Campus Landmarks
Frank Lloyd Wright designed this building, home to the annual Nelson Institute Earth Day Conference.
What is Monona Terrace?
This campus tradition registers on the Richter Scale. In fact, this campus tradition was stopped for a short period of time because is was unclear if it was safe enough for so many students to participate in together.
What is Jump Around?
Most folks know that when you graduate from UW-Madison, you sit in Abe's lap and whisper in his ear your hopes and dreams. However, if you do this before you graduate, this could happen.
What is Abe kicks you down Bascom Hill, and/or keep all of your hopes and dreams from coming true, or you flunk out of school?
The Botanical Garden at the intersection of University Avenue and Mills Street is home to a direct descendant of the apple tree that bore the falling fruit that inspired the notion of gravity by this famous physicist.
Who is Sir Issac Newton?
This student hot-spot is named after a badger’s den and is designed to reflect aspects of nature, such as dim lighting and dark wood.
What is the Sett?
When a Badger team wins a game, these people turn their hats around and wear them backward. The practice started in the 1920s to symbolize looking back at the Badger's victory in the days when they marched out with the departing crowd.
Who are the UW-Madison Marching Band?
Bohzo is the beloved, and possible fictional, serpent that many people in the 1940s claimed to have seen swimming around here.
What is Lake Mendota?
This all male residence hall was the first building constructed on campus. Its early-decades saw a series of wild adventures filled with pranks, ghosts, gunfire and the first nature studies of a young student named John Muir.
Sitting on top of our state's capitol, she is a gilded bronze statue that symbolizes the state motto, "Forward." She is 15 feet, 5 inches tall and weighs over 3 tons. In her left hand, she holds a globe with an eagle on it, and on top of her helmet is a badger, the state animal.
Who is "Wisconsin?"
Removed in the 1980s, this building used to have a slide for a fire escape. Students would break in just to ride it down, so faculty would throw buckets of water down after the students in retaliation.
Every homecoming hundreds of third-year law students take the end-zone at Camp Randall Stadium to throw this over the goal post. If they catch it coming down on the other side, the student will supposedly win their first case.
What is a cane?
Campus Landmarks
UW-Madison Firsts
Campus Traditions
Urban Legends
Famous Folks
This building used to house the Anatomy Department, in addition to many cadavers back in the day. However, people forgot to take them out, so students found random body parts in the building up until 1978. This leads many people to believe that this building is haunted.
What is Science Hall?
Our spirited fight song, "On, Wisconsin," was performed at the Red Gym for the first time November 11, 1909, by its composer, William T. Purdy, at a mass meeting before a football game against which Big 10 school?
What is University of Minnesota?
This person is considered a patron of the university because he signed the Morrill Act in 1862 that provided federal aid which paid for the land that UW-Madison was built on.
Who is Abe Lincoln?
These academic buildings on Langdon used to be a hospital that provided medical, surgical and therapeutic treatment for children in the 1930s. Name two of these three buildings.
What are Bardeen, Medical Sciences, and the Statistics Building?
In 1901 a strict dress code decided that freshmen would wear this to differentiate them from the rest of the student population. In 1923 however, following several weather-induced injuries, the policy was repealed.
What are small, dark green caps?
A popular, but wildly untrue rumor, about our chancellor Becky Blank is that she is actually this mythical creature.
Its first year holding classes in 1849, UW-Madison set tuition at this many dollars per year, which was about the same cost as buying one carton of eggs each week.
What is $20?
In 1973, the assistant attorney general suggested we forget about Bucky as our university's mascot and replace him with a lovable and productive cow with this name.
Who is "Henrietta Holstein?"
The cumulative gift of the graduating classes from 1917 to 1926, you can hear more than 56 bells play their rendition of On Wisconsin every Friday from this tower.
What is the Carillon Tower?
The annual Fill the Hill charity drive, which plants lawn flamingos on Bascom Hill, was inspired by a prank pulled by this legendary group. Fun Fact: The prank was so iconic that the plastic pink flamingo is now the official bird of Madison.
What is the Pail and Shovel Party?
Leading people to believe that the Statue of Liberty had been moved to Lake Mendota, the president and vice president of the University's student government took this much money from each student in order to pull off this impressive feat.
What is 10 cents?
The original UW marching Band, beginning around 1885, was composed of this many musicians.
What is 11?
A Junior studying microbiology at UW-Madison, this Posse scholar gained nation-wide recognition when he developed a groundbreaking vaccine for colon cancer.
Who is Kevin Stonewall?