With theses completed and celebrations held at Renn Fayre, the seniors (myself included) prepare for their final day as Reed students and the event that will transform them into Reed alumni: Commencement.
Personally, I feel torn between a myriad of emotions. I’m relieved to be getting my degree and excited to move on to new exciting things, but I’m also nostalgic for the time I’ve spent at Reed and sad to be leaving the community I’ve become so ingrained in over the last four years.
I’ve been reminiscing on my underclassman years, and looking through photos from my entire time at Reed. How much I’ve changed and grown, and how Reed has shaped who I’ve become. I wonder how life will be outside of the Reed bubble and how my connections to this community will change as my class disperses into the world.
Working in the alumni office has definitely framed my outlook on the post Reed community positively though. The resources and connections available to us do not just vanish upon graduation (clearly, as I’m writing this blog for alumni). Knowing that the Reed community will still be there for me brings me comfort in spite of the uncertainty that the world outside Reed promises.
As commencement and graduation draw ever closer so does the grandest celebration of the year at Reed College: Renn Fayre! You can read more about the history of Renn Fayre in a series of articles published through The Grail, a student-run creative magazine. I’m not here to tell you the history of Renn Fayre itself, but a short history of some of its best previous themes–all leading up to the reveal of this year’s theme, of course!
The first decades of Renn Fayre were Renaissance themed, or without a theme entirely. In the year 2000, an article in The Quest led to the first themed Renn Fayre:
Our magical weekend of joyous mayhem and drug-induced glory is only the beginning. The forces of Good and Evil are upon us […] There is only one answer. SUPERHEROES.
— Mistress of Costumery, The Quest, April 4, 2000
The success of a themed celebration took off, and in 2002, the Czars made the theme a riff of a classic film with: Bill and Ted’s Excellent RF. The campus came alive with creatures for the apocalypse theme of ’03.
The entrance to the library, decorated for the apocalypse
’05 was graced with a hot air balloon and a Ziggy Stardust theme!
The view through the Sallyport of festivities in 2005A Renn Fayre hot air balloon on the great lawn
The Body was the theme for 2009, which featured a giant vagina and a “boob room,” where the bean bag chairs had nipples. In the aughts, theme reveal videos became all the rage. During a ball held a few months before the semester’s finale, a Czar-made video would play to reveal the theme for the spring’s celebrations. The earliest one I can find is the reveal for 2010, where they blasted Daft Punk and revealed the Final Frontier theme.
In 2012, the Czars took a page from the HUM 110 syllabus and themed Renn Fayre: “Genesis”, although the theme was more broadly about the origins of creation, not limited to its namesake required reading. The great lawn was filled with little plastic flamingos in 2015 for the Miami Boom Boom Renn Fayre, which was surely a blast wilder than Spring Breaking in Miami proper.
Elvis Presley (impersonators), balloon arches, and gaudy decorations peppered Reed’s campus for the Sin City Renn Fayre of 2018, accompanied by the Vegas Chapel that was set up all weekend, pictured below. Rumor has it that some of the weddings performed were never formally annulled, and some of those Reedies are still married to this day…
A wedding ceremony in the Sallyport, officiated by Elvis
For 2019, the theme was Lucid Dreams (not the hit single by the late Juice WRLD, but the concept itself)! Student art projects for this Renn Fayre featured lights and colorful psychedelic iconography.
Jellyfish in the grove on the Great Lawn
I might be biased, as this was my first Renn Fayre, but I think the Pandemonium theme of 2022 was truly a sight to behold. A student put together a montage of thesis burnings, where the outfits and whimsy around campus are on full display.
While all of the themes listed above were amazing in their own right, I’m most excited for this year’s theme (and it’s definitely not because I’m a senior). This year’s theme is, drum roll please……. Cosmic Resurgence! The theme reveal video features intergalactic iconography of all sorts. I hope to see an abundance of aliens, astronauts, planets, moon dust, retro futuristic outfits, and disco gogo boots!
Did Renn Fayre in your time have themes? What were your favorites?
Reed College has an abundance of niche and quirky traditions and lore, but we also partake in some of the more standard college traditions. One such tradition is that of the Alma Mater anthem, Fair Reed. An often forgotten aspect of Reed culture and history, the Reed College song Fair Reed was proposed by Reed’s first president, William Trufant Foster, in 1910 or 1911. He also wrote the lyrics. The tune is to an old Scotch melody, “Believe Me, If All Those Endearing Young Charms”. I employ you to keep the tradition alive by reading the lyrics and maybe even giving it a sing, for without our collective memory this tradition may fade away.
