Contact: Claire DenboPhone: 573-341-4328E-mail: [email protected]
STUDENTS GO GREEN FOR 94TH ANNUAL ST. PAT'S CELEBRATION
ROLLA, Mo. -- For the 94th consecutive year, students at the University of Missouri-Rolla will host a weeklong celebration of St. Patrick, whom the students adopted as their patron saint in 1908.
The 94th Annual St. Pat's Celebration at UMR begins on Monday, March 11, and culminates with the annual St. Pat's Parade through Rolla on Saturday, March 16. The event is the most storied tradition on the UMR campus, and involves days of unusual games -- including contests for greenest persons, leprachaun look-alikes, most intricately designed cudgels and shillelaghs -- and a Friday evening knighting and coronation ceremony in which chosen students, alumni and others become Honorary Knights of St. Patrick.
The events are overseen by St. Pat and His Court, a group of students who portray the venerable Patrick and his heralds, pages and guards.
The UMR tradition began in 1908, when UMR was known as the University of Missouri School of Mines and Metallurgy. Students from the flagship University of Missouri-Columbia campus invited UMR students to send a delegate to take part in Columbia's St. Patrick's Day festivities. The Rolla students met in front of the local post office, which was the town gathering point, and elected John H. Bowles, who graduated with a mining engineering degree in 1908, to represent UMR at the Columbia meeting. The students raised the money to send Bowles, discovered they had funds left over, and decided to hold their own St. Patrick's Day celebration.
A small band of organizers met in secret to plan the UMR celebration. March 17 was a school day, and school officials had not given permission for a celebration. Students worked all night decorating the huge entrance of Norwood Hall and, according to the school yearbook, "taking care of the night watchman." Meanwhile, according to the yearbook, "Other deputies were busy posting the town with bills, declaring a holiday for the following day, and requesting students to meet at the depot at 8 a.m." The students turned out as requested, were given green sashes and shillelaghs cut from area oak trees.
According to the Rolla Herald newspaper, the students were met by the school band and the school's first St. Patrick, student George Menefee, "clad in mitre and flowing silk robes." St. Pat then followed the MSM band to Norwood Hall on campus, where he surveyed a quadrangle with his crude transit (a forked stick with a beer bottle resting on it) and interpreted the hieroglyphics on what the newspaper called "the famous Blarney Stone which was found in the neighborhood of Rolla."
"The results of this interpretation," said the Herald, "proved most conclusively that St. Patrick indeed was an Engineer -- a Mining Engineer as well as a Civil one."
The saint then knighted Director Lewis Emmanuel Young and the senior class, thus begetting a campus knighting tradition. March 17 was scheduled as an official school holiday for the following year. Today, students enjoy a mini-spring break on the Thursday and Friday of St. Pat's Week, when they are dismissed from classes.
UMR students continued to hold a party of their own every St. Patrick's Day, and soon the event expanded into a weeklong celebration, during which time they honor their unofficial "patron saint of engineers."
The schedule for St. Pat's 2002 is as follows:
- Monday, March 11: 12:30-1:30 p.m., St. Pat's Follies to be held on the mall north of the University Center-West on campus.
- Tuesday, March 12: 12:30-1:30 p.m., St. Pat's Follies to be held on the mall north of the University Center-West on campus; 7:30 p.m., Student Union Board hosts comedian in Centennial Hall.
- Wednesday, March 13: 12:30-1:30 p.m., St. Pat, portrayed by a UMR student, and his court, ceremoniously garbed in green and gold, will arrive in Rolla near the railroad tracks on Eighth Street; Follies will follow St. Pat's arrival at the pavilion on the corner of Eighth and Oak Streets in downtown Rolla; 7 p.m., Theta Tau Omega Casino Night in UMR's Gale Bullman Multi-Purpose Building, 10th Street and Bishop Avenue in Rolla.
- Thursday, March 14: 11 a.m.-5 p.m., Gonzo on the Fraternity Row field.
- Friday, March 15: 11 a.m.-5 p.m., St. Pat's Games on the Fraternity Row field; 9 p.m., Coronation Ceremonies in Leach Theatre.
- Saturday, March 16: 11 a.m.-noon, Parade on Pine Street in Rolla; Carnival of Knights will immediately follow the parade at noon at the mall north of the University Center-West on campus.
NOTE: In case of inclement weather, Gonzo and Games will be held in the Gale Bullman Multi-Purpose Building.
More information about the UMR St. Pat's Celebration may be found on the World Wide Web at http://www.umr.edu/~stpats/.
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