Purdue Commencement

At the commencement exercises for Purdue University’s engineering schools, graduates of each school stood en masse to be recognized by the dean of engineering. When the aeronautical-engineering students rose, they launched a swarm of paper airplanes toward the stage, where the university’s president and other dignitaries were sitting. After students from all the schools had risen in turn, the president stepped up to the rostrum. Looking at the paper planes covering the stage floor, he remarked, “I’m very glad the agricultural-engineering graduates decided not to throw anything.”

Reader’s Digest, May 1990, p. 28