“To be trained for severe mental labour and discipline is far better than to have the head filled with a mere collection of facts.”— Board of Managers Address, 1833
One of the most intriguing rituals was the cremation ceremony which occurred at the conclusion of each year. Often paired with the annual Loganian Society meeting, the cremation ceremony took place with a procession leading from Founders onto the green around 7pm.
The Sophomores, the class charged with its creation, spent a great deal of their year making elaborate plans for the ceremony which included a prosecution and defense of their least favorite book from the curriculum. Such cremation ceremonies were widely practiced by universities and colleges around the area including Penn, Princeton, Yale, and Rutgers. Yet, the archival remains of Haverford’s illustrate a deep engagement and communal pride invested in the ceremony far beyond others. As noted in their class book, the Class of ’88 proclaims “Our Sophomore may be said to have been dedicated to the successful performance of one event, namely, cremation. We determined to have one that should eclipse all records, and to it we devoted all energy and ingenuity.”
Receipts, songbooks, pictures, and invitations from the various ceremonies provide a fragmented lens through which to view these ceremonies. As the students of these ceremonies remediated Classical traditions and tropes, they partook in the building of community. Textual interventions and agency were able to be recognized by students, faculty, and staff as gestures of remediation and satirical self-culture precisely because of the shared, careful curriculum. The space of the cremation ceremony locates a formation of scholarly identity, authorial agency and imagination.
