We are all governed by one force here at Princeton. Most undergraduate students believe in and follow a golden rule: Don't walk out of FitzRandolph Gate in front of Nassau Hall, or you won't graduate.
If we were truly smart, one of us might ask: But why not? Many believe that this tradition began when commencement logistics started requiring graduates to pass through the gate as a symbolic birth from the womb of Princeton's campus into the real world — or at least Nassau Street.
FitzRandolph Gate is named after Nathaniel and Rebecca FitzRandolph, who donated the land on which Nassau Hall was built in the mid-18th century. The Orange Key e-tour on the University's website promotes the superstition and the infliction of a fear of all things wrought iron into undergraduates: "In June, graduation ceremonies are held on the front campus and the new graduates file out of the gate. For this reason, Princeton undergraduates are superstitious that if they walk out the gate before their graduation they will be cursed and will never graduate. So a warning to prospective students — don't walk out the gate!"
Has anyone dared to break this ritual, either inadvertently or in a meditated fashion?
Hilary Boller '04 said she accidentally crossed the border last year during Communiversity. Though she said she worries about her mistake, Boller rationalized, "it doesn't count on Communiversity day because that is the day when the University's boundaries are dissolved and Princeton becomes one with the town."
Kate Reid '04 also made the dreadful mistake by walking out of the gate once. "I am a firm believer — [or] desperate hoper — that it really only applies to entering through the gate," she said in an e-mail. Folklore has it that prospective students shouldn't cross the gate into campus until they matriculate.
So what are the rules of etiquette regarding the 'don't walk through' tenet? Can we walk from Nassau Street into Front Campus without worry? Answers seem to vary depending on whom you ask; those who have walked through the gate seem to favor a looser interpretation of the rule.
Some choose to believe that the rule only applies to graduation in four years. Caitlin Fitz '02 remembers a male student who graduated last year after only three years of study at Princeton. "[He] didn't believe the superstition and walked out of [it] all the time. As it turned out, he graduated — but not in four years!"
Many non-students seem to think it is funny to use the gate as fodder for teasing us poor susceptible students. "[When] my older brother Ezra Fitz '00 was a freshman at Princeton, my parents decided to take a picture of my three brothers and I just inside the gates. So we lined up for the camera, when my youngest brother started trying to push my older brother out," Fitz noted. "Luckily, it was a 10-year-old against a 19-year-old, so my older brother managed to avoid stepping out by hanging onto the bars."
However, most students take care to avoid angering the FitzRandolph Gate gods at all costs, even if it means taking a longer route to their destinations.
Melissa Bermudez '03, co-chair of Communiversity, remembered a "mini-crisis" that arose at last year's event with Janet Stern, a member of the Borough Arts Council.
"[Stern] was at the main stage on Nassau Street. I was on the campus side of the FitzRandolph gate," she explained. "We were talking through the bars, trying to figure it out and she was like, 'Melissa, I need you to come over here.' Without explaining why, I pushed my way through the crowds on the lawn and ran all the way over to one of the side gates and back to meet her in the center. She thought I was nuts until I explained about the legend."
Like Bermudez, many students warily appreciate the tradition as a legend rather than fear it as a danger. "I like the myth of the gate. I can personally say that I know I have never walked out of it," Stephanie Westcot '03 said. "We took the tour my junior year of high school and even then I refused to walk out it."
Many students look forward to walking through the gate for the first time at graduation as a ceremonial right of passage.
"I want to say that the first time I walked through that gate was when I had just graduated," Chris Connolly '04 explained.
"I'm not so much afraid as I see it as tradition," he added.
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