175 Great Ways to Celebrate 175 Years

During this, our anniversary year, the Office of Alumni and Parent Relations has been collecting suggestions from alumni, students, faculty, administrators, and support staff for ways to celebrate Gettysburg College's 175th anniversary. In no particular order, your submissions are listed below. Please help us to reach 175 ways to celebrate 175 years by sending your creative and meaningful suggestions to asingley@gettysburg.edu. Enjoy!

1. Do a favor for someone who desperately needs it and when he or she looks at you questioningly, say, "Happy 175th Anniversary Gettysburg College. Your only obligation for this favor is to pass a favor on to someone else."
2. Ring the chapel bells or the carillon 175 times as a reminder of each year that the College has been alive and to unite the whole campus.
3. Learn the Alma Mater.
4. Find one of your college friends about whom you think but never take action to contact.
5. Host a Gettysburg Reunion Party. Invite everyone with whom you are already in contact and tell them to invite everyone with whom they have kept in contact. Don't forget to invite the above-mentioned college friend with whom you have recently reunited!?
6. Make a gift to Gettysburg College!
7. Do a service project in your community with other Gettysburg alumni.
8. Wear your orange and blue.
9. Go for a run from campus, up to the Peace Light, and back again. The hills are tough, but the views are breathtaking.?
10. Visit campus and enjoy the many wonderful food options at Servo!
11. Hug an admissions counselor for working hard to improve the student body every year.
12. Call a current student and tell him/her how lucky he/she is to be at Gettysburg College.
13. Wear a BIGGER smile when you talk to people about Gettysburg College.
14. Help KARE with a college fair.
15. Rename your children after past Gettysburg College presidents ("Come here, Little Schmucker!").
16. Reread your acceptance letter and then read it another time aloud to your friends and family.
17. Enjoy Michael Birkner's pictorial history of Gettysburg College.
18. Go through the very valuable blue books from Gettysburg?exams you have saved in the box in the basement, and try to answer some of the questions?you once knew in depth. Or, if you do not have?the blue books?(imagine, throwing away such historic documents!), how about trying to remember the names of your freshman professors! ?
19. Return to the College and stand in the room?you occupied as a?freshman and?recall the ambiance of your first year at Gettysburg.
20. Dig up any sorority, fraternity, or activity picture?you have saved and try to remember all the names of your fellow students.
21. Find your freshman dink and try it on to see if it still fits! In the fall of 1959 we had to wear our dink on campus as well as a name tag for all upperclassmen to see.
22. Wear your dink around your town for a day!
23. Burn that dink they made us wear in the '60's!!!! ?
24. Stand up and proudly sing out the Alma Mater at a football game. ?
25. Plan a Girls' Weekend with your college roomies.
26. Send the Burg a check for $175!
27. Pull out your old college photos and put them on a CD slide show.
28. Dip your toes in Stine Lake fountain.
29. Sled down Peace Light hill on a Servo tray.
30. Make a surprise visit to a professor at his/her office.
31. Go on a GRAB expedition trip with fellow alumni/students/parents.
32. Even if you can't make it back to Gettysburg for the 175th Anniversary Celebration, gather the alumni in your area at a Gettysburg-themed party!!! Recognize your Orange & Blue roots by reminiscing over a Gettysburg slideshow of pictures from your college days. Play music from the years you went to Gettysburg. Have a "Made-to-Order" Egg lady serve you eggs-made your way.? Have someone dress up as Esther and make her check ID's before allowing you to eat. Set up your house/apartment to look like the Bullet Hole (circa 1999-2003). To end the special evening, make sure everyone stays late for the finale-a Midnight Madness extravaganza!!
33. Write to your class correspondent and share some news!
34. Go back to your freshman dorm, find your way into the room where you spent your freshman year, and make yourself comfortable. When the current residents enter the room, act completely dumbfounded when they tell you that it's their room, not yours. They might call S&S, but it would be entertaining.
35. Send Esther a card on her birthday, September 24th.
36. Read a book by a faculty author.
37. Watch Ghosts of Gettysburg.
38. Let your advisor know how you are doing.?
39. Wear your favorite piece of Gettysburg clothing.
40. Buy some new Gettysburg clothing in person at the bookstore or on-line at http://www.gettysburg.edu/about/offices/fa/bookstore.
41. Remember your favorite meal at Servo.
42. Send your greetings and thanks to a professor from whom you learned an important thought.?
43. Finally turn in that late assignment. ?
44. Create a bumper sticker saying "Happy Anniversary Gettysburg College! 175 Years and Going Strong!"
45. Enjoy a hefty portion of French Toast smothered in maple syrup and sprinkled with powdered sugar, as you imagine sitting at the Lamp Post Inn on a Saturday morning in the fall.
