“It shall be no offence if any scholar shall, at Commencement, make, and entertain guests at his chamber, with punch.”

However innocently it was looked upon by the authorities, “punch-frenzies” were cemented as a common part of the Commencement ritual.

The Class-Day Tree

As Commencement itself calmed down, most of the rowdiness become oncentrated on the literary excersizes of class day.

The origins of Class Day date back to 1707. On May 27 of that year, the Fellows provided a senior treat to the graduating class. The ceremony was later moved to the President’s residence in Wadsworth house, where he served the Seniors wine and cake.

Students began the practice of gathering in their rooms for “spreads, “ feasts that grew more lavish and elanorate throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

In the early eighteenth century, the faculty added literary exercises to Class, the translation and public delivery of classics in English, to improve the elocution of the graduates.

By the 1760s, however, the seniors had made it their own, and the speeches tended toward the bawdy.

One study detailed in verse his “unsuccesful amour with a very tall maid.”

After the lunch and spreads in their rooms in the halls, students would begin “cheering the halls,” a cacaphony of hurrahs taken up the their final exit from the dormitories.

During his tenure from 1829 to 1845, President Josiah Quincy 1790 decided to liven things up by bringing in a “young-lady element” and a band.

The students aid out buckets of punch for the general public, greatly increased with a “non-scholastic” element after the construction of the first CharlesRiver Bridge between Boston and Cambridge.

In addition to the drinking, feasting, and large dances held in Harvard Hall or under lanterns in the Yard, there was ritual scramble around the Class-Day tree.

Based on the Liberty-Tree tradition, the class would set a garland of flowers high on a tree in the Yard. As the crowds assembled, they would begin a dance around it, spinning and holding hands.

Gradually all four classses would enter the fray, until the ring broke down from its own weight and speed.