Idol
Digital images of the Idol's current coat are available here
A Chinese stone lion perhaps dating from the 15th century, the Idol was unearthed near Shanghai in the mid-nineteenth century and sent to Union in 1875 as a gift by the Rev. John Farnham ’56. From the time it was set up at Union in 1876, the Idol has been painted and otherwise abused by students on thousands of occasions, and has consequently become the College’s playful icon, in contrast to the sober icon of the Nott Memorial.
Carved from gray rock, the Idol has a lion’s body and a human (or at least a non-leonine) head. The lion is presumed to be female because she formerly had a cub between her legs; the cub played with a ball. Vandals removed both cub and ball in 1921.
Diggers found the statue in 1860 or 1861 on the south side of Shanghai during the construction of a canal or (by another account) defensive earthworks. The officer in charge sold the lion to Dr. Farnham, a missionary, who had it set in front of his new boys' school building. When he later decided to send the statue to Union as ballast on a tea clipper, he had first to pay $20 in hush money to a wealthy Chinese family who objected to its removal from the country.
When the 4,900-pound gift arrived at Union about March 1875, and an additional $300 had been paid for transportation, it was stored in its crate in the college barn for about a year. News in the spring of 1876 that the donor was planning to visit the campus prompted the College to situate the statue in the rear of the President's House, on or near the little-used road which later became Library Lane.
The next night, junior Frank A. DePuy and three sophomore friends stole pots of paint and brushes from the dome of the Nott Memorial, then under construction, and painted the Idol. After they had colored the base black and the body white, one of the painters fetched some red watercolor from his room and painted the inside of the lion's mouth. The students then posted a sign on the bulletin board outside the Chapel: "Prexy's Little God has Changed its Color."
The purpose the Idol answered lay in the domain of anthropology. As Simon J. Bronner points out in his survey of academic folklore, Piled Higher and Deeper, "every campus, it seems, has a rock, bridge, fence, cannon or water tower repeatedly given a fresh paint job."
Ritual painting (as distinct from impromptu painting) began in the late nineteenth century as "Idol worship," in which sophomores forced freshmen to worship the Idol and paint it with their hands. Regularly from around 1910 until 1932, and irregularly thereafter, the two classes fought in the spring and fall to have the Idol wear the paint of their class color.
Unorganized nocturnal painting of the Idol has continued to the present. As class rivalry diminished after mid-century, fraternity rivalry replaced it as an excuse for Idol-painting. More recently, many other groups have also painted the Idol: athletic teams, sections of dormitories, and even groups of friends. Paint fights still occur.
Sanctioned mischief is not entirely satisfying, and from time to time the Idol has been the victim of more than cosmetic abuse. It was tipped over in 1935, 1941, and 1947 (and probably several other times), and burned in 1938 and 1941. Burning became a regular part of the class fights for a while after the Second World War, and recurred as recently as 1985. In the fall of 1964, the Idol was tarred and feathered by Phi Gamma Delta.
More serious vandalism has usually been attributed to raiders from RPI, though probably not always correctly. After the right leg was broken off in the fall of 1919, and "RPI" carved on the Idol, Union severed athletic relations with the Troy college. In the fall of 1921, part of the left leg and of the cub were broken off; they were repaired with concrete. Sledge hammer-wielding vandals broke the Idol into several pieces in the summer of 1985.
Inches-thick layers of paint have been removed from the Idol on several occasions, and from time to time someone points out that Idol-painting is indeed what it was understood to be on that morning in 1876—vandalism of a valuable antiquity—and should now cease. So far, ritual has prevailed over veneration of soiled antiquities.
The Idol has changed location five times. It remained behind the President’s House until the summer of 1879, when President Potter decided that, as he couldn’t protect the statue, he would put it in a less conspicuous place: atop a knoll on what was then the eastern edge of the active campus (the front door of Schaffer Library is near the location). There the Idol remained for thirty-three years, during which time Washburn Hall was built in front of it and a coal bin beside it.
In December 1913, it was moved east to a position about seventy-five feet from the recently constructed Alumni Gymnasium and a few yards south of the Class of 1863 Elm. After curbing was constructed on East Lane in the summer of 1930, fear that combatants might trip in the heat of the paint fights resulted in another shift, that September, about sixty feet west. In June 1985—after the Idol’s longest period in one place, construction of the addition to Alumni Gymnasium necessitated the move to a site west of the Science and Engineering Center. In 1996, to make way for the F.W. Olin Center, the Idol was moved to a small plateau between Achilles Rink and Bailey Field.
Condensed from Wayne Somers, compiler and editor, Encyclopedia of Union College History (Schenectady: Union College Press, 2003), page 405.
Image courtesy of Union College, Schaffer Library Special Collections and Archives, Photograph Collection