BY CORRINE LIU ’23
The weather is slowly cooling down, workloads are quickly piling up and the leaves are gradually transitioning to their warm, autumnal shades. Fall has officially arrived on campus.
This change marks a significant event for the Mount Holyoke community: Mountain Day. On- and off-campus students, faculty and alums annually connect over guessing the day that the bells will ring 100 times to announce the beloved tradition’s arrival.
While Mountain Day has existed since 1838, the year after Mount Holyoke was founded, the college administration has expanded efforts to spread excitement surrounding this tradition in recent years. Since 2011, groups of alums around the world have joined together and celebrated the occasion over ice cream.
More recently, these efforts have gone beyond just alumnae engagement and now include social media campaigns, such as an Instagram giveaway and a raffle.
On Mount Holyoke’s official Instagram page, students can enter a raffle to win a Mount Holyoke swag bag by guessing when this year’s Mountain Day will happen and tagging friends in the comments section. This new strategy helps rile up excitement through the prospect of free merchandise and ensures that the post gets seen by a larger number of Mount Holyoke community members.
“Mountain Day is one of the most important traditions and guessing it is part of the fun not only for students, but also for alums and prospies,” Skylar Hou ’22 said. “I think it’s a really cute thing that everyone in the community has something to look forward to together every year.”
The new inclusion of an Instagram giveaway allows for a wider range of people to truly feel a connection to the Mount Holyoke community by participating in the fun that comes along with guessing when Mountain Day will occur.
“This social media campaign is coming from the Alumnae Association […] and it’s a new way to engage the 38,000 alums all around the country and the world,” President of the College Sonya Stephens said. “I absolutely love all the excitement around Mountain Day, the funny tweets and messages, the requests to access my calendar.”
Anticipation for this tradition exists just as much for current students as it does for alums. Students partake in lighthearted debate about when Mountain Day will occur, building up the suspense and discussion for everyone on campus.
“We love and cherish it,” Amanda Windsor ’22 said. “The anticipation of not knowing when it’s going to happen makes it a really fun surprise.”
The student body stirs up excitement by coming up with their own theories as to when Mountain Day will be.
Sierra Dunn ’22 guesses the second week of October, “when the fall foliage of western Massachusetts peaks,” while Hannah Raykher ’23 guessed Sept. 25, because of the likelihood of “nice and sunny [weather] with no chance of rain.”
Weather is indeed a strong indicator for when Mountain Day will arrive. Looking back on last fall, Mountain Day was “really late and every week people were guessing it might be Mountain Day until [we] were sure it would happen on one specific week or it would get too cold for the hike,” Hou claimed.
The conversation on Mountain Day also affects students in another way: procrastination.
“I feel like Mountain Day is an excuse to procrastinate […] and then try to catch up the next morning,” Hou said.
In a time when classes really start to pick up the pace, Mountain Day provides a convenient excuse for students to put off some of their work in hopes that they will get the following day off.
The importance of this event transcends more than just competitive predictions or an excuse to leave work for the next day. Mountain Day is such an important event on campus simply because it’s tradition, according to both Safa Islam ’22 and Raykher.
It “brings together so many people to the place where the school got its name,” Sophie Schempp ’23 said.
Although the prospect of canceling classes to spend time with one another and enjoy the beautiful Massachusetts scenery over ice cream is exciting, Mountain Day represents the long history of success and liveliness of both the College and the people within the Mount Holyoke community.
With the campus’ foliage rapidly changing, students, faculty and alums alike predict that Mountain Day will come soon. Even 181 years since the first Mountain Day, this tradition persists to satisfy the community’s desire for a rejuvenating moment of bonding and celebration.