One of the more peculiar traditions at Princeton pertains
to theft of the clapper by members of the Freshman Class from
the bell in the tower atop Nassau Hall. One of the oldest customs
of the college is the ringing of the bell to signal curfew at
9:00 p.m. at night. For more than one hundred years Freshmen were
not to be seen after the bell had stopped ringing. Thus, according
to the legend, if the bell did not ring, they would be permitted
to stay out later.
The tradition of stealing the clapper
dates began in1863. That fall, Charles Reading and members of
a group in the Class of 1865 known as "Hogi-Mogi" unbolted the
clapper and shipped it to New York, where it was put on exhibition.
During its absence, the bell was rung with a hammer and hand held
dinner bells were used to wake students from sleep in the morning.
Through time, it became one of the
challenging "duties" of the Freshmen Class to steal the clapper.
at some point, the reward was shifted from evening curfew to the
beginning of classes in the morning. According to legend, successful
theft would result in cancellation of 8:30 morning classes.
Capturing the clapper became a point
of Class pride, and in some instances, the iron from the clapper
was melted down and used to make minature examples of the prize,
such as those sold to the Class of 1887 for $1.00. Examples of
these pins exist in the Seeley Mudd Archive Collections.
A 1923 Princetonian article reported
"There's seventeen of them [groups] that tried it, but we've caught
almost all of them. Only three clappers have disappeared...The
first crowd to try it was a bunch from Holder. I thought the whole
Freshman class was up there, because first three came down, then
two more, and then another two. They sawed it right off, but it
cost them $70 for the damage they did."
A 1932 article in the Alumni
Weekly said Clinton Meneely [Princeton connection not given]
examined the records for the bell company in Troy, New York, that
supplied clappers to the University. According to his report,
"they are bought by the barrel..." and then goes on to report
that between 1911 and 1935, over 150 clappers were ordered.
That same article reminded would-be
thieves in the Class of 1941 that "there are three important things
to keep in mind:"
- (1) Pick
a good dark night;
- (2) Remember
you can't expect to climb up and toss the clapper on the grass;
it weighs 40 pounds and there are almost 50 feet of roof;
- (3) Watch
your step, or you'll come sailing through the cupola floor,
as a present Junior did three years ago, and that isn't exactly
healthy.
Despite these words of wisdom from
the Daily Princetonian the Class of 1941 made five unsuccessful
attempts on the clapper, including one which prompted three freshmen
to write the Princeton to say that they had hack-sawed their way
through the primary trapdoor to the belfry and spent an hour and
a half with a crowbard and two wrenches with no success. According
to them, the "bolt attaching the clapper to the bell in the Nassau
tower has become so rusted that is has become virtually impossible
to remove....
We believe this is hardly cricket"
Happily for their class, yet another
group arrived on the scene "replete with all but crowbars and
dynamite in the field of hardware, but including such niceties
as goggles to prevent iron dust from entering the visionary regions,
a two foot wrench recruited from the machine house near Baker
Rink, and a lovely Cashmere blanket." Thus armed, the group soon
freed the "valued prize."
However, as they descended to ladder in their retreat,
they discovered a bill provided by the Campus Police: "One Clapper...$30.00."
The following year, representatives
from the Class of 1942 had much better luck, entering the tower
of Nassau Hall through the window to the President's Office, removing
the padlock with a hacksaw, and then using a Stilson wrench on
the clapper, which was removed in a mere fifteen minutes!
For a while, it appeared that the
tradition of clapper theft had fallen victim to modern invention.
In 1955, a mechanized bell ringer was installed which automatically
struck the bell with a small piston at the appropriate hour. It
was also reported that installation of this mechanism required
that the clapper be welded into place, and could not be removed
without serious damage. As a consequence, an official ban on clapper
theft was instituted, in order to protect students and Nassau
Hall from needless danger.
However eight years later, Dean
of Students William Lippincott '41 made an inquiry and learned
that while the bell was indeed now rung by a mechanicized device
which strike the bell at the appropriate time, the clapper itself
also remained in place, held only by nuts and bolts. Dean Lippincott
said he was open to reviving the tradition, if it proved to be
reasonably safe.
Not long after that statement, three
enterprising members of the sophomore Class of 1964 borrowed a
ladder from a nearby dormitory repair project, and following a
few beers at a party one Friday evening, began climbing Nassau
Hall around 2:30 a.m. where after a series of miscues (including
accidental tolling of the bell), they eventually managed to escape
with the clapper around 4:30 a.m. According to one of the perpetrators,
their greatest problem was lowering the clapper to the ground.
Their act of daring went undiscovered
over the weekend, because the mechanical bell striker continued
to function as designed, and their exploits went virtually unnoticed
until they shared their exploits with their classmates.
Revived Tradition-- But Not Without
Incident
Once revived, it again became a
test of the freshmen class' collective mettle, and for more than
three decades that followed, they somehow manage to obtain their
prize. However, as society became more litigious, and the University
became more concerned about student safety, this tradition was
discouraged by University officials. In 1990, the Dean
of Students Office attempted to alter the tradition by introducing
a cross campus scavenger hunt, which provided clues for student
teams in search of a clapper hidden in some safer spot on campus.
The event was poorly attended, and students proceeded to steal
the clapper from Nassau Hall anyway!
In September of 1991, the clapper
was removed from the bell tower. According to a Press Release
Already this year, a student fell from the second story
of the building during an attempted clapper heist and sprained
his ankle. During a second attempt, a student who had successfully
removed the bell striker-- a heavy, metal device that hits the
bell from above-- dropped it from the roof of the building; it
narrowly missed a cluster of students on the ground. During yet
a third attempt, a group of about 150 students trying to divert
the attention of a public safety officer from a student scaling
a wall of the building pinned the officer against another way;
the officer was unhurt, though unnerved by the experience."
Unfortunately, not every mission
went smoothly, and in April of 1992, Geoffrey Macarthur '95 fell
approximately forty feet from the roof of Nassau Hall, landing
him in intensive care, miraculously with no broken bones or head
or spine injuries.
Home
