At orientation, in the week before finals and again on commencement day, older students tell this one on the main campus walk, usually to someone who has read the plaque and asked.
The stake marked the end of an Institute survey, they say. It was the last stake of a loop, a line run all the way around and back to where it started, so it marked the start as well. The crew that drove it walked their line all season through brush and cut-over slopes, and when they ran the figures, the loop closed with no error at all. Faculty will tell anyone who asks that no survey in the field closes exactly. Students take that as proof.
Each set of final examinations, the older students say, is a station on your own line, and you lay a hand on the stake to mark it. Seniors come back on commencement day to close the loop.
The mark cut in one face has worn down to a plus sign. In every class, half the students swear it read 0+00, where the line begins. The rest say it gave the length of the whole loop, and no two classes have ever agreed on what that was.
There are two tellings of how it reached the walk: a graduating class carried it up off the hillsides and set it in the sandstone, or the loop began right here and the walks were laid out later to cross at it.
Around the copper tack the top is worn smooth and dark from hands, while down the sides, toward the bronze collar, the redwood has gone gray and split. It gets a flat palm and nothing more.
On commencement day the seniors line up for it in their gowns, and the walks stay blocked in every direction until the last of them has had a turn.
Out of character: in play.
- The stake stands where two walks cross on the main campus walk.
- Walk up and touch the stake for a line only you see, or touch the plaque for a notecard.
- The custom is a hand laid on it, never a knock.
- Your character can keep the custom, skip it or laugh at it.
- Leave nothing at the stake.