Then and Now, Traditions Define King’s Community

In 1942, the first graduating class of The King’s College looked around and realized they had no traditions. In the words of 1942 alumna Marjorie (Absalom) Linton, “No one was ahead of us to say, ‘We’ve always done it this way.’” So, since the students knew that Percy Crawford had founded King’s in hopes of its becoming “the Wheaton of the East,” they looked to that institution for inspiration.

Wheaton, along with many other colleges in the 1940s and 50s, had a popular tradition called the Senior Sneak. The entire senior class would attempt to turn up missing on some appointed but unexpected day at any point during the year. Planning this disappearance involved forming a committee early in the year, choosing a day and time, collecting money, and getting everyone to pack a bag and show up—all in secret. Ralph and Janet (Springer) Shirak, who started at King’s in 1939, note that a sneak could be anything from a one-day prank of hiding from the faculty and administration to three-day getaways from underclassmen, who were supposed to find them. Ploys and diversionary sneaks could be quite elaborate—as could the underclassmen’s countermeasures. One year at Briarcliff Manor, the senior class had to return to campus because the juniors had removed all the license plates from their cars!

The first Sneak, by the class of 1942, was an attempt to slip away from the Delaware campus and spend the day at a park in northern New Jersey. Unfortunately for them, word of a key planning session had been leaked to an underclassman named Margie Zweig, who squeezed herself behind an upright piano in the senior dining room on the appointed night and, over the course of what must have been several uncomfortable hours, gained the information she sought. And so, says Mrs. Linton, on the day of their excursion, the seniors left the main building early in the morning in a hush of excitement, only to be greeted by “all the Juniors and probably the whole school…waiting outside to give us a most enthusiastic send-off. We went anyway, of course, but with some of the wind taken out of our sails for sure.”

It is perhaps no surprise that class Sneaks have largely disappeared in our litigious, safety-conscious age. Even at King’s, the beloved practice had faded by the time the Briarcliff campus closed. Many campuses now have such a culture of protest that there is simply no time or respect for such fun in the first place. Surely this is a great loss. Still, King’s seniors enjoy their own traditions. Most of the Houses—fraternal organizations at the center of student life—hold end-of-year dinners to acknowledge seniors and celebrate House values. Several bestow special honors on one senior who embodies the House’s ideals or has served it in a significant way. The House of C. S. Lewis, for instance, confers its Jack Award (Jack was Lewis’s preferred nickname) on someone who typifies a gentleman-scholar. The House of Dietrich Bonhoeffer knights one of its seniors and keeps a sword for the occasion. The House of Susan B. Anthony’s eponymous award is for a senior who wields constructive influence in the House or the wider student community; and its companion award, named for Elizabeth Cady Stanton, recognizes someone who may be quieter, but whose support has been important to the House’s flourishing.

The common thread among these newer traditions is a concern to affirm and inculcate virtues that will sustain students in their life’s calling. Wholly in keeping with the King’s mission of equipping students for vocations of cultural significance, and also with the culture of honor that we cultivate on campus, the Houses traditions affirm the aspiration to “live and die with conviction,” as the Bonhoeffer mission statement eloquently articulates. As Commencement approaches and the College prepares again to commission its graduates to work for Christ’s glory and the world’s good, we give thanks for traditions old and new that generate hilarity, solidarity, and mission among our alumni over the years.