In the context of Statue of William the Silent, discuss the Involvement in campus life of the History.
Rutgers students affectionately call the statue "Willie the Silent" and "Still Bill." According to student tradition, the statue is expected to whistle should a virgin happen to walk by.  However, Rutgers American studies professor and folklorist Angus Kress Gillespie remarked "But over the last 200 years, he hasn't yet whistled." Nevertheless, the statue has continued to be included in student life as the Voorhees Mall was used as the site of student and community events, graduation ceremonies (until 2007), pep rallies for the football team and other athletic teams, Dutch-American festivals, as well as protests including anti-war protests and strike rallies in the 1970s. On the afternoon of October 11, 1976, United States Senator Ted Kennedy of Massachusetts held a campaign rally at Rutgers during the presidential election of 1976. Kennedy addressed a crowd of approximately 1,000 students the Voorhees Mall in front of the statue of William the Silent. Before Kennedy began his speech he "had to quell boos and heckling by some students holding anti-Kennedy signs."Occasionally, the statue is a target of vandalism in ongoing historical rivalry between students of Rutgers and Princeton University. This rivalry which dates to the two schools playing the first intercollegiate football game in New Brunswick in 1869 and an escalating series of pranks and thefts "under the cover of night" including the theft of a cannon on the Princeton campus in 1875 that became known as the Rutgers–Princeton Cannon War.: pp.105, 107  Over the years, Princeton students have frequently doused the William the Silent statue with orange paint, usually in advance of athletic events. On October 11, 1947, before the annual football game between the two schools, "in the early hours of the morning a group of Tigers (i.e. Princeton students) infiltrated the Rutgers campus and painted the statue of William the Silent". In 2006, Rutgers police officers chased several vandals from the site, allegedly Princeton students, who had painted a large penis and the word "Princeton" several times on the statue.The statue was restored in 2006 with funds donated by the university's alumni from the Class of 1956. Approximately $150,000 in reunion campaign funds were used to restore the four historic gates on the university's historic Queens Campus and the William the Silent statue. It was cleaned to remove the effects of graffiti and transparent tape residue, and conservation efforts were needed to restore the statue's bronze casting and granite base.
presidential election of 1976 United States Senator Queens Campus Ted Kennedy first intercollegiate football game Princeton University folklorist Rutgers police officers Voorhees Mall American studies Rutgers–Princeton Cannon War vandalism penis ongoing historical rivalry William the Silent Massachusetts