Publication: A Princeton Companion
Poler's Recess a ten-minute break in cramming for exams, was a Princeton custom noisily observed from the turn of the century almost up to the Second World War. The recess occurred every night during the final examination period. As soon as the nine o'clock bell began to ring, all windows on campus were opened and all means employed to produce a din that would divert the most diligent poler from his work. (``Poler'' was an old Princeton synonym for ``grind.'')* Firecrackers were exploded, pistols, revolvers, and shotguns fired with blank cartridges, horns blown, drums and tin pans beaten. As an undergraduate writer observed in 1918, it was ``probably the most juvenile'' of all campus customs, but it brought ``a welcome break for everyone in a long night's hard work.''
Poler's Recess was revived after World War II in response to the urging of a young alumnus in a letter to the Princetonian of January 20, 1949. He proposed that beginning at 11 p.m. (rather than at 9, so as not to disturb those taking evening exams), with the cry of ``Take ten,'' ten minutes be given over to total pandemonium, and that thereafter absolute silence should prevail.
In the same issue of the Prince, ``Examinitus'' reported that local doctors thought the break would relieve tensions and heighten morale and probably raise each student's marks from one to three grades. He quoted ``a prominent psychologist'' as saying: ``The break will be of incalculable aid to all those suffering from mental blocks, hallucinations, paranoia, schizophrenia, psychosis, neurosis, and blocking of the digestive tract.''
That night undergraduates responded enthusiastically, and the next morning the Princetonian pronounced the revival an unqualified success, awarding championship honors to Holder Court, where students staged a mock battle with blank cartridges and flaming tennis balls and ``Let the entire borough know they had discarded their books.''
But observance of the ``11 p.m. catharsis'' was sporadic the next year or two and then faded out. Fairly typical was the reaction of one undergraduate who told the Prince that he had enough interruptions already, what with listening to the evening news and then ``taking time out for milk, sandwiches, ice cream (and pie).''
*B. H. Hall, in College Words and Customs (1851), records that at Princeton, and also at Union College, ``poler'' meant one who studies hard, and he suggests that the meaning was derived by analogy from the laborious poling of a boat.
From Alexander Leitch, A Princeton Companion, copyright Princeton University Press (1978).