Library Shenanigans

library exorcism

May 20, 2016 at 3:41 pm Leave a comment

I have it on good authority that an exorcism was performed in Tutt Library at Colorado College. My sources tell me that at a Fly Day / May Day / May Festival celebration ca. 1970, Jim Trissel, a member of the CC Art faculty, banged upon a drum and led “a small army” of revelers through all three floors of Tutt Library, chanting “Out, demons, out!”

I’ve been unable to find any documentary proof of this event, but it may have happened in 1969, when the Fly Day celebrations on campus were of epic proportions, including, according to Owen Cramer (Classics faculty then and now), a 400-foot-long, 12-foot-high plastic tube put up on the campus quad. Students and others could walk or sit in the tube; and at one point, says Cramer, “a saxophone player produced a very pleasing sound inside.” Other elements of Fly Day included “the execution with sledgehammers of a musical score projected onto an old car installed in the ice rink.”

Or the exorcism might have happened in 1971. This reference in the May 14 , 1971 Catalyst serves as oblique proof that something exciting happened in the library around that time: “To George Fagin, for his new library policies, is presented the Police State Award.”

Entry filed under: academic libraries, art, perpetrated by students or patrons, Tutt Library Colorado College.