Though they’re more than 140 miles away, Shannon Blunt proudly displays a sketch of the University of Missouri’s columns in his Eaton Hall office.

The columns are a remnant of Academic Hall, the first building erected on Mizzou’s campus. Blunt, assistant professor of electrical engineering, attended Missouri for all three of his degrees.

Though the columns may be unique to Mizzou, other traditions and aspects of life in Columbia seem to have a counterpart in Lawrence.

For example, Mizzou has what is known as the “Tiger Walk” and the “Tiger Prowl.” Reminscent of Kansas’ convocation each year in August, the “Tiger Walk” is a procession of freshmen walking through the columns into Jesse Hall, according to Mizzou’s Web site. At graduation, seniors complete the cycle with the “Tiger Prowl.” They leave Jesse Hall and walk back through the columns to commemorate becoming alumni, much as KU students walk down the hill for commencement.

The columns even function as Mizzou’s equivalent of Wescoe Beach, the cement expanse in front of Wescoe Hall. Erin Williams, a Marshall, Mo., graduate student, graduated from Mizzou in 2004. She said she remembered several students socializing around the columns, in a fashion similar to Wescoe Beach.

“People sit on [the columns] and read, and chill out, and take naps,” Williams said.

Blunt said he also particularly recalled Missouri’s Engineers’ Week, similar in spirit to Kansas’ Engineering Expo. The Expo is a two-day open house and a chance for engineers at Kansas to showcase projects and compete in different engineering-related contests.

Engineers’ Week is an activity-filled week, when engineers participate in events such as scavenger hunts all over Columbia, Blunt said. At the end of the week, on Saturday, the school hosts the Engineer’s Ball.

“They get very involved with it,” Blunt said. “The dome of Jesse Hall looks like a capital building. It’s white and it’s lit up all the time. But during Engineers’ week, they change the lights out and it’s lit up green.”

Williams remembers both the official and the unofficial traditions from her undergraduate years at Mizzou.

“I went to the Heidelberg for my 21st birthday — it’s this bar that is right next to campus,” she said. ”There are all sorts of institutions like that when you go to Mizzou; you go to the ’Berg, you go to Shakespeare’s Pizza. … There are a lot of external traditions that come to my mind.”

One of the unsanctioned traditions that Williams also remembers was the precedent of going to East Campus, which resembles the student ghetto in Lawrence.

“On a Thursday, Friday, Saturday night, you could walk down, and almost everyone’s at a house party,” Williams said. “East Campus is a residential neighborhood. … If you were to walk from campus to Mass. Street, and you had all these houses and things like that — imagine that it’s a little more compact and isolated.”

However, Williams said that, overall, the campus took greater pride in its official traditions, such as homecoming.

According to its Web site, Mizzou held the first homecoming in 1911. Athletics Director Chester Brewer invited Mizzou alumni to “come home” for the annual football game against Kansas and the tradition has since swept the country. The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign also claims to have started the tradition the same year. According to Missouri’s Web site, Mizzou’s is the largest student-run homecoming in the nation.

Justin Roberts, a 2003 Mizzou graduate, currently works for Missouri’s College of Education. Roberts said that the homecoming activities included a blood drive and a parade.

Both Roberts and Williams said that the greek community was very involved in homecoming activities, organizing a skit night — Kansas has the Jayhawk Jingles during homecoming and the Rock Chalk Revue during the spring — and house stacks, which are 3-D scenes that depict the homecoming theme. During Homecoming Week, Kansas has its Chalk N’ Rock, where teams create homecoming-themed murals on Wescoe Beach.

“Homecoming’s kind of an overwhelmingly big deal at Mizzou,” Williams said. “There’s a weird electricity in the air … It’s the one weird thing that greek people and non-greek people totally get together on.”

Overall, Williams said that the campus traditions were a large part of the Missouri atmosphere.

“That’s a part of pride with Mizzou people,” she said.

Roberts agreed, saying that the Student-Alumni Association really focused on passing along the Mizzou traditions.

“This campus does really well at promoting their traditions,” Roberts said.

— Edited by Melissa Johnson