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Today is the last day of classes at Penn — which means it’s almost my ex-girlfriend’s birthday, so I should remember when to call and say hi. But it’s also the tradition known as Hey Day, allegedly started by some student who said “If I make it to senior year, I’ll eat my hat!”
I’m sure this story, much like the “Penn kids stopped drinking at football games after Prohibition” one, is false. But no matter: Penn juniors will officially become seniors today after they put on red shirts, eat pieces off each other’s Styrofoam hats and dance around with old-timey canes.
In recent years, those oh-so-clever Penn kids have added two more traditions: (1) Chanting “show your tits” at the University President and (2) Members of the current senior class pelting juniors with mustard, shaving cream, ketchup, etc.
New tradition one was, apparently, sexist or something, and not just a way to tell ex-Penn president Judith Rodin she had a nice rack. And so people wrote letters to the editor and guest columns in the school paper and the Inquirer put it on the front page or something and eventually it stopped.
New tradition two, however, continued until last year, when apparently some whiny juniors couldn’t take getting hit with a couple condiments and the University threatened to cancel Hey Day. Eventually, this year’s Hey Day eliminated this tradition by making students sign responsibility pledges, always the cornerstone of any fun activity.
Anyway, Hey Day. Today. And here’s the Inquirer’s lead to today’s story, written by one Julie Stoiber:
Even before the horror at Virginia Tech this week put campus safety in the spotlight, administrators at the University of Pennsylvania had taken steps to quell what they say was a menacing turn in the school’s “Hey Day” ritual, scheduled for this afternoon, in which juniors are pelted with ketchup, fish, and other gross and potentially hazardous foodstuffs by graduating seniors.
After the jump, a few similar leads throughout the ages.
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