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- Graduations are the stuff of tradition, but sometimes those traditions are truly bizarre.
- Some schools race wooden hoops, some throw watches off rooftops, and some distribute the wrong diplomas.
- They may be ridiculous, but those traditions are what make some schools treasured institutions.
- Visit Business Insider’s homepage for more stories.
For those graduating from university this year, it’s going to be hard to say goodbye to their alma mater.
Thankfully, graduation ceremonies exist as both a formality for their parents to take pictures of, and as an opportunity for the new grads to conclude years of hard work and hard partying by throwing their caps in the air.
But not all grads throw their caps in the air. Some colleges have stranger traditions — Smith College distributes diplomas unlike any other school, Yale University has a lucky toe, and Wellesley College rolls wooden hoops downhill.
Here are some of the strangest and silliest graduation traditions in American universities.
Smith College’s Diploma Circle
Brian Snyder/Reuters
While most graduates receive their diplomas when their names are called as they walk across the stage, at Smith College, in Northampton, Massachusetts, graduates get a random diploma with any one of 700 classmates’ names. They then walk over to a field on campus where they form the Diploma Circle.
The Diploma Circle, a century-old tradition, is when the graduating class stands around in concentric circles while diplomas are passed from student to student until everyone has her diploma.
Wellesley College’s wooden hoops
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Wellesley College students have one of the strangest traditions upon graduating: they race wooden hoops down Tupelo Street.
It started out as May Day celebration in honor of spring, but soon grew to become a graduation day tradition. The winner of the race is said to go on to achieve success. The winner is also swept up by the other students and promptly thrown into Lake Waban.
It may seem like an exciting race, but the reality is a little more haphazard — grads dropping their hoops, colliding into one another, all to win the coveted first place.
Yale University’s lucky toe
Wikimedia Commons/CC 2.0 Attribution
Yale students have a rather bizarre tradition that involves the toe of former Yale president Theodore Dwight Woolsey’s bronze statue.
Yale tour guides routinely explain that students rub the toe for good luck once they graduate. Legend has it that Woosley, when he was president, would attend a regatta in support of the Yale crew team. Every time he kicked off a boat with his left toe to start the race, the Yale team would win.
Unfortunately, however, this legend has no basis in fact, and the toe itself isn’t known to be lucky. And the tradition that grads rub the toe isn’t true either — it was invented to cover up the real tradition: when students graduate, they urinate on the toe, which might explain the slightly worn golden tint of the bronze toe.
See the rest of the story at Business Insider
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Source: Business Insider – ideluce@businessinsider.com (Ivan De Luce)