Dean’s Date, and the magic of Princeton

When a friend of mine from Israel traveled to Berlin for vacation, she mailed me a postcard. The cover, a stock photograph of Brandenburg Gate, was pretty, but she uploads her own professional quality photographs to Facebook often. Hearing from her was pleasant, but she could have messaged me on WhatsApp. Really, technology has made the postcard obsolete. This, of course, is the reason her postcard was so special.

For there is something special, even magical, about anachronisms. When we imagine the past, we infuse it with magic. King Arthur has the wizard Merlin. A medieval castle has an enchanted princess or a fairy-tale witch. The modern world, by contrast, is unmagical. If you want to tell a new story with magic, you must either set it in the past, like Pixar did with its film Brave, or create an anachronistic present. The wizards conceived by J.K. Rowling could have used email, a technology already decades old when Harry Potter started school, or a fax machine. Instead they handwrite letters, owl-delivered.

If you feel a faint magic on the campus of Princeton University, you can thank its many anachronisms. I feel it the strongest when I stand before the awesome Blair Arch: its four towers, its gargoyles, its analog clock. The letters MDCCCXCVI are cut into the stone, as if those alive in 1896 still used Roman numerals. Preceding the date are the words “ANNO DOMINI,” not because there was ever a doubt that the arch was built after Christ, but because Latin evokes a mystic era.

These anachronisms are the blood of the University. We shun the brick buildings of the sixties that do not call upon an Oxfordian prestige and praise the Collegiate Gothic buildings that do. We cling to the things that give us real age: Revolutionary War cannons, an alma mater from the 1850s, the name of a long-dead president. And we value tradition. Anyone who doubts it need only watch the students in front of Nassau Hall walk gingerly through the small side gates, avoiding the central one lest they fail to graduate.

Besides imbuing the University with magic, these traditions offer fun. Some, like the Nude Olympics, we have abandoned. Others, we try to preserve. Every Dean’s Date between 4:30 and 5:00, students gather in the courtyard of McCosh Hall. Originally we did this to cheer on and chuckle at our peers who, working up to the deadline, sprinted to turn in their final papers at the eleventh hour. The proliferation of email has nearly killed the tradition, but even as the sprinters dwindle in number to zero, you can still find the band playing in the courtyard on Dean’s Date as members of the student government hand seasonal drinks to a crowd.

The winter of my freshman year, I was a sprinter. My professor, like most others, had not required a hard copy. But my project included illustrations finished at 4:50, and, having no time to scan them, I had no choice but to submit them in person. The run was a highlight of my college career. My breaths were shallow, my pulse elevated. The band played a song like a soundtrack to an action movie. I felt alive.

Because my destination was an office in East Pyne, the crowd at McCosh, I am sorry to say, did not get to see my sprint. Instead they stood in a line waiting for hot chocolate and waiting for a spectacle that never came. The celebration, from the glimpse I caught of it, looked empty and artificial.

Now, I am not a Luddite. Technology is wondrous in its own right, and although it may take away our traditions, it gives us things of greater worth. The efficiency of email is more valuable than the magic of owl-delivered letters. But when the sacrifice in keeping a tradition is small, and the happiness the tradition brings us is greater, then we should sustain and cherish it.

Our Dean’s Date celebration is easy to rehearten. If you, reader, be a professor — or better yet, a department head — I implore you to require a hard copy of final course work. The history department requires this to no ill effect, although they do poorly by setting their deadline at 3:00 and bypassing the celebration. Set your deadline at 5:00 instead, and ask for a copy at your door. Students may grumble, but the fun of the sprint and the fun of watching it outweigh the small inconvenience. We can do without email for two days of the year if it means preserving the magic of Princeton.

Newby Parton is a sophomore from McMinnville, Tenn. He can be reached at newby@princeton.edu.