What better way to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day than to watch a bunch of gingers run down Linden Avenue?
The St. Patrick’s Day darty is the one time a year Cornell stops feeling like an Ivy League and starts feeling like a full-on party school: waking up at 8 a.m. to pregame, fighting your way onto a crowded TCAT (if you even can), wandering through Collegetown and going door to door at random fraternity houses with a mass of people dressed in green, borgs in hand.
For a few hours, problem sets and papers fade into the background. Students pour out into Collegetown, bonded less by coursework and more by borgs filled with something that suspiciously resembles green Gatorade. Even with prelim season looming and that final push before spring break underway, nothing quite competes with St. Paddy’s. Not even prelims are enough to keep people from showing up bright and early to these darties — it’s almost ironic how easily we make it to these, but somehow can’t manage the same for our 8 a.m. lectures.
And maybe that’s what makes it feel so distinctly Cornell: the chaos still has its own kind of order. Even the borgs aren’t just thrown together — they’re named, claimed and weirdly personal. Mine, Maya Rothborg, felt like a small but meaningful victory, a reminder that in the middle of all the noise, there’s still room for individuality. It’s this mix of collective energy and oddly specific traditions that transforms Cornell, if only for a day, into something entirely different.
Each year, as March 17 approaches and Ithaca begins to thaw from its long winter, a peculiar and beloved tradition returns: the Ginger Run (or Run of the Gingers). Equal parts chaotic, hilarious and oddly heartwarming, the event transforms Linden Avenue into a blur of red hair, green attire and cheering onlookers.
The premise is simple. At an agreed-upon time — spread through group chats, Instagram stories and word-of-mouth whispers — a crowd gathers. Then, suddenly, they’re off: a pack of self-identified “gingers” sprinting down the street while spectators line the sidewalks, phones out, laughter echoing between the buildings.
But this year, the chaos didn’t stop there. A new layer of absurdity entered the St. Patrick’s Day lineup: the so-called “Battle of the Gingers.” What started as an Instagram post by Cornell’s Big Red Moon Club quickly spiraled into its own kind of spectacle, pitting iconic redheads like Ed Sheeran and Chappell Roan against a far more niche contender: Cornell’s own Jordy at Corny.
Referencing Big Red Moon Club’s Instagram, which dubbed the celebration the “Ginger Event of the Year,” Jordan Sang ’28 said, “I loved how Big Red Moon Club brought gingers together and gave us the representation we needed. After all, St. Patrick’s Day is our holiday!”
Sang’s excitement about St. Patrick’s Day is clearly shared across the Cornell community. Big Red Moon Club’s celebration in Uris Hall spotlighted Cornell’s favorite ginger and turned the moment into a campus-wide inside joke that students could rally around.
What makes this addition feel so fitting is how seamlessly it blends into the existing chaos of the day. Cornell already has its staple tradition in the Ginger Run — a fully physical, in-the-moment spectacle where students pack Linden Avenue to watch it unfold in real time. But the dedication students have to push the celebration even further is almost impressive in itself. The “Battle of the Gingers,” by contrast, lives entirely online — circulating through Instagram stories, Sidechat posts and inside jokes. Together, they highlight both sides of student life: the tangible, on-the-ground chaos and the digital commentary that keeps it going long after the moment passes.
On paper, both events sound ridiculous. In practice, that’s exactly the point. College traditions often toe the line between meaningful and meaningless, and these comfortably sit somewhere in between. They don’t commemorate a historic event or raise money for a cause. Instead, they thrive on spontaneity, humor and a shared understanding that sometimes, the best moments are the ones that don’t take themselves seriously at all.
And yet, they speak to something deeper about campus life. Cornell can feel intense, isolating and relentlessly driven. Events like these — unstructured, unserious and entirely student-driven — create rare moments of collective joy that bring the much needed unseriousness that Cornell students must feel every once in a while. You don’t have to run down Linden or argue in an Instagram comment section to feel included: just being there, laughing alongside strangers, is enough.
There’s also something uniquely fitting about the timing. St. Patrick’s Day, a holiday built on exaggerated displays of identity and festivity, sets the stage perfectly. While most celebrations revolve around green everything, Cornell, along with many other universities that participate in a collective and once-a-year celebration of the gingers, manages to make room for something else entirely: a celebration of red hair, internet humor and the kind of chaos that only makes sense if you’re in it.
Of course, like many informal traditions, questions about safety, crowd control and respect for the surrounding community inevitably arise. Linden Avenue isn’t just a stage for student antics; it’s also a residential space. As these traditions continue to grow — both on the ground and online — balancing fun with responsibility becomes increasingly important.
Still, it’s hard to deny the charm, or should I say, lucky charm?
Maya Rothbard is a sophomore in the College of Arts and Sciences. She can be reached at msr295@cornell.edu.
