Cornelliana

Dragon Day ’24: Snapshots from a Serpentine Celebration

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By Joe Wilensky

Although this year’s Dragon Day beast featured a minimalist, dark gray design, the festive parade across campus March 29 was a colorful, joyous affair.

The lumber-and-cardboard creature—whose aesthetic, its student designers say, was inspired by grunge rock—utilized sustainable materials and focused on functionality. It sported moveable features such as a working jaw, a stretchable tail, and articulated wings that unfolded from the body.

Parade-goers enjoy the spectacle in the heart of campus — Revelers gather on the Arts Quad at the conclusion of the parade.

First-year architecture students spent weeks designing and building the dragon, continuing an annual tradition that dates back to the early 20th century.

Then, in a rite of passage that has come to mark the beginning of spring, the fierce-looking creature and its human handlers led hundreds of costumed revelers in a lively procession.

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First-year architecture students spent weeks designing and building the dragon, continuing an annual tradition that dates back to the early 20th century.

In some years, Engineering students build a phoenix to symbolically “battle” the dragon as it passes their quad—and for 2024 they did so in splendid fashion, with their bright orange beast clutching a small stuffed dragon in its talons.

And throughout the route that wound from Rand Hall to the Arts Quad, the procession was cheered on by the traditional chant: “Dragon! Dragon! Dragon! Oi! Oi! Oi!”