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The Complete Idiot's Guide to Fox Day

April 18, 2009

Ever since I got back from spring break it feels like I haven’t had time to stop and breathe. It’s been a lot of fun—don’t get me wrong. Between my birthday, Fox Day, presentations, final exams, and getting ready for my abroad experience—so many things going on that summer could not come any sooner.

I’m going to take the time and mesh two great happenings in my life—my 20th birthday and Park Ave. So I invited a bunch of my friends to have dinner at Tolla’s, a great Italian restaurant just off Park Ave, within walking distance from campus. I’ve gotten to know the owner very well since I used to go there about once a week. I got to know this place through Dr. Pequeño, he held his retirement party at this restaurant last year (his son is best friends with Gary Tolla).

Aside from Tolla’s, there are so many great places to go on Park. Even if you end up not sitting anywhere, it’s still a great walk. I will usually go for a walk with a friend and people-watch, and comment on the people-watcher tables at Luma (tables facing directly towards the street as if it were a cinema). On Saturday mornings from about 7 to noon, we have the Winter Park farmer’s market. It’s great if you can make it up in time on a Saturday morning. I had the privilege of going there every weekend in November for a class project. Amy Iarrobino and I were building a computer simulation of the Kettle corn stand for an honors project. Collecting data for hours on arrival times, service times, exit times was not fun. Except for the fact that the stand owner gave us free kettle corn when we told her we were doing this project on her farmer’s market shop.

So on Monday April 7th, I told everyone I knew to get ready for Fox Day. I had an uncanny instinct that the fox was going to roll out the next morning. Well it wasn’t an instinct as much as I had relied on past evidence, right on the Rollins website there’s a list of Fox Day dates for the past decades. You can clearly see that for the past 6 or so years, it has always fallen on the Tuesday of the second week of April except for once, when it fell on a Wednesday. For all of you thinking of coming to Rollins and wanting to play Fox Day roulette, here are a few pointers from a person who has been right two years in a row:

1. In the past two decades, it’s fallen on a Friday twice.
2. Fox Day hasn’t been on a Monday for the past 11 years.
3. Fox Day will never be on a Thursday because students would just take Friday off as well and make it one long weekend, it was once a Thursday 7 years ago, but not anymore.
4. Fox Day will never be on a day where there is an Accepted Student Open House (ASOH) for incoming freshmen in the fall. Ask Admissions about the dates, they aren’t secret, so you can cross them off your prediction calendar.
5. That leaves Tuesday and Wednesday as the most likely dates, this year there was an ASOH on Wednesday, leaving Tuesday the only open day for the second week.

Just follow this Fox Day prediction guide and you will be in the path of the righteous. An easy way to find out too is to befriend someone in catering. They know when the food arrives for the Fox Day barbecue so if you get a tip from someone in catering—don’t dismiss it right away.

I hope this guide will help you in your years at Rollins, it definitely is one of the highlights of the spring semester. Even better than playing Fox Day roulette is actually camping out on Mills lawn and seeing the Fox roll out on the lawn before your own eyes. That’s a must before graduating from Rollins.

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