Let’s not forget the long history of illustrious cheers:
DD’s favorite:
Repel them!
Repel them!
Make them relinquish the ball! (3x)
Others at: http://adaged.blogspot.com/2011/09/some-football-cheers.html
And the equally illustrious history of the football team:
I believe the football team remains as the only team in history to be unbeaten against Notre Dame (and yes they played each other multiple times).
In the summer of 1963 President Kennedy delivered the famous speech in which he proclaimed “Ich bin ein Berliner”. We who arrived at Chamberlin House in B-J in September of that year took to saying, when asked where we were living, “Ich bin ein Chamberliner”. At least we did that until the assassination of the President in November, when the fun went out of the quip. I have heard, however, that it has been revived and now appears on a tee shirt which Chamberliners have been known to wear.
OP, are you getting the sense from these stories that there is a peculiarly U. of C.-ish sense of humor? We need it to stay sane, or anyhow quasi-sane.
One of the best stories I read about U of C in the 1980’s:
At 6:30 a.m. one day in the autumn of 1980 the telephone roused the Hyde Park household of University of Chicago physicist James Cronin. The caller was a wire-service reporter who apologized for disturbing the Cronin family so early in the day. She wanted Cronin`s reaction to a news story that had just come out of Sweden.
It has just been announced in Stockholm that you and Val L. Fitch of Princeton University have been awarded the Nobel Prize for physics, she told the stunned Cronin.
Nobody was very surprised that Cronin, who took his Ph.D. at Chicago and had become a professor there in 1971, should win the Nobel for his work. Cronin himself, however, was surprised by all the hoopla generated by the announcement of the award. A justly famous man in the world of physics since he and Fitch announced the results of their experiment in 1964, he was, nonetheless, hardly a household name outside the scientific community.
A slight, shy, balding, 49-year-old when the 1980 Nobel was announced, Cronin was relieved when the university sent Larry Arbeiter to his home at 7 a.m. to help him handle the deluge of requests for press interviews. Arbeiter, a writer in the university`s press office, suggested that Cronin satisfy all the interview requests at once by holding a 10 a.m. news conference.
Oh, Cronin insisted, I cant do it then. Ive got a 10 o`clock class this morning.
With a good reporter`s instinct, Arbeiter asked what course Cronin was teaching, thinking of news photos of the newly minted Nobelist lecturing to his awed and adoring students.
No, no, Cronin told Arbeiter, Im not teaching a course, Im taking Chandrasekhar`s graduate course on the theory of relativity.
That probably should have been the news story that day. Editors would have loved a story about a man so curious and humble that he chose to sit in the classroom of another teacher on the morning he reached the pinnacle of intellectual success. Cronin didnt think it very remarkable, however. Its just something thats done all the time at Chicago. He didnt even bother to mention the incident when he eventually did appear at a press conference.
http://articles.chicagotribune.com/1985-09-29/features/8503070691_1_mesons-reaction-experiment
Of course, Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar got his own Nobel Prize 3 years later.
@exacademic - anyone who wants to look into the Ida Noyes story, the swim requirement, etc. is welcome to peruse the internet and get the facts but they’ll lose something in the process. The folklore helps define the university.
More stories - I’ll leave others to determine the veracity of any (or all):
There’s a big system of tunnels running underneath the Midway but they were closed off in the '70’s when a student was murdered in one of them.
There’s a certain park bench located somewhere in the quadrangles (can’t remember where) that you can only sit on if you are a virgin.
A parrot couple escaped out of a house near the university one day many, many years ago - and their descendants can still be seen in the trees around Hyde Park.
If your roommate dies in the middle of the quarter (esp. if it’s a suicide, so the story goes) you will get straight A’s that quarter because the Administration wants to keep morale up.
@JBStillFlying I can vouch for the authenticity of 3). I saw them in the 1980’s all the way to mid 1990’s.
Apparently they had been thriving until a couple of years ago.
http://www.chicagomag.com/Chicago-Magazine/The-312/March-2013/In-Hyde-Park-the-Parakeets-Abide/
http://chicagotonight.wttw.com/2016/03/21/why-are-monk-parakeets-leaving-hyde-park
Sometime in the early 80s, I happened to attend the (non denominational) sunday morning service at Rockefeller Chapel. I sat in a pew behind a family with 2 or 3 young children. Through the service, the parents were occasionally preoccupied keeping the kids from getting bored and acting up. Sometime along the way I realized it was the Cronins.
Also, it was not uncommon to see Dr. Chandrasekhar (who was short and slight) walking around the Quads holding the hands of his equally short and slight wife who always wore a beautiful sari.
@85bears46 I would see them too. My dad thought I’d been drinking when I told him on the phone that I saw a bunch of parrots up in the trees on Kimbark. Harold Washington (mayor of Chicago in the 80’s) lived on 53rd near LSD and was apparently quite fond of them. Sad to read that they are leaving the area.
