Dragon Day
Community Celebrates 117th Dragon Day Parade
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A massive white, transparent dragon paraded its way through campus in the annual Dragon Day celebration before Spring Break.
The Cornell Daily Sun (http://cornellsun.com/tag/dragon_day/)
A massive white, transparent dragon paraded its way through campus in the annual Dragon Day celebration before Spring Break.
Watch a news recap of Dragon Day 2018! See how Cornell students celebrate a tradition more than 100 years old.
The theme for this year’s Dragon Day parade is “transparency.”
The 116th Dragon Day brought hundreds of students in silly costumes, creative clothes and face paint to witness the metal dragon on Friday.
“The police were overwhelmed and could not possibly handle the violence,” said technician Brian Beeners.
An 85-foot-long and 20-foot-high skeletal dragon will roam Cornell’s campus Friday to celebrate the 116th Dragon Day — its music and openness symbolizing this year’s theme of “Louder Together.”
This story was originally published on March 18.
The dragon lives on, as this year’s annual celebration of Dragon Day culminated in the burning of a symbolic nest, instead of the usual destruction of the first-year architects’ creation. Endowed with moving wings, claws and heads, this year’s dragon was instead able to escape the fire, finding refuge in Rand Hall instead.
In honor of the 108-year old tradition, the dragon journeyed across Central Campus on Friday, just as Spring Break began. Starting at Rand Hall, the dragon traveled up University Ave, down East Ave, and then made a right onto Campus Rd. As the fiery red dragon passed the Engineering Quad, the engineers unveiled their creation, a bright yellow phoenix. Finally, the dragon made its way to the Arts Quad.
As the architecture students prepare to emerge from Rand Hall, possibly for the first time since January, they will be bringing with them a large unwieldy beast. Dragon Day, the historic day when first year architects parade a mystical creature of their creation around campus, will commence as most students prepare to depart for the break.
You may have seen the publicity around campus — silver eggs being handed out on Ho Plaza, mysterious semi-naked individuals running through your classes covered in green paint and a line of butts up against the Fish Bowl earlier this week. That’s right, this year’s crop of first year architects, body parts and all, have run wild with the recent and historic traditions associated with Dragon Day.
There was a time when having a huge camera (or two!) strapped around your neck got you access to pretty much anything. Unfortunately, the day of the consumer dSLR is upon us and it seems that everyone and everyone’s uncle has at least a Canon Rebel XTi. This is bad news for the photographers who actually NEED to get into the action to get a photo.
The smoke that rose up from the Arts Quad was visible to anyone whose eyes were turned to East Hill on March 14. As the remnants of a wire and paper-maché structure blackened the sky on a surprisingly warm afternoon, thousands of people cheered and chanted, played music and danced.
“Burn it down,” one yelled.
“Look at all that carbon monoxide,” another remarked.
This was the annual burning of the dragon — a 100-year old Cornell tradition upheld every year before Spring Break by first-year architecture students. Donning all black, they stood and watched the destruction of their creation, a project that they had spent many hours preparing.