Dragon Day
Around this time in 1901, as Cornell's engineering students innocently sat in their classrooms with their slide rules and their pocket protectors, a young architecture student named Willard Straight hatched a plan to celebrate the College of Architecture, parade around a giant dragon, and flare up the engineering-architecture rivalry.
Now, 105 years later, the Dragon Day tradition lives on. We engineers have found it necessary to protect ourselves against the dragon's onslaught, and have thus formed a club called the Phoenix Society that generally gets ignored by everyone but engineering students. The phoenix (which is sometimes a penguin, a cobra, or basically anything else that sounds like a good idea and can be constructed primarily using mesh and papier-mache) itself is usually pathetic, but we never claimed to be good at art anyhow.
The dragons really are incredible, though. It's a strange tradition, but it's one of our best. You can read more about the history of dragon day here and see some pictures here.
Now, 105 years later, the Dragon Day tradition lives on. We engineers have found it necessary to protect ourselves against the dragon's onslaught, and have thus formed a club called the Phoenix Society that generally gets ignored by everyone but engineering students. The phoenix (which is sometimes a penguin, a cobra, or basically anything else that sounds like a good idea and can be constructed primarily using mesh and papier-mache) itself is usually pathetic, but we never claimed to be good at art anyhow.
The dragons really are incredible, though. It's a strange tradition, but it's one of our best. You can read more about the history of dragon day here and see some pictures here.
posted by megan at
3:39 PM
2 Comments:
What a cool tradition! Although I'm sure you engineers have a lot of fun with your phoenix, it sounds like the archies really carry the day.
The French need to read about these kinds of things. Maybe it would channel their creative energy more effectively than, say, striking.
By
RebeccaP, at 2:49 PM
From what I've read, their strike is proving at least mildly successful (aside from some violence, which, by all accounts is separate from student action)--they're getting dialogue with the government, and Villepin's popularity has sharply declined.
What are they supposed to do about a new law that allows them to be fired without a cause? Sit back and take it? Even if the best solution is to draw up a referendum, the best way to accomplish that is to get as much publicity as possible so that people know to sign the referendum. By centering the strikes around universities, the student unions gain a lot: they attract more attention from the people who will be directly affected by the new law; they have a comfortable and familiar base for protestors that is safer than a more public forum would be; it's a convenient outlet for news media; and if French academics are anything like American ones, it stands a greater chance of getting support from older adults.
By
megan, at 5:18 PM
Post a Comment
<< Home