Frigid temperatures, excessive snow, and heavy outerwear characterize winter term at Lawrence. For many years, Lawrence students have taken these unfavorable conditions of the Arctic North and celebrated with traditions such as the Winter Carnival, snow sculpting contests, Winter Weekend, and sledding down Union Hill while trying not to land in the Fox River.
Winter Carnival was first held in 1933. Activities of the carnival included horse-drawn carriage rides around campus, sitting by the fire in Riverview Lounge in Memorial Union and drinking hot cocoa and holding tricycle races.
An ice rink was created in front of Ormsby Hall so students could ice skate. Students also organized teams to play broomball on the ice. Curling was also a winter sport played at Lawrence.
A popular winter tradition at Lawrence that started in the 1940s was creating sculptures using snow and ice. Teams were assigned plots on which their sculptures could be created, and trashcans were swiped from Main Hall and used to haul snow to the sculpture site.
There was a snow sculpture contest where faculty and staff served as judges. Sculptures represented a variety of topics, including a guy watching television, campus buildings, Uncle Sam, a Viking, and the Lawrence version of Mount Rushmore.
In the 1940s and 1950s, Winter Weekend was held in February and was a good way to break up the term. Students went skiing and tobogganing at several places up north, including Potawatomi State Park in Door County. Members of the Lawrence Ski Club were on hand to teach people how to ski.
The most popular tradition, and one that continues to this day, has been sledding down Union Hill and trying not to end up in the river. Some modifications have been made to the hill in the past. Until the 1960s the hill went straight down to the river without a gravel road and garden to break it up. This made it even more of a challenge not to sled right onto the Fox. Students had races down the hill using “flying saucers.”
Given that the university is in Wisconsin and that it is extremely cold and snowy in winter, there are days when the Lawrence community hopes that perhaps classes will be cancelled and the university closed so they can enjoy a snow day and stay inside.
Unfortunately, the last time this happened was in the 1960s. Before that, during the 1950s, one brave student contacted then-president of Lawrence, Douglas Knight, using a false identity and reported there was some condition that would absolutely prohibit school.
President Knight was taken in by this deception, and he announced there would be no classes that day. However the student managed to pull this off, it worked, and a lot of sledding down Union Hill took place that day.
The next “Lawrence History Through The Archives” article will focus on the Annual Great Midwest Trivia Contest coming up at the end of January.
Lawrence history through the archives