A core aspect of Reed that sets it apart from other institutions is the existence of the Honor Principle. While many colleges and universities have honor codes or statements clarifying the expected behavior of their community members, Reed leaves the interpretation of honor largely up to its community members. While the honor principle has no formal definition, the most common interpretation of the Honor Principle mentions that any action that causes unnecessary pain or discomfort to any member of the Reed community, group within the community, or to the community as a whole, is a violation of the Honor Principle. The Honor Council attempts to re-encapsulate what the Honor Principle means to the community at large every 20 years.
This code of conduct allows for the Reed community to develop our values together. Coming to an understanding of what honorable behavior is and what the Honor Principle means is a morally and intellectually challenging part of the Reed education. It is up to each member of the community to engage with the trust, as well as responsibility placed on them by the Honor Principle in order for the community to support everyone!
Flowchart outlining how the Honor Principle comes into play when a Reed community member causes harm
Below are some accounts about the honor principle from alum Andrei Stephens ’08 and current J-Board (Judicial Board) member Nicole Li ’25 respectively.
“The Honor Principle was a huge part of Reed when I was there. It permeated everything and was constantly reinforced. Professors would do things like give us a test on Monday and say it was due Saturday but to only spend 3 hours on it. They were able to do that because of the Honor Principle, it was understood. We all left food and electronics and anything else out in public spaces — if it wasn’t marked “K”, nobody would take it. You can test things that you can’t test in the absence of the Honor Principle. If you can’t cite sources directly or use the software that practitioners of your field would use because professors are worried about ‘cheating’, they can’t test the ability to use those tools effectively. The Honor Principle doesn’t mean never getting things wrong; it means that when you do get things wrong you did it from an honorable attempt to engage, and you take responsibility and seek to make things right. The assumption that in an argument all parties were engaging not to ‘be right’ but to probe the truth allowed us to learn more and deepen our perspectives in ways that we simply could not if we had different community expectations.
Unfortunately most of the world does not operate on the Honor Principle. I appreciate my time in the Reed community all the more because I know that we can speak openly with each other, and the assumption of good faith engagement drives our spaces.”
– Andrei Stephens ’08, self-proclaimed Honor Principle Zealot and President of the Alumni Board
“As a J-Board member and student, the Honor Principle is near and dear to my heart. It shows me how much trust we have in this community, and the immense amount of care we hold each other to. Its beauty lies in its ability to be flexible and capture not only individual perspectives of Honor, but the communities beliefs and culture. That is why it is extremely important to me that the Reed Community continue ongoing conversations around the Honor Principle, encouraging education to give incoming students the foundation to critique and reflect about their own relationships with the Honor Principle, and for older students and alumni to revisit how their understanding of the Honor Principle has changed.
In my life the Honor Principle goes beyond my role of J-Board, but thinking about the greater relationships I have with my peers, how we can support each other, and uplift the community. From an academic perspective I often think about Honor through making learning accessible and empowering for others in my other campus roles. Being able to live with the Honor Principle sparks a different type of purpose, a standard that you hold yourself to in hopes of building a strong and healthy community.”
– Nicole Li ’25, Student J-Board Member
As the Honor Principle exists only in the confines of the Reed community, I hope that this reminder of its principles and ideals encourages Reedies of all kinds to remember the values that connect us.
Wacky hijinks and antics are part of the Reedie lifestyle. I’ve heard rumors that in the 70s, the Yale Insider’s Guide to Colleges said, “Reedies are a strange lot and they know it.” Pranks, goofs, and straight-up oddity has often been a part of the Reed ethos for eons, but many of the April Fool’s Day pranks rule them all: toothbrush gardens, swiped owls, and geodesic domes in Eliot Circle.
These photos from ye Olde Reed highlight Reedie antics perfectly…but now that I’m thinking about it, what prompted these photos/events? No seriously, does anyone know??
Confused and intrigued,
Taliah Churchill ’25
early 00slate 60slate 60searly 70slate 70slate 70searly 80s
Photo of graffiti in the steam tunnels from 2015 that reads, “Schrodinger’s old reed is alive. Schrodinger’s old reed is dead”
“Olde Reed is dead.”
A phrase every Reedie knows, but few truly understand. This sentiment has been shared for decades, from Reedies dating back to the classes of the 60s (likely even further) to present day (guilty as charged). We repeat it back for the incoming years to hear, we post it on social media, and dedicate entire blogs (blogception!) to it, so the mantra lives on unchanged while its meaning is ever evolving. You see, everybody knows that:
Olde Reed=n-1, where n is your freshman year.
While my time as a Reedie has been comparatively short, I’ve had the honor of hearing tales of Olde Reed from many an alum. Some, like the giant snowball of ‘14, are wild but believable, but many others, like the car supposedly buried underneath the library, are more in the vein of myths. While I fear the traditions I took part in at Reed are less eventful than those aforementioned, I hope that one day they too can become “Olde Reed” lore such that I have legends of Olde to pass down to young Reedies. What are your favorite tales of Olde Reed, either from your time here or that you heard when attending Reed? Submit your stories in the comments below!
