January 15, 2004

• Special report: A look at campus legends, lore and traditions
  From Hey Day to Ivy Stones, campus buildings to urban legends, we look at the traditions, legends and history of Penn.

• Ask Benny: Church is gone, but the windows survive
• Penn's Archives: Primary source for historical research
• Chip off the old block

• Event Listings
• Editor's Pick: Japanimania
• How Penn lives the dream
• See what's new in youth theater
• People's Choice: Name that team

• News Briefs
• Bookquick from the University Press
• Quoted recently
• Awards & Honors
• At Work with...Delores Snead Hale
• Campus Buzz

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Student rites of passage: From organized mayhem to celebration

BY SANDY SMITH

What are those funny creatures on the Quadrangle that are usually called gargoyles?

“Actually, they aren’t gargoyles because gargoyles spout water,” said architectural historian George E. Thomas Gr’75, co-author of “Building America’s First University.” “They are properly called ‘bosses,’ but nobody knows what that means.”

Those extravagant sculptural ornaments that adorn every nook and cranny of the dormitory represent a classic piece of college humor. Not only are they not meant to be frightening, as their medieval counterparts were, they are really ribald jabs at faculty with donkey’s ears, students sadly clutching a football and even the architects, Cope and Stewardson, who are depicted as fools bearing a tray full of apples.

— Elaine Wilner