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El Zorro Day

April 15, 2008

So Monday afternoon I look at all the events going on during Peace Week (April 7-11) and see that only Tuesday’s events were expendable for Fox Day to fall on. Fox Day is a day in the spring (any day after spring break is game) where the president of the College brings out a statuette of a fox and places it in front of the flag pole on Mills Lawn. This will happen at around 5:30 a.m. and will signal that classes are canceled for the day. If you had exams they are postponed, if you had a paper due that day you don’t have to hand it in, and any meetings for the day must be rescheduled!

For the past few years, SGA has provided the students with buses heading to Cocoa Beach and then some other student organizations host trips to the theme parks in Orlando and some state parks nearby. Everyone comes back to Mills Lawn at 5 p.m. for a barbecue hosted by the president. People from the Winter Park community come that afternoon and faculty will usually bring their families for students to meet.

After I came back from dinner on Monday evening (April 7) from the MUN Panel on Immigration I get to my room at around midnight, I saw several of my friends were just pulling in at the roundabout in front of Elizabeth Hall. They had gone out shopping for Fox Day amenities and they invited me to go along with them and camp out in front of Mills Lawn. There had been many hints that afternoon and late evening and too many people were saying Tuesday April 8 was going to be Fox Day. A friend of a friend said Sodexho (on-campus dining services) had the food for the barbecue, a friend called me at around 1 a.m. asking me if I was ready for Fox Day because it was only a matter of a few hours until the president brought the fox out. I had received another phone call at around 1:30 a.m. saying that the small streets in front of the Knowles Chapel and the Annie Russell Theatre were blocked off with cones presumably for the eventual buses that would come in the morning.

After all these hints, it was enough to convince me to play Fox Day roulette that night. This is when you don’t do any of your homework for the next day and stay up all night hoping the next day will be Fox day. I had actually finished my homework in the afternoon but it was my turn to plan for and run a J.U.M.P. meeting that Tuesday. I had classes straight from 9:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. with only an hour’s break for lunch in between.

We camped out in front of the flag pole outside on Mills Lawn and exactly at 5:42 a.m., President Duncan brought the statuette out. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. It had not even been a minute when cars down Holt Ave. were honking, students ran back to their dorms to wake everyone up yelling “It’s Fox Day!”

There was a huge line outside President Duncan’s office because he was serving freshly made donuts and orange juice as well as handing out the Fox Day Proclamation stating the suspension of classes and meetings for the day. After that, people went to nap for an hour or so before getting on the buses at 9 a.m. for Cocoa Beach. There were 18 buses each with a capacity of 58 students—and all were full! So with around 1,000 Rollins students at the beach, there was a lot of fun going on. We came back on campus at around 4:30 p.m. for the barbeque.

There were several of my professors who had brought their children and lots of people from the Winter Park community had joined us. A mom of an out-of-state friend of mine is an alumna of Rollins and she called her daughter at 6:30 a.m. telling her she found out about Fox Day. I’ve heard that Rollins alumni around the area will call in sick for work once they find out its Fox Day and take the day off to later join students, faculty, staff and locals for the afternoon barbeque.

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