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The Peregrinus

Timeline

1910: Law students kidnap Alec from the engineering students on his second birthday.

1912: Peregrinus dismembered and shipped to the far corners of the state.

1913: Law Students hide Alec on a Pflugerville pig farm. Engineering students retrieve the statute and put him in a bank vault.

1916: Law students charge Alec with vagrancy. He is convicted, but Gov. Jim “Pa” Ferguson pardons the mascot and returns him to the engineering students.

1918: Law students seize and shred Alec. Pieces are mailed to engineering alumni around the world. “Perry” is put in a bank vault and law students boast that “Never has the begrimed, uncouth and hairy hand of a flannel-shirted minion of Alec been laid upon his sacred person.”

1921: Engineers capture Peregrinus. It is returned in 1925.

1934: Law students again lose a Peregrinus to the engineering students at the annual banquet. Newspaper article.

1937: Alec and the Peregrinus appear together for the first time in a Loyalty Day parade. The Daily Texan calls the event the “first treaty of alliance” for the rivals.

1938: Peace is short-lived as law students steal Alec, dismember him and hang his torso from a tree on campus. The torso is later displayed with Perry in the law library.

1939: A fistfight breaks out at the heavily-secured law banquet when engineers attempt to capture Perry.

1943: Law students nab Alec when the engineering students are at their annual dance. Two weeks later, engineering students dunk a few law students in the Littlefield fountain and shave the heads of a few others. The law students return Alec a week later in exchange for their hair. Both groups buy V-Day bonds as restitution. Letter regarding feud.

1987: Two engineering students recapture Alec’s torso from the law library and demand the Peregrinus as ransom. Judge Harley Clark (UT Law 1962) orders that the torso be surrendered to the Law School. Injunction.