Calculus Cremation

Introduction[edit]

Dating back as early as 1865, the sophomore and junior classes of RPI took calculus as an entire grade rather than students taking multiple levels at once. From this, many students dreaded the course and thus began the tradition of the Calculus Cremation. As time went on, this tradition grew into a ritual with processions and music.

History[edit]

In celebration of the dreaded calculus course being over, students took to burning their notes and textbooks as an act of freedom. After a few years of burning, it became a ritual called the Calculus Cremation. In some years, they described the cremation as a funeral, and others as an execution. The ritual itself took place all over Troy, changing year to year. Students would make a procession line beginning in the 87 gym. As time went on, the ritual itself became more intense, with students dressing up in all black cloaks and carrying torches to the site of the cremation. Students would sing songs during the march, and eulogies were given upon arrival. There would then be a celebration of some sort with music and drinks for the students. The organization of the cremation was often done by a committee, who is credited in many of the invitations, sometimes given fun nicknames and sometimes just referred to as things like the naughty eight or the royal guards. In the early 1920's calculus stopped being taken as a cohort and the ritual died out.

Students dressed in cloaks for procession

Cremation Invitations[edit]

With each year of the Calculus Cremation, students would get more and more creative with their invitations to the event. The invitations themselves were sent to the students in the course, announcing when the ritual was occurring and why it was. The invitations themselves surrounded the names Bowser, Crockett and Elwyn because those were the names of the authors of the textbooks. Some of the invitations were politically charged, reflecting the climate at the time. During the world war, in 1918, the invitation was titled "Bowser Calculus, German Spy, Executed at Sunrise" giving a glimpse into what the students at the time were feeling both towards the war as well as calculus. It goes in depth, explaining how the spy called out for the Kaiser, the Devil and the Sultan of Turkey. There were times where the invitation was depicted as a poem, showing the artistic skills as well as the literary skills of the students. Other invitations surrounded announcements of deaths of leaders, some depicted as kings, and others depicted as tyrants. In 1906, the invitation was an obituary, with both the cause of death and the life's work being calculus puns. The theme was always some kind of death and in celebration of the death, there was to be a cremation.