In Greek, “Xenia” embodies hospitality between a host and a guest, centering generosity and reciprocity. In this spirit, we celebrate the volunteer and community work done by Reedies throughout this past year through the Alumni Board’s Xenia Initiative. We’d like to share a few of our favorite photos and comments from this year! Comments have been edited for length and format.
“Over the past 12 months, I led Nasdaq’s Green Team, a supportive employee group for people with environmentalist values. We invited speakers from nonprofits like The Nature Conservancy, Environmental Voter Project, Climate Voice, etc. and carried out local volunteer activities around the world. We also held an Environmental Justice series in collaboration with another support group called GLOBE (Global Link of Black Employees), because minority groups are almost always victims of environmental destruction.”
“I have been a volunteer manager and coach for Southwest Portland Little League or other Little Leagues since 2005 when my kids played baseball/softball, and after they moved on continued coaching softball every year. I also have been a volunteer coach and manager for a travel softball team for the past six years (the players are now seniors in high school), and even managed to get the players through the pandemic, providing them with an opportunity to get outdoors and play the sport they love.”
“[I am the] Team Director and level 3 coach for youth mountain bike team (Portland Metro Composite), part of the Oregon Interscholastic Cycling League and National Interscholastic Cycling Association.”
Duncan Parks ’92 coaches the Portland Metro Composite Youth Mountain Bike Team.
“I represent the Hearing Loss Association of America as a voting delegate and Co-Chair of the Communications Task Group on the American National Standards Association (ANSI) A117.1 Committee on Accessible and Usable Buildings and Sites.”
Sharon Toji ’58 is a leader on Hearing Loss representation and Accessible and Usable Buildings and Sites.
“JourneySongs Hospice Choir where I run the Google Workspace for the group and also sing at the bedsides of folx in hospice; Newton Conservators (a land trust preserving open space in Newton) where I maintain the website (Newtonconservators.org) and their Google Workspace, as well as lead nature walks in Newton, give nature talks, and tech host webinars on nature.”
If there’s one thing that unites Reedies, it’s our love for learning, and that’s what Paideia is all about. This year, Paideia will take place from Saturday, January 18, to Sunday, January 26, and will include an array of classes taught by students, professors, and alumni. With some returning courses such as “Building Reed College in Minecraft”, “Reed College Survivor,” and “The Art of Pokemon Battling” along with some new ones like “World Domination 110: the Reed Alumni Agenda”, there’s classes for everyone!
As we move towards post-pandemic life, Paideia is once again open for all Reed community members, which includes alumni, so we hope to see you there!
Mary Barnard ’32 is arguably Reed’s most prominent creative artist. Her original poetry and translations of classic poetry influenced generations, including the Beat poets who followed her by one generation. Her 100th birthday was celebrated in 2009, so it is appropriate that the Reed Centennial honor her with a full day of lectures about her life, her work, and her influence (see “Alumni College: Letters 100: Experiencing Mary Barnard ’32” on Thursday, June 9).
It is also fitting that pre-eminent Barnard scholar, our own Sarah Barnsley ’95, should return to lead this seminar. Sarah was an exchange student from University of East Anglia for one year, and she now teaches at Goldsmiths, University of London. Her other research interests include American literature, poetry and poetics, modernism, gender and queer theory. Following her tenure as H.D. Fellow in American Literature at the Beinecke Library, Yale University, Sarah has completed a book manuscript, “‘A bright, particular excellence’: Mary Barnard, American Imagist.” She is also a poet in her own right.
Mary Barnard ’32 was born in Vancouver, Washington, and attended Reed College, where she discovered modernist poetry and Ezra Pound; she later initiated a long-distance correspondence with Pound that was to last nearly 40 years.
As noted by the Beinecke Library, “With Pound’s encouragement, Barnard began translating Sappho’s poetry from the Greek. Her translation, published in 1958, has never been out of print. Barnard’s own poems won her Poetry magazine’s Levinson Award when she was only 26 years old. Her shorter fiction was published in Harper’s Bazaar, The Yale Review, and The Kenyon Review. She later composed a book-length essay in verse entitled Time and the White Tigress and researched and published her own genealogy and various essays on mythology.”
The delightful and spirited memoir of her school days, Erato agonistes: Writing a creative thesis at Reed College in “The Golden Age”, is available in the bookstore.
Other speakers in the seminar will include Professor Anita Helle, Oregon State University, on Mary Barnard’s original poetry, and Professor Ellen K. Stauder, dean of the faculty and David Eddings Professor of English & Humanities, on Mary Barnard’s Sappho, in the morning sessions. Afternoon conference leaders will include, in addition, Elizabeth J. Bell ’87 MALS, Mary Barnard’s literary executor; and Anita Bigelow ’67, illustrator of Mary Barnard’s work.
