Harrison's Signature Event: The Great Pumpkin Sacrifice
Harrison House maintains the longest running tradition at UNB, The Great Pumpkin Sacrifice, which began in 1973. For the event a large pumpkin is carved in the face of the Roman god Janus. One side of the face is a happy face, the other a not-so-happy one. This represents the 'academic' harvest and that some are happy with the crop reaped, while others are not. House residents decorate campus and the city with pumpkins in the lead-up to the event, and mark the coming of the event by a two-minute howl at midnight on each of the seven days prior to the event. Silence marks the daylight hours of 31 October in a mark of the solemnity of the occasion and the judgement that will come in the sacrifice.
Leading up to midnight on Halloween, the Great Pumpkin is escorted by a cast of actors, wise-people, and house residents guarded by the Pumpkin's militia out of the house front doors, and across campus, blessed at the former Lady Dunn Hall courtyard (now Joy Kidd House), and returned to Harrison House where it is risen to the roof and sacrificially dropped and exploded (under the supervision of a pyrotechnician). Although the event has always been prescribed to take place a midnight on Halloween, for several years in the early 2000s, the timing was adjusted to just before 10 PM, so that it would not interfere with university quiet hours.
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