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Show : r I i 4J A. "Y" Day, 1919, was serious students of BYU. Efforts to m j& - jr $PI ? r 3 Photo courtesy ol business among the add the "B" and "U" it was determined it would require three to five times as much work. Eventually stu- - stopped when dents abandoned the idea of adding letters just painted the Y. BYU. and Development of concrete Y ended contention By MARK EDDINGTON The Daily Herald Just as the large "Y" on the moun- tain overlooking Brigham Young University is a proud symbol of unity today, so it was an important means of ending contention when it was constructed 90 years ago. The trouble began in 1906 when the BYU class of 1907 whitewashed their graduating year on the mountainside. Feeling slighted, representatives of other graduating classes hunted down the '07s and punished them for their presumption. Competing graduating classes obliterated their lime powder monument, shaved the heads of offending '07 participants, and began placing numerals of their own graduation years on the mountain. Sensing trouble and offended by the sight of a mountain that had become a communal eyesore, BYU President George H. Brimhall consented to having drafting and engineering Professor Emest Partridge and students Harvey Fletcher, Elmer Jacobs and Clarence Jacobs replace the unsightly scrawls with the letters "B." "Y." and "U". letter Work on the thereafter. "Y" began shortly team Partridge and his climed the mountain and staked the outline of the letter. In his unpub- ot three-memb- 18 er Fletcher lished autobiography. described the method used. "The transit was securely placed at the foot of the 'Y and then after leveling it, the telescope was set on on the flagpole at the top of the high school building; that is the first building which was built on the lower campus. lSThen we read the inclination angle, that is the angle between the horizontal and line of sight. Then this enabled us to calculate how long the big letter must be compared to its w idth to make it appear in the right proportions when viewed from lower campus. To do this, the length of the 'Y' was about 330 feet, while the stem was only 50 feet. We also staked out a B' at the left and a U' at the right of the 'Y'." What the team hadn't calculated on was the reaction of students to their work w hen they arrived the following day to cover the "Y" with lime, sand and rocks. The dimensions of the letters that looked to be right from low er campus appeared all out of proportion close up. The student body officers who arrived early to begin the work wanted no part of it. They w ere convinced the surveyors had made a mistake. After being persuaded otherw ise by Elmer Jacobs, who was student body president that year, the work students, was enforced commenced. line "Students stood in a about eight feet apart, stretching from the bottom of the hill to the site of the Y". The first man took the bag of lime. sand, or rocks and carried it eight feet, and handed it to the second man. The second carried it another eight feet and handed it to a third man and thus the bag went up the hill, each man shuttling back and forth along his eight-foportion of the trail. zig-za- g ot All the students began with it was a much bigger enthu-siam...B- ut job than anyone expected. It was 4 p.m. before the 'Y' was covered, and then by only a thin layer. So no attempt w as made to cover the other two of the boys fainted and had to be helped down the hill." Fletcher later w rote. Although the "Y" covered with white looked beautiful on the mountainside, students realized similar efforts to cover the "B" and the "U" would require three to five times as much work. Consequently, nothing more w as done for three years. Eventually students abandoned the other letters and decided that the "Y" would receive a fresh coat of paint each year on what was to become known as "Y Day." Participation, winch was for all male mandatory government's by student quasi-offici- al Benevolent Order of Hair Removers From Y Day Sluffers. After Provo Police responded to fracas in 19 2 that resulted from one student refusing to have his head shaved, Brimhall stopped the practice. Slackers, or Y Day absentees, were then punished by ducking and freshmen "sluffers" were tossed into the school's botany pond. 1 While all men on campus were expected to paint the letter, freshmen were given the additional disagreeable task of weeding around the block "Y". The unpopular duty compelled those freshmen who did participate to become even more militant enforcers of the policy than upper-classme- During the World War II years, there were not enough men on campus to carry the necessary 1 0 bags of lime, 500 pounds of salt and 3.000 gallons of water up the mountain for the annual whitewashing. So the "Y" was left unpainted. 1 In the 1950s, coeds were no longer exempted from the duty and the resumed. Students were finally relieved of the burdenwhitewashing some task in 1978, when BYU spent $30,000 to use cement and seal to cover the "Y". |