Simon J. Bronner - Campus Traditions: Folklore from the Old-Time College to the Modern Mega-University

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Copyright 2012 by University Press of Mississippi
All rights reserved

Manufactured in the United States of America

First printing 2012

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Bronner, Simon J.
Campus traditions : folklore from the old-time college to the modern
mega-university / Simon J. Bronner.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-1-61703-615-6 (cloth: alk. paper)

ISBN 978-1-61703-616-3 (pbk.: alk. paper)
ISBN 978-1-61703-617-0 (ebook)

1. College studentsUnited States. 2. College studentsUnited States
Social life and customs. 3. College environmentUnited States.
4. FolkloreUnited States. I. Title.

LA229.B655 2012

378.1980973dc23

2012009070

British Library Cataloging-in-Publication Data available

(All photographs are from authors collection, unless otherwise indicated)

BY THE TIME STUDENTS GRADUATE FROM COLLEGE, THEY ACCUMULATE plenty of courses but are not given enough credit for the traditions they bear. Sure, students are usually in college only a few years, and the locations of their education vary widely, but I argue that undergraduates in their hallowed halls, more than in any other place of their scholastic experience, embrace distinctive traditions because campuses constitute transitional spaces and times, precariously between childhood and adulthood, parental and societal authority, home and corporation, and play and work. One might falsely presume that the business of obtaining a degree precludes the handing-down work of tradition, but in fact, I find that campuses are hotbeds of expressive traditions fitting under the rubric of folklore, and even more so, rather than less, as universities have become engines of mass society.

The idea of tradition on campus refers inevitably to connectionto the past, to people, to placewhether this idea comes through in customs known to have been repeatedly enacted or to cultural practices designed to spread across space and maybe recur in the future. In both these cases, collegiate denizens recognize the feature of tradition allowing participants to socialize and feel a part of something larger than themselves. Tradition evokes a feeling of groupness, usually implying cultural work of participants own making and less than official or corporate involvement. Sure, college authorities often have a hand in organizing campus events, but many, if not most, traditions embraced by students suggest their appropriation of customs or narratives for their own purposes. Often students intend to foster smaller identities within the corporate whole outside of the job of coursework, and even to subvert, transgress, or at least question the organizational control over students. Other consequences of their campus traditions might not be as evident to them ritualizing coming-of-age, simultaneously separating from and longing for childhood and home left behind, adjusting to place, anticipating an uncertain future, realizing sexual and emotional profilesbut they are important in comprehending the repeated urge to folklorize college campuses by every generation of students.

In this book, I trace historical changes in the traditions of college students, especially as the predominant context has shifted from what I call the old-time college marked by its emphasis on its we-ness in size and sense of community to mass societys mega-university, an organizational behemoth that extends beyond the central campus to multiple branches and offshoots throughout a wide region, and sometimes the globe. With the common association people make of folklore to small groups, one might assume that the mega-university has dissolved collegiate traditions and displaced the old-time college, but I find the opposite. Student needs for social belonging in large university centers and a fear of losing personal control have given rise to distinctive forms of lore in the sprawl of the skyscraper mega-university and a striving for retaining the pastoral campus feel of the old-time college. What the two types of institutions share in common is a need for social and psychological adaptation for students in transition between one stage and another, usually regarded as the most significant of their lives. In the moderate-size campuses between the two poles, students also share this adaptation and often a balancing act of small college feel with large-scale aspirations. The folkloric material students spout, and sprout, in response to these needs is variedincluding speech, song, humor, legendry, ritual, custom, craft, and artbut it is tied together by its invocation of tradition and social purpose. Beneath the veil of play, student participants in campus traditions work through tough issues of their age and environment. They use their lore to suggest ramifications, if not resolution, of these issues for themselves and for their institutions.

Although the college experience of taking courses, getting through exams, and working with institutions is global, sharp cultural differences are evident in national systems. In this book, I focus on the United States because of the immense proportion of the population pursuing postsecondary degrees and the pivotal role of college life in shaping American culture. The American context is important to consider in the development of campus traditions because of the oft-reported lack of ritual passage into adulthood in American society and the varieties of collegiate experience that citizens in the United States expect to access in one way or another, whether as fans, neighbors, employees, or alumni. Another contextual national factor that affects American collegiate folklore is the foundational idea of higher education fostering democracy so basic to the American enterpriseand dream. The social tension in the American system that pervades lore is on the egalitarian, inclusive ideal of an educated, classless citizenry characteristic of democracy coming into conflict with the universitys production, indeed encouragement, of an affluent, elite stratum to lead a competitive, hierarchical society.

I began documenting the folklore of American college students during the 1980s and published the results in two editions of Piled Higher and Deeper (1990, 1995). Although the present book contains some of the material found in those editions, the revisions have been more sweeping and warranted retitling as a new work. In addition to reorganizing the sections, I have focused interpretation more on the relation of student life and lore to the campus environment. I also updated the status of student culture with more material on folkloric responses to new technologies, hazing controversies, and economic and political upheavals. I additionally revisited the historic material with more extensive treatments of sports, interclass contests, and the Greek system, and extended my previous social-psychological perspectives on these traditions with the idea of precarious, often paradoxical social frames students call upon to perform and empower cultural practices.