@ihs76 I remember one time in the 1980’s when I got out of Reg in a hurry I almost slammed right into Chandra on the steps. As I was (and still am) a pretty hefty guy , I apologized profusely to him and his wife. I didn’t recognize him at first but then as soon as I walked past Hull Gate, it suddenly dawned on me: “Holy smoke, did I just almost run over a Nobel Prize Winner 
?”
The story of the feral parrots got a brief mention in Saul Bellow’s last novel, “Ravelstein”, which depicts an eccentric, to say the least, U. of C. professor (Hyde Park denizens and U. of C. profs appear in many other of Bellow’s novels, including “Herzog” and “The Dean’s December”). I am sorry to hear that the parrots are no longer thriving. Supposedly there were only a couple of other places in the world with such populations.
Perhaps, JBSFlying, you are thinking of the C bench in front of the oldest building on the quad (name of which escapes me for the moment, the one just south of the infamous Ad building). Perhaps that story has also morphed a bit. In the 60’s it was said that no 1st year could sit on it. That sounds a bit Big 10ish (as, of course, Chicago was once). I like the later version better.
And do note, OP, that at Chicago you are not a freshman, a sophomore, etc, but “first year”, “second year”, and so on. I don’t know the exact reason for that divergence from the collegiate norm except that Chicago is a place where a certain divergence is always to be expected.
Ah, but my point wasn’t that the Ida Noyes story was false; it was that other schools with swimming requirements manufactured the same kind of backstory. Reminds me of college tours where each school has basically the same story about stepping on the seal, or kissing on a particular bridge or bench, or touching the statue of the founder. Maybe this stuff is part of what makes college college, but, to me, it’s not what defines/captures the essence of a particular school (vs, say, the Lascivious Ball).
Oh of course, @exacademic. The C bench is another example of a common myth. What makes the Ida Noyes story particularly charming is that it explains TWO phenomena at the U of C. Also, let’s face it: legends are fun and each school has its own particular twist that is unique to the school and, in many ways, helps describe the school. Each myth also tends to be grounded in some truth, which is what a myth is supposed to include. The mythological perpetual student, for instance, isn’t really far from reality - at least as of a few decades ago - simply because EVERYONE knew at least one nth year. The social skills deficits of poor Ida and Aristotle - and the supposed condemnation from peers and administrators - are touches that many at UChicago will identify with (not because everyone’s on the spectrum but because the place is known for its nerds). A bit of hyperbole added to an underlying description really helps to make a great legend.
Edit to add: I actually do think, as @Marlowe1 is implying, that the legends DO provide some hint of the essence.
I should also add that the story of the murdered student in the Midway tunnels obviously plays on the fears concerning Hyde Park’s location on the South Side, much of which has had its share of safety issues. (my previous stories about students getting mugged for their Harold’s Chicken on 68th and Stony are NOT a myth but real events). I wonder how many realize that the tunnels actually DO exist?
JBS - I can attest to the existence of those tunnels. Though never in them myself, I had friends who were! No murders ever came to their attention. Pity.
Famous professor stories could go on forever. 85Bears has inspired me. Here are a couple more:
The steam tunnels story is not a myth. We explored those tunnels from the Hospital all the way to I House, and from the Quads across the Midway. They were really creepy, and there were rat skeletons all over the floors. I don’t think they are as accessible as they used to be.
We also managed to get on top of the roofs and towers of Harper and almost all of the other buildings on the main Quads. The Hutchinson tower was the only one that defeated us.
Exploring steam tunnels and getting to the tops of locked towers are features of undergraduate life at many colleges.
The first and oldest University building whose name had eluded me a few posts ago has just come to me, without google assistance - Cobb Hall. It has always been the seat of the humanities/social sciences core. If those walls could talk!
If other schools have Chicago-like stories, I assert it’s because they are imitating us, probably poorly!
How old is Cobb Cafe in Cobb’s basement? It’s a current source of material for campus legendarium; the kind of place that plays recorded whale noises instead of music.
Alas, HydeSnark, Loeb and Leopold did not frequent the Cobb Café. Nor did I in the 60’s. The two coffee joints on campus were in the Swift basement and the Classics tower. They were always overflowing, a mixed crowd of grad and undergrad. One or other of these places was where you went for a cup of coffee after class or on a break from studies. Cobb was thoroughly gutted and renovated in the late 60’s and repurposed exclusively for the College. That must have been when the Café was installed in the basement. That was no doubt more convenient for undergrads. I have no doubt that legends developed, friendships sealed, romances begun.
So I heard today that David Brooks (a la NYTimes) not only lived in the house right next to mine, but also was apparently in my year long Western Civ class with Prof Weintraub. Class was only about 20 students but I have zero recollection of the man. Apparently not particularly a stand out back in his college days.