The Cane Rush
At many colleges a class picture fight was customary, as freshmen and sophomores attacked their assembled adversaries, trying to steal the photographic plates or at least disrupt the sitting. These fights occurred at Union (1873, 1897), but were apparently not major events. In 1873 however, a cane-carrying freshman appeared for his class picture, in defiance the rule forbidding freshmen from carrying canes before third term. Sophomores attacked and the cane was broken in several pieces, but the freshmen retained possession of the head and so were considered victorious.
Thereafter, some form of cane rush was an annual fall event at Union for sixty years. Originally the battle often lasted an hour and moved around the campus (in 1878 it spilled into Jackson's Garden; alarmed at the damage to the shrubbery, Mrs. Benedict came out on her balcony and fired several shots from a revolver). There were at first no rules for determining the winner, but in the early years the fight began when a freshman appeared carrying a cane. Circa 1876–1881, a member of the Class of 1878 much later recalled, this would happen in chapel:
Some morning a freshman, well-guarded, would slip into [old] chapel with a huge cane. This was a signal for the sophomores to bolt chapel and wait for the offender outside. Out he would come, surrounded by his classmates, and a battle royal would ensue. The sophomores tried to pull the freshmen off, and the freshmen fought to drive the sophomores away, hurling them over the terrace if need be. The cane was tugged back and forth and sometimes was borne clear across the campus to north college. Sometimes the combatants struggled for nearly an hour until all were worn out or the cane was smashed to pieces….
Sometimes (1878, 1879, 1881) the cane or a part of it would be carried away entirely and hidden. It may be that only the first fight, in 1873, was over a real cane; the next year the object of contention was described as "an ornament usually called a cane," and in 1894 the "cane" was five feet long and two inches thick. By that time the winner was the class that had the greatest number of hands on it when time was called. The next year an ordinary baseball bat was used, and by 1897 it was a "well greased" one.
By 1890 the cane rush was regularly held during the freshman-sophomore baseball game in late September; by 1895 it was held immediately after a freshman class meeting in the chemistry laboratory. The football team began supervising the event by 1900; the Terrace Council later sometimes played this role.
In 1895 the rush lasted fifteen minutes, but probably at the same time the football team became referees, and certainly by 1912, a whistle ended the rush after three minutes, and a winner was declared. Three minutes were not enough to exhaust anyone, however, and fighting generally continued as individual wrestling matches.
In 1916, revised rules shortened the rush from three minutes to one. The classes lined up two hundred feet apart, and the bat was supposed to be tossed in the middle. Pistol shots began and ended the clash.
The cane rush, and the preliminary salt and tomato fight described below, were held in the pasture after the first few years. The last of the traditional cane rushes occurred in 1933, though they returned in a much altered form in 1939–41.
Canes are, of course, functionally a symbol of seniority and morphologically a symbol of manhood. As early as 1868, wearing top hats and carrying canes was a privilege granted to Union freshmen in the third term, but later it seems sometimes to have been deferred until the sophomore year. The significance of the cane rush was codified by the Terrace Council in 1914, but it seems to have been essentially settled by 1878: freshmen could begin to carry a cane only after Moving-up Day, and only if they had won the cane rush. If they lost (and in the later years they usually did, because the bat-tosser favored the sophomores), they would have a second chance as sophomores. If they lost again, they could never carry a cane. This was humiliating, though cane-carrying had long since ceased to be fashionable, and most of the victors exercised their right only on the day they acquired it.
Condensed from Wayne Somers, compiler and editor, Encyclopedia of Union College History (Schenectady: Union College Press, 2003), page 369.
Image courtesy of Union College, Schaffer Library Special Collections and Archives, Photograph Collection