Junior Week
Junior week was first held in 1901. The events that were announced on the program were a concert by the Glee, Banjo, and Mandolin Clubs and an informal dance on Monday, April 8; a reception for the junior class and a theatre party at Keith’s Opera House on Tuesday, April 9, and on Wednesday, April 10, a special chapel service, a baseball game with Andover, and the junior promenade, which had first been held in 1898. The new junior society, Pi Kappa, presented a farce. In due time other events were added. The 1909 Junior Week was especially exciting. There was a “Country Fair” with side-show tents on Lincoln Field, and in one corner of the field there were horse races, in which four old nags raced, sometimes being pulled along by the clowns, until one of the horses stumbled over a rope into the crowd, injuring three women spectators. In 1918 Junior Week began on Thursday with a baseball game between the staffs of the Brown Daily Herald and the Liber Brunensis, followed by a tea dance, a Sock and Buskin performance, and dancing at the Brown Union. Friday began with a chapel service, and continued with a Brown-Amherst track meet, a circus on Lincoln Field, and the 21st annual junior prom. The events of Saturday were the Brown-Yale baseball game and an interclass sing in the evening, which was followed by a concert by the Musical Clubs and a final dance.
Another activity of the junior class was the “Junior Cruise,” on Narragansett Bay, a rowdy affair which prompted Donald Jackson ’09 to compose a song:
Dean Meiklejohn, he says one dayJunior Week, which in the beginning started on Monday, began on Wednesday from 1905 until 1910, then on Thursday until 1928, and after that on Friday, as all the activities moved to the weekend. For many years it was customary for the Brown Daily Herald to print an issue which listed the men who were attending the junior prom with the names and cities of residence of their dates. In 1928 the prom was moved from Sayles Hall to the new Gymnasium. The prom was broadcast from the Gym in 1932 by the ten radio stations of the Yankee Network. In 1935 the prom again changed location to the Biltmore Hotel. After World War II the junior prom, sponsored by the class and the Brown Key, was revived in 1948. The next year an “All-Campus Weekend,” and a “Hilltoppers Ball” replaced Junior Week and the Junior Prom.
There’ll be no Junior Cruise this May.
This Boozing is an awful shame
So I will spoil their little game.
The Juniors were of diff’rent mind,
They soon a lucky chance did find
And so one day at twelve o’clock
They had the Squantum at the dock.
The good old Junior Cruise is o’er.
We sail upon the bay no more,
Nor feel the rolling ocean swell,
And tell the dean to go to - well,
A place where Juniors never go
Because down there the beer won’t flow,
And so we are content to muse
On that immortal Junior Cruise.