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Dragon Day is a Cornell tradition that goes back more than 100 years. It has evolved into a day of spirited rivalry between Cornell architecture and engineering students. Every year in mid-March, the Architecture, Art, and Planning freshmen rally to bring their dragon to the Engineering Quad. Our rival phoenix is underfunded to properly represent Cornell Engineering. Our goal is to inspire unity across the different engineering disciplines by construction a phoenix that represents all engineering students on Dragon Day 2017!
Phoenix Society History
Dragon Day started in 1901 when architecture student Williard Straight of the class of 1901 led a group of architecture students around campus carrying a model dragon. This tradition evolved through the years, and Dragon Day as it is celebrated today started sometime in the 1950s.
In the 1980s, the engineers became inspired to join the festivities and show off their talents as well. In the spring of 1987, a group of engineering students organized a response to Dragon Day. The group chose to create a majestic phoenix to hover over the engineering quad as the dragon passed by. Not satisfied with this being a one year performance, the group founded the Phoenix Society and vowed to challenge the dragon annually with an engineering rival. Over the next few decades, the group built a number of different creatures, including a penguin, a knight, and a cobra. Ultimately, the tradition has become to build a phoenix.
Engineering Spirit
Phoenix Society brings together engineers from all majors to do what we love—taking an idea and building it into something amazing through the application of concepts. Our phoenix is built to show our pride in what we do and remind the rest of campus of our presence. It is a representation of all of us engineers and our drive to create new structures or products. The Phoenix Society has members from many of the different engineering majors, including chemical engineering, civil engineering, biological engineering, mechanical engineering, applied engineering physics, environmental engineering, and computer science.
Beyond Dragon Day
The Phoenix Society wants to extend the love for engineering to students in middle school and high school through programs that introduce engineering concepts. We want to help students understand what engineering is so more of them will consider it as a potential career field, and give them hands-on experience, that students often do not have at such a young age.
We have one goal in mind – to build a Phoenix that rivals the Dragon on Dragon Day 2017. Help us by making a gift and we’ll share our journey with you this year!
Your donation will help us add details to our phoenix with spray paint and feathers.
Your donation will help us purchase the basic supplies we rely on, such as wire and nails.
Your donation will help us purchase important materials, such as wood and cloth.
Your donation at this level will help give us access to the training we need.
Now we're cooking! Your donation will help us take our designs to the next level with metal and moving mechanical parts.
We're building something big! Your donation will help with the transportation cost to get us to the parade on Dragon Day.
Is this the year the Engineers out do the Architects? With your help we'll update our lab space to build something incredible.