Originally known as the “Rook Bonfire,” this tradition — going back to the early 1900s — gave firstyear students the chance to earn bragging rights by building the tallest bonfire in school history. “A lot of students really responded to it,” archivist Karl McCreary said in a 2018 Daily Barometer interview.“You can see that in the old bonfires, whichwere50feethigh.Theywouldtakeanything they found in town, put it into this one huge, massive pile and just light it on fire. That was something that just can’t be done today on that scale.” The last-known bonfire was in 2013, when a few modest stacks of wooden pallets were torched on one ofthe last dirt parking lots on campus.As McCreary observed: “This university is growing so much, [there is no space] where you can have a place where you can burn something safely and not have asphalt melt, windows blow out or have a conflagration. If they have it again, they might have to move it out of town.” —KEVIN MILLER, ’78 Fall 2023 37 KARL MAASDAM; OSU SPECIAL COLLECTIONS AND ARCHIVES ! THE HOMECOMING BºNFIRE Nº
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