In 1857, Massachusetts Governor Joel Hayden of Haydenville donated funds to Amherst College for the building of a state of the goddess Sabrina. The statue was built that very same year, and weighing at a bit over three hundred pounds and standing at a height of four-and-a-half feet, it quietly sat in the flowerbed between North Dormitory and the Octagon.
The statue remained peacefully until 1860, when an Amherst student adorned the statue in clothing, which would later become a trend for students looking for a quick laugh. That same student, after being harshly reprimanded by College authorities for his offense, later struck the statue with an axe, causing that was later repaired.
The abuse of the statue continued. In 1870, after the expulsion of one of their numbers, the class of 1870 had the entire statue whitewashed. By 1884, the statue had found itself dumped on the roof of the octagon, placed on the chapel tower, and thrown into the college well.
By this time, the President Seeyle of the college had already considering seeking an end to the exploits of his students. He assigned the college janitor ‘Professor Charlie’ a task – to destroy the statue. Professor Charlie, however, fell for the beauty of the statue and, instead of destroying it, hid it under a pile of hay in his barn, where it remained for two years.
Then, in an event that is as surprising as it is unlikely, the goddess Sabrina is said to have appeared to two members of the class of 1890. It was then that the goddess announced itself to the two men and effectively began a feud that would last for a long while.
What began as a relatively simple purloin quickly developed into a conflict 
among classes as the class of 1889 stole the statue from the class of 1890. 1889 soon passed the statue on to the class of 1891, which resisted 1890’s repeated attempts to steal the statue back.
The tradition continued, with Sabrina being hidden in all sorts of places, including coal mines, bank vaults, and the bottom of the Connecticut River. Protected by ‘Sabrina Men’ who were also assigned to present the statue to fellow members of their class each year, the statue has been held primarily by members of even-numbered years
Sabrina made an appearance in 2005 at the class of 1980’s 25th reunion. Not in the best shape due, the statue was once again hidden away by the class.
Sources:
Shoop, Max. Sabrina: The Goddess of Amherst College. 1910.
In the midst of the Cold War, when concerns of nuclear attack by Russia bordered on hysteria, the U.S. Strategic Air Command created a “nuclear war relocation site” on the Holyoke Mountain Range in Western Massachusetts. This 44,000 ft² bunker, built on twenty-seven acres of land,was created with the intention of giving the U.S. military a chance to strike back in the event of nuclear attack. Equipped with its own water supply and electrical system, the bunker had the ability to keep three hundred people alive for forty days.
But as concerns over nuclear holocaust lessened, and major military bases were relocated from the east coast to the Mid-West, the bunker began to lose its utility. By 1972, the SAC bunker, built to withstand all but a direct nuclear attack, was converted into a Federal Reserve storage facility.
In 1992, the Federal Reserve put the bunker up for auction. Seeing the use of the bunker as an off-site storage facility for library materials, Amherst College placed a bid and on October 7th, 1992, purchased the bunker for $510, 000. Renovations were soon underway and by 1994, the 38-room Amherst College Depository was opened.
In terms of scale, this bunker had “three times as much space as the White House and four times as much space as Mt. Vernon.” (Amherst Volume 45, Number 1, Fall 1992 “Bunker is a Bargain”)The possession of the massive storage facility enabled Amherst College to move large numbers of furniture, supplies, records and books off campus, freeing up space in the Robert Frost Memorial Library for what would eventually become the A-Level Media Center. By 2002, the remaining four colleges of the Five Colleges- Holyoke College, University of Massachusetts Amherst, Hampshire College, and Smith College – also relocated many of their materials to the bunker, creating The Five College Depository.
Amherst College offers tours of the facility each year during alumni reunions. The Five College Libary Depository website offers directions here.
