Late in 2021 a fence built around King Chapel entrapped The Rock. The fencing was necessary during repair work on the chapel. However, it kept Cornellians from one of their favorite activities: painting The Rock. Belou Quimby ’19 used her imagination to create this species label and affixed it to the fence entrapping The Rock.We then had what appeared to be a Rock in a zoo enclosure—especially since our clever chemical stockroom manager, Belou Quimby ’19, used her imagination to create a species label and affixed it to the fence. For a few days the sign remained a mystery. Then someone leaked the truth, after which the Cornell bubble burst with the news and it came out in the Campus Newsletter.“This species exhibits a variety of social behaviors,” reads the label, “as it can be found letting students paint it a variety of different colors, swimming in Ink Pond on hot summer days, burrowing under the earth for years at a time, being on fire surrounded by other species, and performing a seemingly random migration to Coe and back.”The entrapment ended suddenly one day in mid-April when Facilities staff moved the fence so The Rock was just outside its perimeter. Perhaps it wasn’t such a bad thing. Both King Chapel and The Rock arrived on campus in the 1880s, and so much has happened since. They enjoyed a little down time together for a few months. Old Sem, with only one wall blocked by the fencing, may have been jealous of their shared respite though, since she was there first.