46. Pack a picnic, blanket, and book, and head to the battlefields for the afternoon-the way we used to on sunny weekends when we were students.
47. Visit your residence from each of your years at Gettysburg.
48. Grab a late-night meal at the Lincoln Diner.
49. Start a MySpace account and search for other Gettysburg alumni.
50. Attend a Gettysburg College sporting event.
51. Read a book in Musselman Library.
52. Give your children a personalized tour of your alma mater.
53. Watch a movie in the new Majestic Theater.
54. Make a gift to the Center for Athletics, Recreation, and Fitness.
55. Place a Gettysburg College sticker on your car.
56. Give a donation to your fraternity/sorority.
57. Contact Gettysburg alumni with whom you went abroad and catch up.
58. Party like it's 1832. Have a 175-year-old theme party.
59. Play frisbee on Stine Lake.
60. Live off $20.00 a week.
61. Learn about famous alumni.
62. Call your parents and tell them you miss home.
63. Name something of yours "Gettysburg" (child, pet, car, plant).
64. Call your first-year roommate and catch up on the past years.
65. Send an email to a favorite professor.
66. Frame your Gettysburg College diploma and hang it in a prominent place.
67. Attend a regional alumni event.
68. Sponsor a trivia contest about the College and give away tickets to the Majestic.
69. Invite the surrounding community to campus for tours of the buildings and special treats from Catering.
70. Contribute to the Gettysburg Fund, using the numbers 1, 7, and 5.
71. Take a late night stroll by Stevens Hall and try to catch a glimpse of the "Blue Boy."
72. Wear Gettysburg garb to a major public event.
73. Dress your family and pets in Gettysburg garb!
74. Fly a Gettysburg College flag.
75. Introduce yourself to people you see on the street wearing Gettysburg garb.
76. Even better, introduce yourself to people you see ABROAD who are sporting Gettysburg College hats and shirts.
77. Give a gift to the Orange and Blue Club in honor of a favorite coach.
78. Bike or jog through the battlefield.
79. Walk from campus to the Peace Light.
80. Read a book by an alumni author.
81. Join the 1832 Society.
82. Cheer for the Bullets at an away game.
83. Check out the Alumni Relations website to see what is happening in your area.
84. Drink a beverage of your choice in a Gettysburg College mug.
85. Gather your classmates and offer a toast to the best four years of the 175!
86. Buy Axiom Asunder, The Majestic Jazz Orchestra's CD, composed and directed by Buzz Jones.
87. Start working on a nostalgic scrapbook to share with your friends during Reunion Weekend.
88. Review your will and consider including Gettysburg College as a way of leaving a legacy.
89. Visit the Gettysburg College Observatory.
90. Call the Admissions Office and ask for 5 brochures.? Give the brochures to 5 families with high school students and share a story with them about what makes Gettysburg College special.
91. Call a College professor in your area of expertise and offer to help by talking to a class.
92. Invite a student to your place of work for a shadowing experience.
93. Purchase a book by a Gettysburg College author as a present for your own birthday.
94. Call your first-year roommate out of the blue and arrange a reunion!
95. Get a Gettysburg College tattoo.
96. Make your home landscaping scream "Gettysburg College!"? Trim shrubs into a GC, or mow a GC into your front lawn.
97. Join the Cupola Society.
98. Buy music that reminds you of your years at Gettysburg.
99. See how many Gettysburg College logos you can remember from over the years. Hint: The current one features the Cupola and 175.
100. Greet everyone you see with a cheerful "Happy Centeseptiquinary!"
101. Get a vanity license plate:? CLXXV
102. Re-read Lincoln's Gettysburg Address.
103. Go to this web site http://www.starregistry.com/index.cfm and have a star named in honor of Gettysburg College's?175th.
104. Gather 19 of your friends and have a tug-of-war across the Tiber.? Don't forget to wear your dinks!
105. Write, direct, and perform a one-person show about Gettysburg College.
106. Bring the historic and administrative majesty of Penn Hall to your home-build your own cupola on the roof!
107. Fence off the old quad area and fill it with farm animals, just the way it was in the College's early years.
108. Attend all classes dressed in attire worn during the founding of the College. (Women dress as men as there were no female students at that time.)
109. Sing the Alma Mater while watching the sunset.
110. Flash a Gettysburg tee-shirt under your tux or formal gown when you accept your Nobel Prize.
111. Create a poem that incorporates the names of all the trees on campus; whether you use popular or scientific names is up to you.
