Princeton Reunions
The Princeton Reunions are an annual college reunion event held every year on the weekend before commencement at Princeton University. Known simply as "Reunions", this event brings back to campus upwards of 25,000 alumni and guests for a four-day celebration featuring large outdoor tents, elaborate costumes, sporting events, alumni and faculty presentations, fireworks, and bands from rock to swing.
History
A Princeton Companion places the advent of Princeton reunions shortly after the end of the Civil War. The 1890s saw increasing interest, although it was not until the 1950s that Reunions took on today's level of organization, particularly with respect to on-campus housing for returning alums.The P-rade
The Alumni Parade, known today as the P-rade, is the capstone of the Reunions weekend. Held on Saturday, it is the last major event — save for the fireworks display The 25th Reunion class heads the parade; they are led by the Princeton University Band, which plays traditional songs such as Going Back to Nassau Hall.The P-rade then proceeds with members of each class from oldest to youngest, accompanied by spouses, children, family members, and even pets. Alumni of the Graduate School normally take the place of the 25th reunion in the sequence. In 2000 and 2001, to celebrate the centennial of the Graduate College, the Graduate School alumni marched immediately behind the 25th Reunion class. Each year, the University president honors the oldest returning alumnus by presenting him with a silver cane donated by the class of 1923. The bearer of that cane from 2002 to 2005 was Leonard Ernst '25, and in 2001 and from 2006 to 2012, the bearer was fellow '25 graduate Malcolm Warnock, who was 107 at his final Reunion appearance in 2012. Ernst, Warnock, and most older alumni are typically chauffeured along the parade route by golf carts, but in 2001, the then-96-year-old Warnock impressed everyone by walking the last segment of the P-rade, waving his cane toward an appreciative crowd. In 2016, cane recipient Joseph Schein '37, walked the entire route with the cane at age 101.
Classes celebrating a major reunion often wear themed costumes, which have ranged from Roman legionnaires to firefighters and Uncle Sam lookalikes. Costumes and themes are often completely unrelated to Princeton or the year the class graduated.
Frequently, classes will hire musical groups, such as the Mummers, local high school marching bands, and a calliope, to lead them through the parade.
The P-Rade begins on Nassau Street, enters the campus through FitzRandolph Gate in front of Nassau Hall, then proceeds through Cannon Green. Until the early 1990s, the route continued across McCosh Walk, through 1879 Arch, down Prospect Avenue, and finished on the baseball field. However, because of escalating public liability and insurance costs, the University moved the P-Rade route to stay only on the private property of the University. Some think the University also felt that too many alumni would stop off at their eating clubs on Prospect Avenue before finishing the P-Rade, and so it changed the route so that it does not leave campus. Currently, after crossing Cannon Green, the P-Rade proceeds down Elm Drive through the center of campus, and onto Poe Field. The Classes are arranged on both sides of the entire route, so that each cheers its elders, then falls in line to march past those younger. The P-rade ends as the graduating seniors race onto Poe Field under review of the President of the University, and are then formally welcomed as alumni/ae.
1967 P-rade and Orientalism
The 10th reunion group in the 1967 parade became part of Edward Said's critique of the West when Said discussed the Reunion as an example of the arrogant Western cultural scorn towards Arab peoples. In his extraordinarily influential 1978 book, Orientalism, Said criticized the reunion as typical of the "popular images and social science representations" of a "tendentious kind" into which "the Arab" is "continually being forced." Specifically, Said criticized reduction and scope, in his words:"The costume for Princeton's tenth-reunion class in 1967 had been planned before the June War. The motif—for it would be wrong to describe the costume as more than crudely suggestive—was to have been Arab: robes, headgear, sandals. Immediately after the war, when it had become clear that the Arab motif was an embarrassment, a change in the reunion plan was decreed. Wearing the costume as it had originally been planned, the class was now to walk in procession, hands above heads in a gesture of abject defeat. This was what the Arab had become. From a faintly outlined stereotype as a camel-riding nomad to an accepted caricature as the embodiment of incompetence and easy defeat: that was all the scope given the Arab."
Closing Ceremonies
An outdoor orchestra concert and an elaborate evening fireworks display set to music, first held to celebrate the university's 250th anniversary in 1996, but repeated every year since by popular demand, is held the Saturday evening of Reunions. This can be seen as a closing ceremony of Reunions; however, the Reunions parties do not officially end until 2 a.m. that night, and low-key brunches are often held Sunday morning, at which point Reunions Weekend fades into Commencement Weekend.Unofficially, after the tents close, the party moves to the eating clubs on Prospect Avenue and will go until sunrise, especially Saturday night.
Trivia
- As older classes march by in the P-rade, younger classes greet them by shouting an old, traditional Princeton cheer called a locomotive. The format of the cheer is "Hip! Hip! Rah! Rah! Rah! Tiger! Tiger! Tiger! Sis! Sis! Sis! Boom! Boom! Boom! Ah! Oh-Eight! Oh-Eight! Oh-Eight!". The older class then traditionally returns the locomotive cheer to the younger class. This is a variant on one of the oldest college cheers, the "Princeton Locomotive," dating to the late 1870s or early 1880s.
- Noted Princeton Reunions participants in 2017 included Jeff Bezos and Ted Cruz.
- Noted Princeton Reunions participants in 2014 included David E. Kelley and William Clay Ford Jr., returning for their 35th Reunion, Donald Rumsfeld, returning for his 60th Reunion, and Bill Frist, returning for his 40th.
- Noted Princeton Reunions participants in 2012 included Brooke Shields, returning for her 25th Reunion.
- Noted Princeton Reunions participants in 2005 included Ralph Nader, returning for his 50th Reunion.
- Each senior class designs and distributes a decorated canvas "beer jacket." Beer jackets are so named because they were originally worn to protect the wearers' clothing from beer. Since 2002, the administration has renamed these as "Class Jackets" for politically correct reasons, but students continue to refer to them as "beer jackets." Modern incarnations are also designed with voluminous inner pockets to conceal and carry beer cans. The jackets also serve to distinguish seniors from other underclassmen, a custom that dates to the days when seniors were afforded special privileges.
- For the 5th, 10th, 15th and 20th Reunions, each class designs a new costume. Over the years, costumes have included cowboys, tigers, astronauts, toreadors, soldiers, mountain-climbers, clowns, sailors, ANZACs, beetles, chefs, firemen, pirates, toga-clad Romans, and a 50-person-long "centipede."
- At the 25th Reunion, class members receive class blazers. These range from blue blazers with a class logo to various variants of orange-and-black stripes, or various custom designs with class numerals, names of classmates and other icons.
- In 2005, there were 74 classes in the P-rade, beginning with the Class of 1925.
- In 2012, the Class of 1925 was once again the oldest class represented, with Malcolm Warnock '25, age 107, the recipient of the "Class of 1923 Cane" awarded to the oldest alumnus from the oldest returning class. Warnock returned for many Reunions, becoming the first person ever to participate in the P-Rade at his 84th, 85th, and 86th Reunions.