History and Tradition
It’s easy, when considering the state-of-the-art features of UMass Amherst—the world-renowned engineering and research facilities, the computer resources, and the library's capabilities—to forget that this is a school with deep roots, a rich history, and great traditions.
We were born in 1863 as the Massachusetts Agricultural College—a land-grant agricultural college set on 310 rural acres with four faculty members, four wooden buildings, and 56 students—and we’ve obviously grown quite a bit since then (you can read the official history on the UMass Amherst site). What hasn’t changed is the way students work to make UMass Amherst a distinctive place. In the last century, this included the kind of traditions your grandparents will tell you about. Freshmen had to buy beanies and wear them 24/7 or risk being busted by an upperclassman. They couldn’t take them off until the Minutemen football team scored their first touchdown of the year. They celebrated surprise days off—Mountain Day and Spring Day—with picnics and outdoor hoopla. Every residence hall (OK, they were called dorms then) would build floats for the Homecoming Parade through Amherst. There was bowling and dances in Memorial Hall and rope pulls across the pond.
These days the campus traditions take on a different flavor. Still, many are activities that your grandparents would recognize: Starting UMass Amherst with a bang during First Week, watching the sun come up over the campus pond, getting into the spirit with MinuteFan Park and all the festivities at McGuirk Alumni Stadium, celebrating homecoming, warming your hands at a football bonfire, rubbing the Minuteman statue for good luck at finals, checking out the annual Spring Festival of the Arts, listening to the drumming at the annual Native American Pow Wow, taking in the Spring Concert every May, dancing at Hasa/Casa—the festival of Haitian and Dominican culture, and finishing your college career with the gala Commencement Ball. If you really like to be part of something ongoing you could get involved with the Index Yearbook, which started in 1869 (it’s the oldest yearbook in New England and the third oldest in the country), or the Class Tree Planting, a tradition that dates back to 1867. (When you’re on the UMass Amherst campus, look carefully at the base of trees, for the year that each was planted.)
It’s no surprise that we’ve got a lot of history and tradition here—this is Massachusetts, the cradle of U.S. history. For anyone with a passing interest in the story of this country, this is the place to be. We’re located in a town with a storied past as well. More than 200 years old, Amherst has long been one of the great education centers of the country and home to many artists and writers, including Emily Dickinson, Noah Webster, and Robert Frost.
