Calculus Cremation and a Happy Halloween
Calculus… Ah, calculus. I have no fond words to say about it and don’t know any tame enough expletives that accurately express my disdain for the subject. This sentiment is likely shared by many of my peers, but some of you are strange enough to tolerate or even enjoy calculus. Maybe others dislike calculus enough to want to do terrible things to their calculus homework: Rip it up, throw it away, soak it water so it dissolves in a thousand pieces, possibly even burn it. This sentiment is one that has stuck with Lehigh students for generations, with students in the 19th and early 20th centuries making these twisted fantasies of ours into reality with the celebration of “Calculus Cremation.”
In the “Brown and White 1966 Centennial Special Issue,” the student journalists described that the Calculus Cremation in retrospect as “once a big event in the life of the Lehigh Student… The Sophs collected their calculus books and papers, burning them in an end of the year rite, a practice which apparently lasted until about the turn of the century” (p. 12). The sophomore students of Lehigh really did what everyone was thinking and burned their textbooks.
Why are we talking about this event during Halloween when it used to take place in the summer? Once students committed to burning these books, they really got into spirit: they played funeral dirges, they dressed like demons, they paraded around singing songs, and they even had a mock trial where they accused calculus concepts of crimes before putting them to the fiery stake.
Lehigh students made this allegorical activity a major event, often coinciding with commencement and the return of alumni to campus. The traditional bonfire composed of text books was often used to light the end of the year celebrations. The 1966 centennial Brown and White article also mentions that Calculus Cremation “lasted as a yearly event until the school year 1924-1925.” (p. 47), so it had been going on for at least forty years at Lehigh. This event was exclusive to Lehigh University as students at other institutions shared a similar disdain for calculus. Pictured below from a Stevens Institute of Technology webpage about school traditions is a pamphlet proclaiming a trial of calculus from 1911. Lafayette College (copying Lehigh?) also had a Calculus Cremation tradition dating to the late 19th century, which featured a play with calculus as the antagonist. Imagine writing and performing a new play about calculus every year!
To notify the students of the event, Lehigh students made a variety of unique invitations every year. Reading through these 100+ year old invitations serves to humanize past students who have long since left Lehigh and lived in what seems like a different world. Many current students likely imagine 19th century Lehigh students as old and serious men, but they were really just a bunch of nerds like Lehigh’s current student population. Who other than nerds would memorize songs to sing about hating math. The level of effort and artistic skill that went into making these invitations demonstrates students’ quirkier sides.
Displayed above are the front covers of several Calculus Cremation invitations.
My personal favorite invitation is the Class of 1902’s. It contains a song and chorus for people to sing along, a programme for other music that would be played, a poem, and unsurprisingly, a lot of math references. The illustrated front cover looks distinctly Lovecraftian with robed and hooded figures burning calculus in effigy.
As previously mentioned, this tradition came to an end around the mid 1920’s. It isn’t clear exactly why this fun tradition came to an end Possibly due to the fact that burning calculus textbooks was dangerous, a waste of money, or just not the attitude a college institution wanted to encourage toward educational material. Personally, I think this is very cowardly and those books got what they deserved. But I’m also very afraid of creasing my rented textbooks so I can’t judge too harshly. I hope you learned something about this Lehigh tradition, and that you were able to see the more humanity in past Lehigh students by seeing them unleash their inner devil. Have a happy Halloween!
All of the Lehigh Calculus Cremation materials have been digitized and will be available online through the Digital Special Collections Repository in the near future. If you have any questions about the items displayed in this post or about Lehigh history in general, please reach out to us at inspc@lehigh.edu.