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Throwback Thursday: on the fence
By Mark Alden Branch ’86
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11:05pm July 10 2024
Our June 12, 1931, cover featured a Yale College tradition: the Fence Oration. Over the decades, strictly observed student customs had developed about sitting on the fences of the Old Campus. Freshmen were denied the privilege until the end of the academic year, when sophomores turned over their section of the fence in an annual ceremony. Beginning in 1876, one freshman and one sophomore were chosen to make speeches, typically laden with feigned pomposity and insults aimed at members of the other class. In his 1931 oration, sophomore Vinton Lindley declared—not so presciently—that "this will be one tradition at Yale that will never be broken, for it is founded on a fundamental need, the need of sitting down.” 
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