Salt and Tomato Fight
By 1896, a salt and tomato fight had become a preliminary to the cane rush; it would remain so until shortly before the cane rush died out.
In the salt and tomato rush, the freshmen threw rotten tomatoes (cantaloupes in 1909, when the sophomores stole the tomatoes) and the sophomores hurled small (half-pound, in 1909) bags of salt. Salt was supposed to be appropriate because the freshmen were so "green." Bags of salt had been thrown at freshmen entering chapel (and perhaps in the chapel itself) circa 1878–81. Historical precedent was claimed for the custom of "salting" freshmen; Anthony Wood wrote in the seventeenth century of Oxford freshmen being given salted beer if they declaimed badly.
As the salt and tomato rush/cane rush became a scheduled event, it also became customary for the sophomores to kidnap freshmen and force them to pack the bags of salt that would shortly be thrown at them. In a further refinement, about 1914 the sophomores extorted a "salt tax" from freshmen and used it to buy the salt. In 1924 the levy became an official twenty-five cent per man tax on both freshmen and sophomores, used to buy paint, salt and rotten tomatoes.
When all the salt and tomatoes had been thrown, combatants would wrestle; when the referees certified that a student had been pinned, he was hors de combat. After a salt and tomato fight had run its course, the cane rush would begin.
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