AP News, April 10th, 2007
Some students at the University of Pennsylvania have eagerly waited for three years to be pelted with flour, eggs, ketchup and mustard.
They'll have to settle for streamers and marshmallows.
That was part of the compromise agreed to by Penn officials and students participating in "Hey Day," a decades-old rite of passage that administrators at the Ivy League college had threatened to curtail or abolish because of fears it jeopardized student safety.
On Hey Day, which began as "Moving-Up Day" in 1916, juniors are proclaimed to be seniors. On April 20, hundreds of Penn juniors plan to continue the tradition of sporting red T-shirts, canes and plastic foam hats as they picnic and then walk to College Hall for the declaration.
A more recent development finds graduating seniors pelting them with condiments and other objects, even whole fish, along the way.
"I really enjoyed it," said senior Brett Thalmann, who had items thrown at him in the festivities last year. "I think it's one of Penn's great traditions."
The food hurling has escalated over the years, leading some to question if it could be called hazing. Last year, a university official told the student newspaper, The Daily Pennsylvanian, that many juniors did not participate in Hey Day for fear of being splattered with foodstuff. Administrators threatened to cancel the event.
After lengthy negotiations this year, administrators and students agreed in February to give seniors "safe and celebratory items" to throw _ likely marshmallows and streamers _ and to ask them to sign "responsibility pledges" to ensure the festivities don't get out of hand.
"The plan that we have put forth balances the expressed desires of students with the paramount need for Penn traditions to be safe," Valarie Swain-Cade McCoullum, vice provost for university life, said in a news release.
Junior class president Puneet Singh agreed it was "a great resolution."
The controversy highlights the balance colleges must strike between tradition and student safety. Many schools have anti-hazing policies _ usually directed at fraternities, sororities and athletic teams _ but the issue becomes more delicate when the university sponsors the event in question.
Elizabethtown College, a small private school outside Harrisburg, has a similar dilemma with a tradition called the "First-Year Walk." The school has begun holding meetings about the ritual, in which freshman might be taunted or doused with water, among other pranks.
