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Every spring they conduct Tree Week, which basically consists of contestants' staging bizarre stunts and/or bribing the selection committee, which consists of the incumbent Tree and band leaders. The Stanford Daily student newspaper provides front-page coverage of the week (which actually lasts longer than a week).
There are three basic rules for Tree Week:
Don't light yourself on fire. (There is folklore about one aspiring Tree who -- this being Stanford -- wrote a five-page paper detailing how he could light himself on fire without actually being injured. He didn't win.)
Don't go to jail.
Don't go to the hospital.
Pretty much anything else goes. This year's Tree, Whipple, helped secure the job last spring by affixing leeches in the shape of the Tree on his back. He still has a scar on his lower back from one particularly tenacious leech.
The Stanford Band, affectionately known as LSJUMB, does not march and encourages pieces of flair on the members' signature white hats.
Among this year's aspirants, one actually bit the head off a live, two-foot snake and then swallowed the still-writhing critter. He didn't win, perhaps in part because the tree selectors saw what the wrath of animal-rights activists did to Michael Vick. There are limits, even for Trees.
When I arrived on campus last Thursday, the new Tree had just been picked: Patrick "Patchez" Fortune, a junior from Fresno, Calif. Fortune had staged a public boxing match to further his cause, and he also came through with a big-time bribe by setting up a beer pong game between Whipple and one of the Stanford basketball players.
After the momentous announcement was made, the Daily carried a front-page color photo of Fortune wearing a flaming horned helmet. His facial expression was dead serious.
More funny stuff inside the article.
Go Cardinal!
