Happy 144th Birthday to Syracuse University! The university celebrates its anniversary on March 24, the date the Board of Trustees signed the University charter and certificate of incorporation.
If it was possible to time travel, I’d like to go back to Syracuse in the late 1890s – maybe around the time my Pi Beta Phi chapter was founded in 1896 or maybe five years later when the chapter hosted the 1901 convention. A University of Vermont Pi Phi attended as her chapter’s delegate. Wouldn’t it have been fun to meet the future First Lady, Grace Goodhue Coolidge when she was a college student? I would love to have seen what the campus looked like back then. And to have the opportunity to meet Wellesley P. Coddington and Frank Smalley (he of the word “sorority” fame) would be intriguing, to say the least. However, I am certain that I would not enjoy the activities of which I write today.
From the founding of the institution up until the pre-World War II years, inter-class “rushes” between the Syracuse freshmen and sophomore men were yearly events. The first of these activities was the Salt Rush. The tradition began when sophomores sprinkled salt on the Chapel benches where the freshmen sat. The purpose was to “take the freshness out of the first year men.” When the college moved to a hill in Syracuse, the “salting” as it was first called, turned into something more raucous. Sophomores would throw salt at and on the freshmen, sometimes rubbing it in their hair. The female students were spectators.
According to the Syracuse University Archives website, “There were many Rushes known to this campus (Cane, Flour, Orange, Salt, and Snow – to name a few), but the most popular two were the Salt Rush and the Flour Rush.”
The flour rush debuted in 1904. It usually took place before the Salt Rush. The December 1905 Delta Upsilon Quarterly contained a report on the Syracuse chapter’s activities, “The Flour rush and Salt rush were held as usual and furnished the same amusement to the spectators and the same exhibition of class spirit as heretofore, the former being won by the freshmen and the latter by the sophomores.”
Salt Rush 1903, One Section of the Spectators (From the Onondagan yearbook)
Salt Rush 1903, the melee (from the Onondagan yearbook)
College customs were much discussed in the Greek-letter organization magazines of the early 1900s. Gamma Phi Beta’s Alpha Chapter outlined some of Syracuse’s traditions in the November 1906 Crescent of Gamma Phi Beta, “Class distinction is impressed upon the ‘Freshie’ by a flour rush and a salt rush; in the Spring he retorts by an extraordinary ‘parade’ and a moving ceremony, in which the ‘Freshies’ bury their hated green caps which they have been forced to wear all the year.”
According to a chapter report in the January 1911 Alpha Phi Quarterly, “At the beginning of each college year the men have a series of rushes which include the salt rush, flour rush, the football rush, and later the snow rush. Only the underclassmen participate in these and everyone is glad to see the freshmen win as they usually do. The freshmen form at the foot of Crouse Hill, and the sophomores at the top. Then they rush at each other, throwing bags of salt or flour as the case may be, and the sophomores try to prevent the freshmen from reaching the top of the hill. Wrestling matches follow the rushes. The men usually escape with a few cuts and bruises but these, of course, are marks of honor.”
1927 Snow Rush (Photo from the Onondagan Yearbook)
This excerpt from a 1930 Onondagan yearbook gives more details, “The Flour Rush, which took place on September 28 (1929), was a victory for the freshmen who stormed the Irving Avenue side of Crouse College with bags of flour and completely routed the sophomores with their fire hose. Boxing and Wrestling matches followed. A tie rush was scheduled between the halves of the St. Lawrence game, but this was called because of the mud. The Salt rush which followed soon after was a chance for revenge for the men of ‘32, and they took advantage of it.”
These traditions died out by the early 1940s. Inter-class rushes were not confined to Syracuse; they were part of campus life on many other campuses. Salt Rushes took place at other upstate New York schools including St. Lawrence University and Colgate University. This may have been because, Syracuse supplied much of the country’s salt. Cane Rushes in which freshmen and sophomores sparred over possession of a cane were commonplace at schools all over the country. That topic is a post for another day.
The Hall of Languages, 2010
To read last year’s post on Syracuse’s mascot, From the Saltine Warrior to Otto the Orange – Happy Birthday Syracuse University! see http://wp.me/p20I1i-Ia .
© Fran Becque, www.fraternityhistory.com, 2014. All Rights Reserved.
