Which College Urban Legends Are For Real?

May 21st, 2009

Have you ever played the icebreaker game “Two truths and a lie”? Basically, each person tells the group three things about herself, and the group has to decide which two items are true, and which one is the lie.

Sound easy? Try your hand at the game with these college urban legends. Choose the lie before scrolling down for the answers. No cheating!

The Legends

1. Dissect an Aunt
Imagine rolling up your sleeves for gross anatomy lab, only to discover that you are, in fact, seeing dead people – and one of the cadavers is someone you’ve seen before. It happened to a medical student who discovered that one of the cadavers presented to her class was her great aunt. Of course, a different cadaver was immediately substituted by the state anatomical board.

2. Doing Laps to Get a Degree
At Columbia University, a stellar student who completed his degree requirements in three years, finished at the top of his class, and later earned a Ph.D. from Columbia and taught at Columbia was denied his bachelor’s degree because he failed to pass the mandatory school swim test. After informing Columbia that he had since learned how to swim and asking the school to waive his disqualification, he was finally granted his bachelor’s degree – 60 years later.

3. Beware the Brothel
Have you ever wondered why your school doesn’t have a sorority house? It might be because of local brothel laws, which prohibit more than a specified number of unrelated females from living together. In these municipalities, sorority houses are illegal … so members of the sisterhood stay in the dorms.

Truth or Lie?

1. Dissect an Aunt: It’s true, and it happened in 1982 at the University of Alabama School of Medicine. Other urban legends about discovering the cadaver of a long-lost parent or a celebrity, however, are false, including the tale of the corpse of English novelist Laurence Sterne, who died in 1768. But the fact that it could happen and it has happened is creepy enough!

2. Doing Laps: This one’s for real, too. In 1923, Dr. Mortimer J. Adler was denied his bachelor’s degree from Columbia because he couldn’t pass the mandatory swim test. Actually, Columbia and a handful of other schools still require students to pass a swim test before graduation. Untrue urban legends about university swim tests do abound, however, citing that the tests came at the behest of a wealthy benefactor whose own child drowned.

3. Beware the Brothel: Despite constant retelling at colleges across the country, there are no “brothel laws” that tie a building’s classification as a bordello to the number and gender of its occupants. Some municipalities do have zoning laws that prohibit more than a specified number of nonfamily members from living together, but buildings in violation of those codes would only be labeled a brothel on the basis of what goes on inside the house. Plus, sororities and fraternities are exempt from those housing restrictions.

Comment up: What’s your favorite college urban legend?

– Robyn Tellefsen

Entry Filed under: College Craziness, College Trends, Pop culture & college