Seven Seals Scots Day 2023

On Monmouth College’s seventh annual Scots Day of Giving, Tartan Nation stepped up again in a very big way, with 767 alumni, faculty, staff and students from around the United States combining to contribute $309,406 on April 13.

With around five hours left in the all-day event, a donor from Idaho came through, allowing the last remaining state to be shaded in, officially completing Tartan Nation.

“It all relies on our alumni, and I think they’ve come out in full force,” said Assistant Director of the Monmouth Fund Troy Hippen ’22 midway through the event. “We’re nine hours away from the end, and we’re already close to our dollar amount from last year,” when more than $232,000 was raised to support students and student programming.

The day started at 5 a.m. CDT with a livestream of bagpipes playing in front of Wallace Hall and concluded at 11:53 p.m. – 18 hours, 53 minutes later to commemorate Monmouth’s 1853 founding. This year’s Scots Day of Giving had that same general focus, as well as support for four specific programs: the Fighting Scots Society, SOFIA (Summer Opportunities for Intellectual Activity), the senior class gift and the Monmouth Fund.

Hippen appreciated the nationwide response, which included many alumni answering the call for their “Monmouth Seven” – seven memories or traditions they associate with their time as students.

“Despite the distance they might have from Monmouth, these are the things that bring them back to campus, no matter where they are,” he said.

One of Scots Day’s big hits was the Cash Cab, in which Hippen often rode shotgun with a microphone to interact with students, often while being livestreamed.

“I had some students tell me, ‘I think I’ll always remember my ZBT initiation,’ or ‘I’ll always remember my first football practice,’” said Hippen. “But I was also able to talk to students about giving back to campus — just hone in on educating them about the importance of giving back, whether that’s one year out of school, or 10 or 30 years down the road.”

And that is one of the beautiful things about Monmouth College. With its rich history of campus traditions, it seems very likely that the students who graduate in the 2020s, ’30s and ’40s will still be talking about bagpipes, Homecoming and the meaningful relationships they formed with their professors and college friends when that 2053 event — which will also be the College’s bicentennial — comes around.