Letter to the Editor:
Relentless effort to instill tradition

An opinion piece in the Sept. 29 edition of The Rider News suggested that the Rider Rock and the administration’s near-obsessive implementation of it as a University tradition are both a little mystifying. My first instinct was to agree whole-heartedly with the writer.

My graduating class was the first to bear witness to the wonder of the Rock, as we casually mocked the sudden appearance of a giant granite slab outside the Bart Luedeke Center. Later, we would find out that people had already devised ­— and apparently followed through with — decidedly unhygienic ways of desecrating the Rock. And as we followed the post-commencement ceremony procession toward the student center, there were school officials barking at us like drill sergeants to “touch the Rock!”

Maybe I was too immersed in school work and extracurricular activities to notice, but in my four years at Rider, it didn’t exactly seem as though the University was imbued with tradition. The Rider Rock is a fledging effort to give the student body something meaningful. The intentions were good, but the execution was a little lacking.

A tradition isn’t something you have to enforce, and it certainly doesn’t begin with a monument that’s dumped unceremoniously on the campus lawn mere weeks before graduation. Take a look at Rider’s pub and the carvings and signatures that adorn its interior, evidence of last calls that span the years ­— there’s a tradition that’s meaningful to the seniors. Perhaps if the Rock were an entity of greater significance, then maybe it would be something we’d all take a little more seriously.

From my understanding, this year’s freshman class was issued small plastic replicas of the rock. While such a practice first struck me as a little odd, it is a step in the right direction, especially since it also seems that freshmen are asked to touch the rock when they first come to the school, which probably will make touching the Rock after graduation mean a little more than it did to my class.

I’m still not entirely sure why a rock of all things was chosen to become something that is supposed to possess great symbolic importance. But perhaps future incoming classes will receive a better explanation for its presence and importance. And, hopefully, the Rock is just the beginning of more traditions for Rider students.

— Madeleine Johnson
Opinion Editor, 2005-2006
Social Editor, Cranbury Press
and South Brunswick Post