Stanley North drove up to Watson Hall in September 1969, skeptical of beginning his first year as a Syracuse University freshman.

 

As his family’s station wagon settled alongside the curb, North and his mother noticed a circle of about 20 people, all wearing hats, clapping and jumping. Intrigue turned into concern as they suddenly rushed toward the Norths‘ vehicle.

 

Alarmed, North’s mother quickly rolled up the windows and locked the station wagon’s doors. North, on the other hand, exited the car to the awaiting students. One greeted the freshman with a ‘big kiss’ and hearty welcome to campus.

 

‘My attitude toward Syracuse changed immediately at that moment,’ said North, now an SU alumnus.

The students were members of the Goon Squad, a team of upperclassmen organized to lend a helping hand during freshman move-in. This campus tradition dating back to the 1940s survives to this day, with every move-in experience unique to each class of goons.

 

For students in the mid-40s, the entirely sophomore-run Goon Squad openly hazed freshmen, according to an Oct. 18, 1944, article published by The Daily Orange.

 

The 1944 Goon Squad members demanded any freshmen whose names they wrote down during the day to attend a ‘hazing convocation.’ They imposed an extra study night on freshmen males who failed to show up, according to the article.

 

A year later, a group of freshman architecture students formed the Freshman Architect’s Protective Association to safeguard themselves from the hazing of upperclass goon architects, according to an Oct. 19, 1945, Daily Orange article.

 

Five days after the association was founded, the 60-member Goon Squad created five-person patrol groups to ensure that freshmen wore ‘lids,’ beanie-like hats. They enforced the lid policy during a 1945 SU football game against Colgate University. If Syracuse won, freshmen could remove the caps. If the Orange lost, freshmen had to wear the lids until the first snowfall, according to a Nov. 14, 1945, article. Freshmen wore the lids until the next snowfall, which fell days after the Colgate game. This carried into 1948, when freshmen had to tip their lids to sophomore Goon Squad members.

 

‘Freshmen on campus have been required to wear orange caps signifying humility to the more worldly upperclassmen,’ the article stated.

 

The tradition waned in the 1960s, when Larry Bashe attended SU for his undergraduate and graduate careers. Freshmen wore lids more as a show of solidarity than in fear of retaliation from upperclassmen, he said.

 

‘I thought the beanie thing was an attempt to pull people together,’ Bashe said.

 

A sophomore Goon Squad member in 1963, Bashe said goons served as informative figures during the freshman move-in process. Goons fielded questions from eager students who could not preregister for classes and didn’t receive roommate notifications before stepping foot on campus, he said.

‘It was very positive. People were just starving for information,’ said Bashe, also former president of the SU Alumni Association.

 

Like Bashe, 1984 SU graduate Melinda Reiner doesn’t recall instances of hazing during her time on the Goon Squad, but she observed another tradition.

 

The night before freshmen arrived on campus to move in, Reiner said, Goon Squad members gathered on Marshall Street and University Avenue and poured buckets of orange paint on the ground. Goon Squad members then pushed one another to the ground, grabbed fallen members by the ankles and dragged them through the paint down University Avenue.

 

The goal: to paint an orange line that led from University Avenue up to the Hall of Languages, which, at the time, led straight to each other.

 

‘My butt was a paintbrush, basically,’ Reiner said.

 

The Goon Squad remains a recognizable force on move-in day, with 624 goons during the last move-in, though traditions have been lost through the years.

 

Stacy Kolcum, a junior psychology major and member of the latest Goon Squad, said she volunteered to move into her South Campus apartment early and wasn’t aware of past Goon Squad traditions.

 

Kolcum said she disagrees with hazing freshmen and her favorite aspect of the move-in experience was offering advice to freshmen.

 

Said Kolcum: ‘I’d rather just try to be as helpful as possible.’

 

dbtruong@syr.edu

Published on November 9, 2011 at 12:00 pm

Contact Debbie: dbtruong@syr.edu | @debbietruong