(thing) by n6 Mon May 21 2001 at 10:22:12
Random other notes:
  • During the first few weeks of classes (and indeed throughout the year), a senior will often announce at any given house's dinner that "Ditch Day is Tomorrow, frosh!"

    Most of the freshmen have heard about ditch day, but know very little about it. (I for one hadn't the slightest clue what a stack was until well into first term my freshman year.) So they tend to be rather confused about all this business about it being tomorrow. The real story is that some time ago, the administration started demanding to know when ditch day was, since it has a rather broad effect on campus activities (all classes are actually cancelled, for one thing). In response, the use of Tomorrow with a capital T as a synonym for ditch day was spawned as a sort of protest. (ADMINISTRATION: "Hey seniors, WHEN IS DITCH DAY?" SENIORS: "Ditch Day is Tomorrow!" You get the idea.)

    Nowadays, the school actually is informed in advance, so "Ditch Day is Tomorrow!" is used primarily as a tool for taunting frosh into teary-eyed submission.



  • Ditch Day begins at 8:00 AM. Usually signups for individual stacks begin between 8:05 and 8:30. Long before 8, the seniors pound on the doors of a few freshmen and yell DITCH DAY! DITCH DAY! GET UP FROSH, IT'S DITCH DAY! or somesuch. It is then these and other freshmen's duty to wake the remainder of the non-senior population before signups begin.


  • To add a further layer of secrecy to the whole matter of the exact date, one or more Fake Ditch Days are executed during the months leading up to the real thing. The wake-up and signup proceedures are exactly the same, and there is generally similar evidence of preparation going on in the nights beforehand. But the stacks are all fake, which is to say that they are very, very short. Generally, one of the first few clues (if not the first) is "Go back to bed, frosh. DITCH DAY IS TOMORROW!" Yes, even though all non-seniors participate in the stacks, it always says frosh. Silly seniors.


  • The pranking that Halcyon&on refers to (and of which the bribe is offered in lieu) is called counterstacking. For example, one group this year switched all the pins around in their senior's door lock and changed her door combination, leaving her only a set of picks and clues to the combination to open the door. Of course, they also took the bribe. Bastards.


I like it!