Traditions, whether eccentric or curious, have long characterized schools with significant histories. They fostered community, channeled into an activity or symbol the sense of belonging and reinforced the College's uniqueness. For these reasons, and often for the sheer fun of involvement, Amherst students once took immense pride in cultivating idiosyncratic customs. Sadly that quality of invention and participation appears to have followed its patrons into the faded annals of College history.
Certain individual campus organizations and sports teams, it must be said, continue to observe traditions that imbue that particular group with continuity and identity. Yet we shall be hard-pressed to discover many-any-campus-wide customs that feel distinctly Amherst. In recent years, perhaps only the spontaneous migration of sledders to Memorial Hill upon first snowfall comes close. Yet even these moments, at once shared and individually intense, suffer from tight policing.
Thus that we struggle today to identify a practice that gives pleasing singularity to the Amherst experience must be an indictment of sorts on the state of school spirit. The name Sabrina, for instance, lives on in one of the College's two all-female a cappella groups, but few will think to associate it with the bronze statue that captured the imaginations of numerous Amherst generations. Today it is hidden in an undisclosed location, virtually inaccessible to all but lucky-mostly the generous sort-alumni.
Must we bring the Sabrina back? The answer really makes very little difference. Insofar as current students invest no meaning in an old statue, its repatriation would only revive a tradition for tradition's sake. Just because a custom has acquired the luster of time scarcely makes it more valuable. We must look, rather, to those traditions that can infuse a measure of shared experience, and act as common language for members to express pride in their class and institution.
Learn and sing Amherst songs at games again; reintroduce interclass competition; set aside time-a designated day, perhaps-for spontaneity and spirited activity. With the College's commitment to admitting an increasingly diverse group of students, fostering solidarity and camaraderie among College students in this transition period has become an ever more important and delicate enterprise.
Interesting traditions can provide this requisite social glue, and as critically, the continuing attachment into later life of that original time and that original place when we were students.