Word: customs
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Dates: during 1890-1899
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...strictest following of that suggestion, however, can hardly justify one old custom-the Memorial Hall custom of stamping whenever some thoughtless visitor in the gallery keeps on his hat. There is not dignity or point enough in the practice to make it worth the name of a Harvard custom. Few visitors know what the stamping means when it begins and only a part of them find out before it ends. The rest go away with strange ideas of Harvard manners. All in the gallery must feel uncomfortable and embarrassed to see several hundred men gaping and stamping at them...
Compared with the old form of the scrimmage, the new plan promises to be infinitely superior. The dangerous and objectionable features are to be eliminated, while the good old custom is retained...
...news is pleasant for several reasons. It means that the Senior class will not be forced to abandon without its consent the old custom of scrimmaging and that the present Class Day exercises may be retained in something like their old form until the class shall see fit to adopt some substitute or improvement, if one be found which commends itself as better than the old form...
...clear then that the flower exercises are an old and unbroken tradition, and that they have existed in their present form for upwards of thirty years. To substitute artificial ceremonies for the living custom-the scramble for the flowers, is hardly a reasonable proposition. A tradition is the slow product of time and tendencies, and is only susceptible of very gradual change or modification. Once rudely disturbed from without and its very essence is gone. Briefly, you can not take away the flowers and the scrimmage on Class Day without destroying the tradition. You may still have exercises there...
...events the Corporation should at least allow the student body the opportunity of remedying the abuses to which they have objected before they insist upon abolishing a custom which is so intimately associated with the college life of the past, and so dearly treasured by the undergraduates (and we believe also by the graduates) of the present...