Dragon Day - Politics and Pranks

Politics and Pranks

Dragon Day has been used as a form of political expression. At some point between its origin and 1920, the festivities were banned by Cornell's third president, Jacob Gould Schurman, because campus Catholics were offended by the theme. During the 1933-1934 school year, students constructed a large paper-mache beer stein to celebrate the repeal of Prohibition. In the 1950s, Dragon Day was cancelled in protest of Senator McCarthy's red scare. In 1968, the dragon was controversially painted entirely black in protest of the Vietnam War. In 1994, the possible cancellation of the Cornell in Rome Architecture Program prompted students to adopt a "Fall of Rome" theme.

Campus pranks often surround Dragon Day. In 1966, a green pig was released into the Ivy Room, a dining hall, resulting in a massive food fight. In 1974, artist Oded Halahmy threatened to remove his outdoor sculptures from the campus after some were splattered with green paint and moved. The day before Dragon Day, the freshmen architects can be found running through campus, barely clothed and painted green. That night they moon the windows of Uris Library and festoon the Arts Quad with toilet paper. In 1990, the Department of Architecture severed all ties with the holiday due to the pranks, but began re-affiliating with it in 1993.