzrandolph gates

until their graduation day because it's supposedly bad luck. There's a similar legend at the

University of Georgia where some students choose to avoid walking through the arches

for fear they won't graduate on time. Speaking of arches, students remain silent while walking

through the archway by the Journalism School at the University of Missouri-Columbia in

memory of journalism. No, I'm just kidding. Journalism is still a thing. Thanks, Buzzfeed! No, legend has it

that if you aren't silent or at least quiet while walking through, you'll fail your next test

Also, Brown University students walk through the Van Wickle gates, or campus entrance

once as freshmen and once during graduation. Walking through them more than those two times

is considered bad luck. For bastions of intellectualism, there sure is a lot of superstition at our universities

The Exorcist was filmed on Georgetown University's campus, and now the movie is screened there

every year, and afterward, students howl at a local cemetery near Healey Hall. The tradition

is known as the Healey Howl. Speaking of cemeteries Florida State University keeps one outside its sports complex known as Saad Cemetery It doesn commemorate people though There are plaques for Florida State best football wins and underneath those plaques are the bunches of turf or grass from those games

There's a three-foot-tall cement post on the Roanoke College campus known as the kicking post. You'll never guess what students do for good luck when they walk by it. They punch it. No, they kick it

Dartmouth College hosts a bonfire every homecoming weekend, and freshmen run around the bonfire

a certain number of times depending on the year they will graduate, usually around a hundred times in recent years

Nice to know that all these Ivy League universities are so focused on classroom work. Anyway, around 30,000 people a year visit Purdue University's Bug Bowl

which features events like cockroach racing and cricket spitting, in which people spit crickets out of their mouths

I know what you're wondering, are the crickets alive? No, no, they're frozen, thankfully

But still, disgusting. Every October, MIT students do a pumpkin drop off the 21-story-high Green Building, the tallest

building in Cambridge, which, by the way, was named after me, noted MIT alum, is an

example of a lie. On Ski Beach Day at Pomona College in California, students ski at Mountain High Resort in the

morning, then spend the rest of the day at Newport Beach. At the start of the second semester at Bucknell University, every year, freshmen serenade

the president with the alma mater. There's a music festival at Northwestern University known as Armadillo Day, or Dillo Day for short

It was originally a gathering between Northwestern students from Texas, which explains the name

Fun fact, in 2014, 2 Chainz did a concert for Dillo Day

What's that? You don't think that's a fun fact? You don't like 2 Chainz? He has a Z on the end of his name. 2 Chainz is fantastic

Quick side note, Meredith. Who is 2 Chainz? What kind of work does he do? Apparently he is a musician

During the California Institute of Technology's annual senior ditch day, seniors create complicated

architectural puzzles outside their rooms preventing underclassmen from like getting to the doorknob so they can't go in and vandalize senior rooms as they did back in the day

Duke University has some unofficial traditions, like driving backwards around the traffic circle

which sounds very dangerous, and also climbing Baldwin Auditorium, which also sounds very dangerous

While entering the University of the South, or Sewanee, people tap their car ceiling

then they do it again as they leave. This is a gesture to the guardian angels that some

associate with Sewanee. We don have a guardian angel here but I like to think that Yoshi watches over us These days the University of Colorado at Boulder closes its campus on April 20th aka 420 the day used to attract up to 10 people who would smoke marijuana on campus

In addition to keeping non-university people out via police tape, officials spread a fertilizer

that smells like fish on the quad to discourage people from hanging out there

But there is a hash bash at the University of Michigan that attracts thousands of participants

who celebrate marijuana while also rallying for its legalization. Moving on from being stoned to being boned. Before you're allowed to call yourself a genuine Iowa State University student

you must kiss under the campanile, a bell tower that's 110 feet tall

Meredith, what does kissing have to do with being boned? Apparently when used as a verb, bone has a colloquial meaning

Anyway, speaking of PDA, at Stanford University's Full Moon on the Quad event, students gather on the quad and exchange many kisses

There's a statue of former Yale University President James Dwight Woolsey on campus

Some students rub its foot for good luck, but many students don't, because apparently there's another tradition that involves peeing on the foot

Another good luck statue can be found at Texas Christian University, where you're supposed to rub the nose of the 1,200-pound horned frog

The night before finals, Carleton College students all scream at the same time, which they call the primal scream

Here you see the primal scream as demonstrated by Domo. UCLA has a similar tradition called the midnight yell, but it occurs every night of finals week at midnight

Virginia Tech has a huge snowball fight every year called the Cadet vs. Civilian Snowball Fight

in honor of back when the school consisted only of Reserve Officer Training Corps male students

Every year, Reed College celebrates the 7th Annual Nitrogen Day, because nitrogen is 7th on the periodic table

Apparently, the school thinks that nitrogen doesn't get enough attention, so they have a festival on its behalf

Emory University has an unofficial mascot, a person dressed up like a lab skeleton named Dooley

And every spring, during Dooley's week, he wanders around campus. Dooley was once kidnapped by students from Georgia Tech, so now students dressed like security guards accompany Dooley everywhere he goes

Liquid Latex is an annual dance show at Brandeis University where all student performers wear full body paint

It originated in 2000 with a body art fashion show and has grown from there

Every year during the week that Ohio State University plays Michigan thousands of OSU students jump into Mirror Lake Why To celebrate Every spring Clark University gets an unexpected day off called Spree Day and in 2013 the

day was almost canceled because of concern about binge drinking. Now, MennoFloss viewers

being an upstanding sort, probably don't know about this, but binge drinking is a bit of a problem on American college campuses. Anyway, Clark University students protested

via email and social media. They even arranged a sit-in, and their beloved Spree Day was

The University of Virginia has a streaking tradition, which apparently culminates in

kissing or touching the butt of a statue of Homer. Similarly, Tufts University has a naked quad-run tradition, though the university president

banned it in 2011. And my alma mater, Kenyon College, had a naked mile-run

I've just been informed that, in fact, Kenyon did not have a naked mile-run tradition. That's just something that I happened to do my sophomore year

If you're a student of Occidental College, you might get thrown into the Gilman Fountain on your birthday

There's a statue of Athena on the Bryn Mawr College campus, where students leave offerings like jewelry and poems before tests

We left this gnome an offering of googly eyes. If a couple who met at Murray State University goes on to get married, it's tradition that

they return to campus and nail a shoe to a tree on the quad known as the shoe tree

And finally, I return to my salon to tell you that it is considered good luck at the

University of Texas at Austin to see an albino squirrel before an exam

The albino squirrels on campus even inspired the students to create the Albino Squirrel

Preservation Society in 2001. Thanks for watching, Manoplasia, on YouTube, which is made with the help of all of these

nice people. Every week we endeavor to answer one of your mind-blowing questions

This week's question comes from RS Arete, who asks, did Italians really invent pizza? Yes

The term pizza first appeared in a text in the southern Italian town Gaeta in 997 CE

and it says that a villager has to give the bishop 12 pizzas every Christmas day and every Easter

But those pizzas could not possibly have involved tomatoes, because tomatoes are a new world crop, which didn't come to Europe until, like, the 16th century

The modern pizza was invented in Naples, though. If you have a mind-blowing question you'd like answered, please leave it in comments below

Thank you again for watching, and as we say in my hometown, don't forget to be awesome