Quincy House (Harvard) - House Traditions

House Traditions

At the beginning of each academic year, Quincy House hosts a field day in which second, third, and fourth year students compete against each other in athletic contests. The "Quincy Assassins" is an annual event in which students target a fellow house member with a Nerf gun. Another recently-implemented tradition of the House is its talent show.

On the day each spring when freshmen learn of their House affiliations for their upperclass years, Quincy House students storm the yard with their house flag, led by someone wearing a penguin suit. The 2011 theme for Quincy was "Quinception", inspired by the film Inception.

There had been a tradition in the 1970s for a weekly dinner in one of the small rooms off the main dining hall where excessive amounts of cannabis were smoked; by the end, or even the middle, of dinner a haze would usually settle over the room. This continued at least into spring term 1980 but was phased out not long after that.

Read more about this topic:  Quincy House (Harvard)

Famous quotes containing the words house and/or traditions:

    “Semantically, taste is rich and confusing, its etymology as odd and interesting as that of “style.” But while style—deriving from the stylus or pointed rod which Roman scribes used to make marks on wax tablets—suggests activity, taste is more passive.... Etymologically, the word we use derives from the Old French, meaning touch or feel, a sense that is preserved in the current Italian word for a keyboard, tastiera.”
    —Stephen Bayley, British historian, art critic. “Taste: The Story of an Idea,” Taste: The Secret Meaning of Things, Random House (1991)

    “I think a Person who is thus terrifyed [sic] with the Imagination of Ghosts and Spectres much more reasonable, than one who contrary to the Reports of all Historians sacred and profane, ancient and modern, and to the Traditions of all Nations, thinks the Appearance of Spirits fabulous and groundless.”
    —Joseph Addison (1672–1719)