T R U T H
From Playboy honors to a cursed prize to "The Far Side," campus legends run wild and deep at Washington College. We asked our reporter to run down a few, and what he found might surprise you.
employment behind me. When I
first arrived at this centuries-old
campus, people were slinging all sorts of wild stories my way, tall tales meant to impress a wide-eyed stranger intimidated by all the history surrounding him.
Stories like the audacious boast that little Washington College was the first college founded in the new United States of America. Or the myth that the school actually gives something like $40,000 to a graduating senior just for writing well—cash money the winners are free to spend at will, be it on their first novel or on Red 17. My favorite was the myth of students—male and female—stripping away their clothes every May 1 and streaking across campus, a wildly poetic ritual celebrating spring.
Of course, fables like those—
NOTE FROM THE EDITOR: Doug, those things aren’t myths. They’re all true.
Really? Even the naked part?
Yes, although we certainly don’t condone that sort of behavior.
No, of course we don’t. So where was I last year on the first of May?
You were fishing.
But as I was saying, myths are a natural part of the collegiate landscape, as common as brick walks. Few institutions lend themselves to myth-making like colleges and universities. The combination of centuries’ worth of history, a powerful nostalgia for the campus’s good old days, and a core population that churns through itself every four years produces an oral history filled with mysterious tales of hazy origins.
The above examples are all false, by the way—tall tales that have wormed their way into the mythology of campuses across the country. The Washington College Magazine has mustered all its investigative resources and set out to examine a few legends closer to home, stories that have been told, retold, then told again for decades, yet never scrutinized.
Until now.
(CONTINUED ON p. 24)
ILLUSTRATIONS BY MARCY DUNN RAMSEY
