the history of an apple

Going on two hundred years, the Hamilton College community has maintained traditions young and old. Especially around commencement time, traditions at Hamilton hold unforgettable memories for the graduating seniors. For one week, seniors are given time to spend together, creating those final bonds with Hamilton friends and making memories they will hopefully remember after all of the Senior Week festivities.

Kirkland College may only hold ten years on record in the Hamilton history book, but its impact on Hamilton’s campus is still celebrated through a strawberries and champagne picnic for the graduating women and their families. Started in 1978, the final year that Kirkland College held a commencement ceremony, Strawberries and Champagne continues to recall some of the activities of Kirkland’s graduation, including an open mic that was once a part of the actual ceremonies. Organized by the female faculty, the picnic did gradually integrate the male faculty of Kirkland College who wanted to honor their female students.

Another well known Kirkland-founded commencement tradition is the placing of a green apple by each Hamilton female on the podium as they cross the stage. The ladies of the first co-ed graduating class started the tradition in protest to the administration’s decision to disband Kirkland College. Nancy Rabinowitz, the Margaret Scott Bundy Professor of Comparative Literature, recalls the comedic scene at graduation as the faculty scurried on stage to remove the green apples after each woman, having been trained in how to make the apple make the greatest thud against the podium, placed it on the stand. The apple placing has now become more of a symbol of honor towards Kirkland College than of a resistance movement, and today, senior women are given a green apple pin by female members of the faculty.

Why such an emphasis on the traditions of Kirkland College at commencement time? “Kirkland is a part of the past that needs to be recognized,” Rabinowitz says. She notes that without these Kirkland traditions, there would be nothing else of the all-female institution that deserves more celebration.

Countering the women’s picnic, Apolon ’08 has requested with the consent of the senior week committee and office of the Dean of Faculty that the men of Hamilton College have their own event, a carved ham lunch with ale. In this way, the men of the college can recall the long history before Kirkland College. “The old Hamilton has vanished just as surely [as Kirkland],” Apolon points out. “The name remains but this is not the same school as it was before.”

As May quickly arrives, seniors will soon become nostalgic for the past years they have spent on the Hill. Assistant Dean of Students for Campus Life and Director of Student Activities Lisa Magnarelli ’96 recalls that senior week is a great time to reconnect with old roommates and friends while creating a common, individual experience to share as a class. “Senior week is bittersweet,” Brian Greenleaf ’08 says, “At some point in time you have to move on.” Each year new “traditions” are introduced, as each class year has the opportunity to form its own events for the week. Finally, at the commencement ceremonies, each Hamilton graduate will receive his or her classic cane, uniting the class and alumni alike. When another school year officially closes, the Class of ’08 will step aside to let the bicentennial class tackle the academic rigor on the Hill.
-alicia wright