Sometimes you make a mistake where you start banging 2×4 walls together before digging holes for the foundation, and then realize that the ground is an inch of clay covered by impenetrable granite. “Putting the horse before the cart” as people say. I did that last week, when I announced that I wanted to write a column this year for the Iron Warrior; as I said it, I realized that I didn’t know what I wanted this column to be about. So I blurted out the first thing that came to mind: national engineering traditions from countries around the world.
I figured it would be a good topic. What equivalent do other countries have to Iron Rings, purpling, and the Hymn of Godiva? The answer, I was disappointed to find, is purpling and the Hymn of Godiva. So abandoning my original topic for this column, I did the equivalent of putting skis on the bottom of my house so that at least when it slid nothing would get too damaged; I changed the challenge to a more easy one, and reworked my scope to the traditions of other Engineering Schools, international or otherwise. And up first, a school with whom we have less of a rivalry than University of Toronto: Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario.
I went to Queen’s once and took a tour. It’s a nice campus, right on Lake Ontario, with pretty glass buildings and a foreboding old guard tower—certainly nicer than the plain walls of DWE which my friend’s father once described as “[screaming] 60’s education grants.” My tour guide also mentioned that a 5 minute walk was appropriate for those off-campus students who were trying to lower their rent by living further away from campus.
As far traditions go, Queen’s Engineering has an impressive roster. There’s “The Queen’s Grease Pole,” a frosh week activity in which first-years must climb a pole situated in the middle of the “Grease Pit” mud pit to rescue a traditional Scottish cap known as a tam. The pole itself is a football goal post, stolen by Queen’s students from UofT (these guys are starting to grow on me) in 1955 and guarded by each first year engineering class, who must defend it from both other schools and their own upper year students.
By far the most rigorous tradition of Queen’s Engineering is the protocols surrounding their leather school jackets. Engineering students buy their jacket in December, two nights before the start of their final exam season. After buying the jacket, they are not allowed to carry it, and instead must kick it home before picking it up. This is apparently in memory of an older tradition where upper year students would steal the jackets (you know, these “upper years” are starting to sound like real jerks), place them on roofs or poles (I’m noticing a trend), and then mandate that the frosh couldn’t use their hands during their efforts to retrieve the jacket. After successfully kicking their jackets home, the first years dye them purple, and then must wait until the end of the exam season to actually wear them.
As if all of the regulations regarding purchasing and preparing your leather jacket weren’t enough, there is a whole second set of rules for all of the achievement patches and emblems you can put on. I found a detailed diagram online about the specific locations where the various patches go, though I noticed a small note that this was only a “suggested” style guide. I choose to maintain my original assumption, however, that failure to place the patches correctly leads to the jacket’s owner being ostracized by the engineering community, and that they must preform some great feat like scaling the aforementioned tower’s wall to regain their social standing.
Finally, I will speak briefly on an Engineering tradition which is probably more interesting to me than anyone else; the Queen’s Engineering Society weekly satire newspaper, Golden Words. Started in 1967, it has provided weekly humour and information to Queen’s engineers for over 40 years. And while I could not find any primary or secondary sources to back it up, the Golden Word‘s Wikipedia page claims that the paper once did a parody issue of the Globe and Mail. They even managed—it is claimed—to get their copy of the paper into the newspaper vending machines in the Globe’s head office instead of the official version.
So here’s to you Queen’s Engineering, a school which is apparently rocking just as much engineering tradition as Waterloo—most of it hoisted on the top of poles. Next issue I’ll be back with another university, probably international this time. That is unless I find that Queens and Waterloo are the only engineering schools which have any traditions worth commenting in, in which case get ready to hear about my high school’s really awesome football chants.
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