Kansas is a university ripe with tradition year-round ­— the Rock Chalk chant, waving the wheat and the alma mater to name a few. Yet at no time of year are some KU traditions more in bloom than at the peak of spring, and the peak of graduating seniors’ college careers — commencement.

From the University’s first commencement in 1873 to now, here is a brief glimpse of some KU commencement traditions.

“I think these traditions are special because it unites Jayhawks throughout generations,” said Michael Gray, Buhler senior. “Walking through the Campanile, you’re experiencing something that your parents, and maybe your grandparents, experienced. It unites Jayhawks throughout history.”

From Then to Now

1873 marked the first commencement at the University. Graduates made a procession from “the old building” — the first building ever built on campus, also called Old North College, which sat where Gertrude Sellards Pearson Hall and Corbin Hall sit today — to “the new building,” the second building ever built on campus, then called University Hall and now called Fraser Hall. On the program that day was a prayer, the awarding of the diplomas to the graduating class, music, announcements and a benediction.

Walking Down the Hill

At the University, students don’t ask “are you going to commencement?” said Kathryn Nemeth Tuttle, associate vice provost for student success.

“They say ‘are you going to walk?’” Nemeth Tuttle said. “It has taken on such a symbolic thing in everybody’s mind. There is something very special about it.”

KU Info director Curtis Marsh said Memorial Stadium wasn’t built until 1921, so the walk down the hill couldn’t have occurred before that. Nemeth Tuttle said she had seen film of students walking into the stadium from as far back as the 1930s.

“It’s a long established tradition,” Nemeth Tuttle said. “Obviously, the size of the stadium — it’s the only venue of that size, because remember, at that time we didn’t have Allen Fieldhouse. We had Hoch Auditorium, which was somewhat limited in seating, so for thousands of guests the stadium became the only place to really do it.”

Marsh called walking down the hill the primary KU commencement tradition. According to the KU Info Web site, there are two different trails that graduates take down the hill. Going down the west side are students graduating from the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences as well as master’s and Ph.D. students. It takes a graduate about 300 steps to get down the hill. For those taking the second trail down the hill on the east side — students from professional schools — it is a little bit of a longer walk, with about 330 steps to get into the stadium. The difference? Those on the west side have no stairs to combat, while those on the east side start their walk with 28 stairs.

The Campanile Curse

Nemeth Tuttle said the Campanile was constructed in 1950 and that she thought the tradition of walking through the tower began sometime soon after that. She said she couldn’t remember the curse of the Campanile — that if students walk through the tower before commencement they will never graduate — from her undergraduate years in the late 1960s and the early 1970s, and guessed that this tradition started sometime in the 1970s.

Marsh said the curse of the Campanile was one of the University’s traditions that did not have a formal beginning.

“There are a lot of them like this, like waving the wheat,” Marsh said. “There are traditions that are just extraordinarily important to the KU experience that are hard to pinpoint as far as origins.”

The walk through the Campanile — built to honor the 277 students and faculty who died in World War II — is extremely special to graduating students, Nemeth Tuttle said. She remembered her own experience graduating from the University with her doctorate degree in 1996, when much construction was being done around the Campanile. Because of this, she said, graduates were not allowed to walk through the Campanile at commencement.

“This created very bad feelings,” Nemeth Tuttle said. “It’s a great example of a tradition becoming so strong that students got quite upset that they didn’t get to do that.”

Nemeth Tuttle found a way, though — one of her relatives at the time was Baby Jay, she said, and as Baby Jay led her through the crowd, “the seas parted” and she got to walk through the tower after all.

The Importance of Tradition

Nemeth Tuttle said she remembered a story from last year that showed the importance of commencement traditions to graduates. One student graduating from the School of Nursing had a grandfather who graduated from the University decades ago, she said. The student’s grandfather did not have enough money to purchase the graduation regalia back then, so he did not walk down the hill.

“They worked it out so he could go down the hill with her last year,” Nemeth Tuttle said. “It’s a symbol of connectedness — no matter when you graduate, you can connect with it.”

Commencement is especially an occasion to feel connected to the traditions of the University, Marsh said.

“You go to commencement and realize that they have been doing the procession since 1873, and the fact that we hold fast to tradition means, while we’re here, we feel like we’re part of a very big, very special thing,” Marsh said.

He said the tradition of commencement made him feel closer to those who had gone before him and those who would come after him.

“Everyone wants to feel a sense of belonging to something bigger than themselves,” Marsh said. “Having an institution with lots of very special traditions makes you feel as though you’re a part of something much bigger than you.”

— — Edited by Susan Melgren