How the Mirror Lake jump came to be
By: Josh Thompson and John Snodgrass
Issue date: 11/17/05
Young men carry a canoe to the lake's edge, dump the boat in, and start paddling it around - but there is no race. A group of students undo their trench coats and jump into the lake - naked. Yet another group launches themselves, and a shopping cart into the shallow waters. A solitary student dressed as Winnie the Pooh stands wading in the waters, watching the students that have turned the back of Browning Amphitheatre into a mud slide.
The date is Nov. 18, 2004, the location Mirror Lake, and it is the Thursday night before the Ohio State-Michigan football game.
"I'm here with 10 of my buddies and I don't know where any are. With the mud pit and the rain, I've never seen anything like it before. It's insanity," said Matt Pappas, a senior in human ecology at the time. "This is why people come to Ohio State - for traditions like this. It's great."
Students have congregated at Mirror Lake for several years before the Michigan game, and many jump in. Few know why they do it, and there are as many stories and myths that surround the Mirror Lake jump as there are people who do it. Some myths stem from ghost stories surrounding legendary OSU football coach Woody Hayes while others claim that students must jump into the lake naked in order for the jump to be official.
The true origins of the Mirror Lake jump are much less mythical and radically more dressed.
In his 1984 report "The OSU Mirror Lake Hollow," John H. Herrick, then executive director emeritus of campus planning, recorded that students had been entering the waters of Mirror Lake as far back as 1902 or 1903. These students were predominantly freshmen who were being thrown in by upperclassmen.
Herrick also documents that the first recorded item to be dumped into Mirror Lake was a horticultural wagon in 1895. The stunt was a Halloween prank.
Although these events have no direct relation to today's modern Michigan week celebration, they do set the tone for the way in which the OSU student body and university's faculty felt toward lake jumps.
Throughout the early part of the last century the student body and the university administration were often at odds.
During this period, "May Festival," later called "May Week," acted as the university's biggest showcase of school pride - much like "Beat Michigan Week" does now - and students saw it as a time to prove class dominance, with upperclassmen often dunking or "ducking" freshmen in the lake, often a part of a group initiation. This did not go over well with the school's administration or with the university's freshmen classes.
According to a May 5, 1926 Lantern article, freshmen became fed up with their unfair treatment and lashed out against upperclassmen. Both the Lantern article and Herrick's report state that the annual freshman "Cap Burning" ceremony, which took place in the Mirror Lake Hollow, turned into a riotous atmosphere when members of the upperclassmen group Bucket & Dipper attempted to postpone the event.
During the altercation, 103 freshmen were thrown into Mirror Lake. One sophomore received a concussion from a police officer, and water was poured into the gas tank of a police officer's motorcycle. The following spring George Rightmire, OSU's president at the time, banned all further hazing by Bucket & Dipper. The ban did not last long as Bucket & Dipper, as well as several other university and greek groups, resumed "ducking" students in Mirror Lake.
The tradition of dunking students in Mirror Lake lasted until the tail end of the 1960s but had dwindled considerably compared to what it was 40 years prior, according to Herrick's report.
In the 1950s both May Week and the week of the Michigan game began to take on similar traditions - traditions that would eventually lead to the Mirror Lake jump.
A 1950 Lantern article states that then football coach Wesley Fesler was upset by the lack of spirit among OSU students and asked students to attend a final pep rally before the Michigan game. There was a torchlight parade led by the marching band throughout the campus area in order to bring the students to the rally.
A 1953 Lantern article states that the May Week "kick-off" rally took place in Mirror Lake Hollow and was preceded by a march through the University District, led by none other than the band.
As May Week took on less meaning and "Beat Michigan Week" took on more, the tradition of the band leading students to a rally became a niché in "Beat Michigan" culture.
In an interview last year, Jon Woods, director of the OSU marching band, said he remembers that the tradition was still going strong when he arrived in the mid-1970s.
"The night before the Michigan game, there was always a university bonfire. It was almost like a pep rally," Woods said. "The bonfire was generally in different places, sometimes on the Oval or other times near the French Field House. Sometimes before the fire, the band would split up and some would go to the south side of campus and others would go to the north and play the pied piper role and lead students to the fire. There was a tremendous turnout for these things."
Despite the large turnouts, the parade and pep rally ceased to continue in the early '80s. Some band members wanted to continue the tradition, and this is when the unauthorized "phantom band" started, Woods said.
The phantom band resumed playing in 1984, and that year the tradition ended with dancing and singing in the middle of High Street, according to files in Ohio State's Center for Folklore Studies
A 1989 Lantern editorial states that before the 1989 Michigan game, the vice provost of student affairs, Russell J. Spillman announced that all organized events related to Michigan week that year, except for the blood drive, had been canceled because the football game was scheduled during Thanksgiving weekend and most students would be away from campus. The phantom band decided to go through with their march, but the parade turned ugly and resulted in at least one overturned car.
In 1990, members of the marching band agreed not to participate in the phantom band because most of the blame for the problems of the year before fell on them, Woods said.
According to a Nov. 21, 1990 Lantern article, some band members resisted the agreement and decided to lead the phantom band again. The parade ended with a rally outside of Pomerene Hall near Mirror Lake. Reports within the folklore archives describe students jumping in Mirror Lake in 1991 and refer to 1990 as the earliest year it occurred.
In the Lantern article, Brooke Roesle, a freshman at the time, said that Woods showed up at the rally and began yelling at the band members. Everyone ran away from the scene and some students decided to jump into Mirror Lake, she said.
Mike Boone, a 1994 OSU graduate, who currently lives in South Carolina, was a freshman in 1990 and participated in the infamous phantom band parade and remembers the event a little bit differently.
"I wasn't real aware of the tradition. My roommates informed me about it," Boone said.
Back then the day was not set in stone - it either happened on a Wednesday or a Thursday, he said.
Roughly 10 members of the OSU marching band, dressed in OSU spirit wear, showed up outside Taylor Tower and began playing music, he said. The band gathered students from north campus and proceeded to lead them toward the Oval. The band would play fight songs and students would sing along if they knew the words. Between songs students would vocalize their distaste for "the team up north" by singing and chanting, Boone said.
As the students walked they would throw toilet paper in trees and on other overhangs marking their path.
"(The toilet paper) would last a couple of weeks," Boone said.
When Boone and his group got to the east end of the Oval they met up with the south campus band. Boone said he cannot remember whether there was a band coming from west campus. From there the parade went to Mirror Lake and the band stood around the lake while about 20-30 students jumped in fully clothed, Boone said.
Boone himself did not jump into the lake that year.
"I had one nice pair of shoes and I was wearing them," he said. "I wasn't going to trash them."
Boone does not recall Woods showing up at the event.
The phantom band returned in 1991 and once again led the students of OSU to Mirror Lake and a dip in its waters. This caused the university to take action. In Boone's junior year the university backed a parade that was lead by the OSU Marching Band and ended in front of Ohio Stadium, Boone said.
This did not deter him and his friends from jumping into the lake, however.
"(The lake is) a nice place to cap it off," he said.
"I can't remember if the band played my senior year," Boone said.
It did not matter. He and his friends jumped anyway.
As the decade continued, the band took a back seat to the Mirror Lake jump.
Today students jump in larger numbers than ever before. Dan Bozich, a senior during last year's jump, said it best.
"This is what happens when classes drive you crazy."
