This Virtual Cache (part of Virtual Rewards 3.0) brings you to the Arts Quad at the heart of the Cornell University campus. This is also the center of the College of Arts & Sciences, the oldest and largest of Cornell's colleges. Two statues on the Quad memorialize the founders of Cornell: Ezra Cornell and Andrew Dickson White.
According to legend, the two statues will walk off their pedestals and meet in the center of the Quad if certain conditions are met. There are several variants of the myth's conditions including:
- if a virgin crosses the Quad at midnight
- if a virgin crosses the Quad at midnight while the chimes are ringing
- if a virgin graduates from Cornell (version from Elizabeth Tucker's Campus Legends: A Handbook (Greenwood Folklore Handbooks)
If these conditions are met, it goes that the statues will get off their pedestals and:
- shake hands, or
- switch places, or
- dance a jig in the center of the Quad.
The common theme here is the chastity of the university's students and to this day, the statues have never gotten off their pedestals and shaken hands, switched places, or danced a jig.
Every year since 1936 the fraternity Phi Sigma Kappa has repainted the footprints on the Quad to memorialize the legend.
To log this cache,
1) Post a photo of yourself with the statue of either A.D. White or Ezra Cornell and
2) Email me the number of footprints from the midpoint to one of the statues and tell me what color each statue's footprints are.
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Virtual Rewards 3.0 - 2022-2023
This Virtual Cache is part of a limited release of Virtuals created between March 1, 2022 and March 1, 2023. Only 4,000 cache owners were given the opportunity to hide a Virtual Cache. Learn more about Virtual Rewards 3.0 on the Geocaching Blog.