Top 200 Photos: #149

Back to Cornell for today’s Top 200 Photos.

photo #149 is:

I’ve already spoken about Slope Day in a previous post. We have one other huge tradition at Cornell - Dragon Day. I’m not sure if there will be more Dragon Day photos (I’ve only captured up to photo #121 at this time), but I have a bunch up on my Cornell set.

Dragon Day was started in 1901 by Willard Straight, a prankster who was responsible for a bunch of famous pranks on Campus during his matriculation. The Student Union in Ho Plaza is named after him. Nowadays it involves freshman in the School of Architecture building a dragon float and parading it on the Friday before Spring Break - usually occurring near St Patrick’s Day. The week before involves all kinds of pranks, chalkings, and other methods for advertising the event. I only got to see it for two years because the dragon was always notoriously late to arrive and in my Junior and Senior years I had places to be. (NYC for Spring Break one of those years) On the day before Dragon Day, the architecture freshmen run through the Engineering Quad practically naked. I just happened to be outside with my camera (which I was carrying everywhere at that time) when they came running by in 2005.

• Cornell
• Dragon-Day
• Top-200-Photos