@f0x My friends from Bryn Mawr college told me that the reason they have so many strange and varied traditions is because "anything that happens twice is a tradition."

With that criteria, it's quite easy for traditions to have been started by people who are very much alive, and perhaps haven't even graduated yet.

Still probably peer pressure, though.

@f0x There is good and bad peer pressure. My youngest daughter was potty trained by the time she was 18 months old because none of the older ones were going to show her up. If they could do it, she was determined to show that she could, too.