It?s tradition. Every UR student should at one point or another go to paint the rock outside the Susan B. Anthony Residence Halls. The rock has played a significant part in UR history since 1967, when it was placed outside SBA after being unearthed when Rush Rhees Library was enlarged.
During construction, builders were going to use dynamite to break the rock into pieces. However, when Robert Metzdorf, a member of the Trustees? Council of Alumni Advisors saw the rock, he suggested that it should be removed and saved for novelty.
In fact, the rock was referred to by some as ?Mount Metzdorf.?
The decision to put the rock outside SBA was made either by former University President Allen Wallis or his assistant Kenneth Wood. A part of the reasoning was that it would be fairly close to the library excavation.
?Maybe they put it in front of SBA thinking that the students will figure out something,? Vice President and University Dean of Students Paul Burgett said.
After the construction workers placed the rock in front of SBA, UR hired geologists to work with the rock and uncover its history.
Its history began 400 million years ago when this area was covered by the warm and shallow Silurian sea and ended 10,000 years ago at the end of ice age here. It is a part of the Lockport dynamite, an extensive rock unit that was formed during that time.
?The rock, which looks like a block carved from a piece of graying Swiss cheese, was found buried in the sands that make up the ridge that extends from the River Campus east to Cobbs Hill,? professor of geology Lawrence Lundgren said in a university report.
Since its original placing outside the residence hall, it has been moved once when there were renovations at SBA in 1986.
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