First held on May 17, 1926, Aloha Oe was a ceremony in which seniors bade farewell to their alma mater. The first event, held on Shields-Watkins Field, featured the military unit and the band parading, a muddy tug-of-war between freshman and sophomore teams, and female students clad in grass skirts and strumming ukuleles. In keeping with the May theme, students from the Women’s Physical Education Department were scheduled to present a maypole dance, with music furnished by an old piano mounted on a truck. In the middle of the dance, the dancers became confused and, unable to complete their routine, became a mass of bumping heads. The dance was called off during the performance. The 1926 crowd was estimated at twelve hundred.
In 1927 the tug-of-war occasioned two slight casualties—a policeman and a female spectator were knocked off their feet. Tugs-of-war were henceforth discontinued.
The lighting of the torch was introduced in 1927. The formation of the lighted T first happened by accident in 1927. As the seniors filed up steps to the Hill, several turned back to look down on the field—some to the right and some to the left, forming a relatively ragged T. In the next year, the forming of the T was made a principal feature of the event.
By 1935 Aloha Oe had evolved into an impressive farewell set in the stadium, with all seniors lighting candles to signify acceptance of the Torch of Service and pledging to serve both the university and their community as responsible and loyal adults by reciting the Senior Pledge in Unison: I, _____, as I leave The Hill pledge my unswerving loyalty to The University, and promise that Time itself shall but strengthen my love and devotion to my Alma Mater. The ceremony concluded with the seniors moving up the Hill to form a lighted T, then singing the “Alma Mater.” Then “The Holy City” was played and the university dead were commemorated by a lighted cross on Ayres Tower, after which a bugler played “Taps” from the top of the tower, silhouetted against the sky. The ceremony featured the passing of a toga to the outstanding junior. In 1937 (when the crowd was estimated at ten thousand) the outstanding junior became known as the Volunteer of the Year.
The name Aloha Oe was undoubtedly taken from the song written by Her Majesty Queen Liliuokalani, the last Hawaiian monarch, who ruled from 1891 to 1893. “Aloha Oe” is the most famous of the compositions of the royal family of Hawaii and is one of over 150 songs written by Queen Liliuokalani. (The English lyrics were devised by Charles E. King in 1923.) Appropriately, the royal standard of the queen’s family was the burning torch.
The ceremony eventually stopped in 1967, revived in a modified format in 1997, discontinued in 2006, and revived again in 2007 by a bill passed by the SGA to reinstate the UT tradition as part of the 2008 Kickoff to Commencement celebration.