112. Commemorate your collegiate escapades with chalk footprints or cartoons on the campus walkways.
113. Buy What's Up in The Attic?, The Buzz Jones Big Band's new CD (due out April 1st).
114. Tune your radio to WZBT 91.1.
115. Attend a First-Year Send Off.
116. Attend a show at the Hatter Planetarium.
117. Throw a Pizza House party. Serve your favorite hoagie . . . remember the smell, the taste!
118. Recreate the donuts from the Lamplighter.
119. Go to Reunion Weekend and stay on campus in the dorms . . . that will bring back some memories.
120. Promise yourself that you'll attend you next class reunion and take along your dink to wear in the class picture.
121. Dig out your Spectrums to see how you looked in the "good old days."
122. Recite the Gettysburg Address from memory.
123. Alumni who work for Janney Montgomery Scott get to DOUBLE their fun, as the investment firm also was founded in 1832!
124. Enjoy a cup of morning coffee at the Bullet Hole.
125. Do not go near your computer for 175 hours.?Okay, well, maybe that's too hard -- how about 175 minutes? Minutes when you are AWAKE, that is! Could you imagine going through college now with just a typewriter and White-Out?
126. Write a letter to the current students who reside in the room you were assigned as a freshman, sophomore, junior, or senior.
127. Find and wear that orange necktie we had to wear during Freshman Customs in the fall of 1956 (but DON'T wear it on March 17!!!!).
128. Go to Weidensall Hall basement/first floor and try to figure out where in the heck the pool used to be.
129. Try bribing a Safety and Security officer into letting you up into the Cupola to check out the panoramic view of the campus and beyond.
130. Get a group of friends to join you for the campus version of a "Ghosts of Gettysburg" walking tour.
131. Try to remember who lived next to you each of your four years.
132. Get a tattoo of Billy Bullet.
133. Bookmark http://www.gettysburg.edu/ in your web browser.
134. Volunteer to be on your next Reunion committee.
135. Post a memory on the Share Your Gettysburg Memories web page: http://www.gettysburg.edu/about/175/gettysburg_memories/share.dot.
136. Subscribe to Podium, the College's podcasting site: http://www.gettysburg.edu/podium/index.dot.
137. Check out Gettysburg Experience Videos: http://www.gettysburg.edu/gettysburg_experience/flash.htm.
138. Join a Wellness class.
139. Come to the Women's Studies table at Get Acquainted Day to learn more about women's history.
140. Drink wine with John Regentin and the Office of Experiential Education in Burgundy, France.
141. Spend 175 minutes with the Registrar, who is retiring this year.
142. Go?to http://www.wzbt.org/ to listen to WZBT?online.
143. Freeze a pumpkin in liquid nitrogen and drop it from a tall building and watch for the flash of blue-green luminescence.
144. If you're an alumnus/a, contact your major department and let them know what you've been up to.
145. Sing a few verses of "A Mighty Fortress" to celebrate the College's Lutheran heritage.
146. Attend FASH with colleagues from across campus.
147. Enjoy a meal with friends and colleagues and chat up the delights of working at Gettysburg College.
148. Catch a trophy rainbow trout in Montana's fabled waters?during a trip with Experiential Education: http://www.gettysburg.edu/about/offices/college_life/grab/expedition_/flyfishing.dot.
149. Read Deborah Larsen's The White or hang out with Fred Leebron's Six Figures for a while.
150. Bask in the shade of the College's Centennial Anniversary sycamore tree.
151. Donate your College memorabilia to Special Collections.
152. Visit the 175th Anniversary sycamore. Hint: it's near the Centennial sycamore.
153. Stand under the rotunda on the 2nd floor of Penn Hall and talk. You'll be amazed.
154. Brush up on your botany knowledge by studying the tree plaques around campus.
155. Enjoy the hospitality of the Norris-Wachob Alumni House and see the new permanent display, Gettysburg at 175: Our Journey Through History.
156. Get your kid(s) involved in lacrosse so they can eventually enroll at G-Burg and become an integral part of the Bullet lacrosse tradition.
157. Sign up to serve on your next Reunion committee.
158. Put BLUEberries on your ORANGE sherbert all summer long.
159. Congratulate the Class of 2007
160. Attend a regional send-off to?welcome the Class of 2011.
161. Offer a summer internship to a Gettysburg student.
162. Read Yonder Beautiful and Stately College Edifice, a new book about Pennsylvania Hall by?Professor Emeritus Charles Glatfelter '46.?