How the Pembroke Seal Got Its Curse, and Other Stories

Are you a Brown tour guide? Do you pride yourself on your knowledge of Brown trivia? Do you just want to know more about the history of the institution that you attend? Read on.

The Creation of Brown University

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On the sixth day, Brown students were created to cultivate, rule over, and care for Brown University. All they had to do was eat and sleep and hang out with each other, and for a while it was a great time. They were allowed to use all the technology at Brown, with one exception: they were forbidden to use any Apple products. One day, out of healthy intellectual curiosity, one of the students pulled out her iPhone to figure out whether Neil Armstrong was dead yet. He was. From then on Brown students had to go to class every weekday and leave once they graduated. Lots of people at Brown use Apple products now, but to this day there are still no Apple department computers.

How Hope Got Its Name

Many years ago, when the annual Housing Lottery was looming, one housing group still needed to pick a group leader. One day when they were all hanging out together one of the students in the group yelled, “I volunteer!! I volunteer as group leader!” The other students said, “Geez ok! Wow. Thanks,” and the stage was set. The lottery required extensive preparation, and the group leader worked tirelessly. She made complex flow charts and graphs, hoping that her entire group would be able to live together on the main green. When it was time to pick rooms, it was a battle to the death, but she managed to get her whole group into the dorm they wanted. Since that dorm had embodied all her hope, it became known as Hope. Some say that if you search Google at just the right angle, you can still see gifs of her talking about pizza.

Do you see it? Move your head to the left a little.

How the Pembroke Seal Got Its Curse

Brown University was once divided into seven kingdoms. These kingdoms existed among one another peacefully for many years, but one day, the ruler of Grad Center decided to unite all the kingdoms as one. A great war broke out from the far islands of Young O and Perkins to the North Wall beyond Pembroke. Because of Pembroke’s tactical position way the fuck out from everything else, it was able to hold out the longest. Thousands of people died trying to conquer Pembroke, so when it finally fell, the new ruler decided to put a curse on the Pembroke seal to both punish Pembroke and rejuvenate the population of the kingdom. Now, when a male student steps on the seal, he will not graduate, and when a female student steps on the seal, she will become pregnant with a bastard child, surname Snow.

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