The annual Watermelon Drop is UC San Diego’s oldest tradition. The event took place Friday, before finals week when this year’s “Watermelon Queen” Justine Hopkins, a second-year theatre major, raced up seven stories of Urey Hall to drop the sacrificial fruit into history. The goal is to break the 1974 splat record of 167 feet, 4 inches. However, this year’s farthest splat missed the mark, coming in at 67 feet, 11 inches. This campus ritual started in 1965 as a physics experiment to determine the terminal velocity of a watermelon when it hits the ground at more than 100 miles per hour.
The annual festival, which has been a campus tradition for more than three decades, once again reached capacity this year, with 23,000 students, alumni, faculty, staff and guests attending.
Students, staff and faculty at the University of California, San Diego paid homage to Mother Earth during the university’s annual Earth Week celebration.
The Triton spirit was on display Saturday for the second annual Triton Day. The event drew a crowd of more than 20,000 guests. Admitted students and their families and members of the campus and local community gathered to take part in the day’s events and activities, which ranged from college tours to student organization fairs and open houses.
