When Helen Osborn, a member of the Class of 1906, became a teacher at CSG, she designed a crest for the school that first appeared in a school songbook in 1915. Miss Osborn originally coupled the red rose, earlier designated the school flower and symbol, with the unicorn from the Gothic legend, The Lady and the Unicorn. The floral symbol of girlhood is protected by the fierce Unicorn, with an open book bearing obvious significance for a school. The school motto is printed on a banner below the crest. The school colors, red and gold, were chosen earlier to symbolize the colors of the dawn. Since the 1970s the Unicorn no longer appears on the Crest, but is still used to represent CSG Athletics.

CSG has always emphasized the importance of community service, and Service Club is an important part of the school. Each student is expected to participate in class outreach projects, from tutoring, to Canned Food Drives, to hospital work. Students have even built a house for Habitat for Humanity. This sense of noblesse oblige has been instilled in our students throughout the more than a century of educating young women at CSG.

In March, on the Friday before Spring Break, the seniors host a festive occasion called Senior Day, which was formerly held prior to the Senior May Programs. The seniors provide games and events in both gymnasiums for all the students of CSG in order to raise the funds for their class gift to the school. This joyous occasion has taken place almost since the school was founded, and demonstrates the graduating seniors’ understanding of supporting and giving back to their school.

The school year formally opens with a Convocation service. This tradition began in 1966 and is held on the first Friday of the school year. The entire school community is invited to join the students in welcoming a new year and listen to messages from the Head of School, Student Council Presidents, and an esteemed guest speaker. In formal Assembly style, complete with flags, service, and dress uniforms, the opening exercises are an inspiring and distinctive tradition.

The Thanksgiving program stands as a testimony to a century of tradition. A favorite program of many, this service celebrates, in ever-changing expressions of thanks, the American holiday. Songs that have endured for more than 100 years provide the framework around which unique contributions from students and faculty create a memorable program for the entire school. Many young alumnae look forward to a reunion with friends at the program.
 

A highlight of the program each year is the presentation of Over the River and Through the Woods by the students from the Program for Young Children. This unpredictable and irresistible rendition by the youngest members of the CSG community is usually rewarded with a standing ovation from their schoolmates.
 

Another important segment of the program is the presentation to the head of School of the Scholarship Walk proceeds by the Service Club officers. This is also the time for presenting the Golden Foot and the Lead Foot Awards.
 

The Thanksgiving program culminates with selections from CSG musicians. In recent years, the choirs have been joined by the band and orchestra to present music that, for many, encompasses the essence of Thanksgiving and sets the tone for the upcoming holiday season.

In the earliest days of the school, the two founding headmistresses, Miss Scott and Miss Kelley, gave a Christmas party for the Junior and Senior girls. It was a very popular event, and a description was included in the 1902 Topknot. In 1906, Bryden Hall was the scene of the first Christmas party hosted by Miss Gladden and Miss Jones for the Upper School students, faculty members, and many returning alumnae. Over the years, the dinner has become a major function held in honor of the seniors. The toasts given each year originated in that gathering held in the school’s Bryden Hall at Parsons Place. As the Holiday Dinner evolved from its simple beginning, Trustees and parents of seniors were invited to join in the formal occasion. The evening includes the class flags, an address by a faculty member (whose identity is kept secret until that evening), a program by members of the graduating class and, of course, dinner.

The pursuit of excellence at the secondary school level is the hallmark of those elected to join the Cum Laude Society. CSG students and faculty have been among the ranks of the esteemed national organization since 1938. Students in the top 20% of their class are eligible for consideration by faculty members of the society.

An induction ceremony is held during a school assembly program. A member of the CSG community is honored as the event’s guest speaker, and a reception for the new members, their families, and faculty is held following the speaker’s remarks.

Each year, the Lower School ceremony recognizes the Form V students as teachers read a summary that each girl has written about her elementary experiences. The traditional Senior Serenade is the Lower School’s farewell to the graduating class, with To Fill the World With Love being a favorite of Seniors and parents.

Each year, since the inception of the Middle School, a ceremony is held to recognize students who have achieved in the areas of citizenship, scholarship, and athletics. The ceremony is designed to promote the excellence that is a goal of CSG. It is, in a sense, a commencement for girls leaving the Form VIII and entering the Upper School. During this program, the Senior Class processes in a short ceremony to pass down their class flag, class song, and class mascot.

This special evening during graduation week is an occasion that honors those students who have worked toward excellence with the context of the expectations of the Upper School forms. The evening also recognizes outstanding achievements.

The first school graduation in 1899 was the culmination of the founders’ dreams. Two girls received diplomas in a ceremony conducted in the schoolhouse on East Town Street. Dressed in white frocks and carrying field daisies, the graduates set the pattern for future celebrations. The daisies were replaced by red roses in 1905, but the long white gowns and many of the elements that contributed to the pageantry have remained.
 

Faculty, processing in order of seniority and adorned with hoods appropriate to their advanced degrees, have always participated in the event. After the school was incorporated in 1927, the Chairman of the Board of Trustees joined the ceremonies and since that time has presented the graduates with their diplomas.
 

In 1996, Commencement returned to its original location, the school campus. The Seniors, in white gowns and carrying red roses, process to William Walton’s Orb and Sceptre. They receive their diplomas on the stately portico facing Broad Street. Form VI Little Sisters honor their Big Sisters as they form a line for the recessional and hold a garland on either side of the aisle. After a reception in the Spirit Courtyard, the Seniors are serenaded by their sister class.

In 1972, the traditional Senior Stairs, located at the main entrance of CSG, were enthusiastically traded for the senior commons, the room that opened onto the Senior Courtyard. After the major renovations and new construction in 1994, the seniors began to again use the Senior Stairs as access to their new commons area in the upstairs of the mansion.

The courtyard, which is still reserved for the seniors, contains a piece of marble that came from the same strata of rock that produced the Parthenon. The marble was given to the school by Katharine Sater '25 and is mounted on Ohio sandstone. The focal point of the courtyard is a fountain sculpted by Carol B. Clark, who was the Upper School Art Teacher and Chair of the Art Department for 24 years. It represents a young girl embracing a unicorn, which is the emblem of Columbus School for Girls. For a number of years, each senior created a sand casting that was personally designed and placed upon the courtyard walls as a memento of her life at CSG.

Head of School Miss Grace Latimer Jones (later Mrs. McClure), initiated the use of school and class flags at CSG after a 1911 visit to a festival celebrated since the Middle Ages in Sienna, Italy. Individual class colors were combined with red or gold, and at commencement in June 1912 the flags were used for the first time. There had been class colors from the first, but 1911 saw the initial use of alternative red and gold classes, from which the Red and Gold Teams later arose. The class flags are carried by the student leadership of each class, and the American and school flags are carried by the student leadership of the school. They became an integral part of the regular assemblies. In a ceremony held during commencement week since 1912, the outgoing senior class presents its flag to the incoming Seventh Form. Thus, the tradition of class flags continues to be a part of Columbus School for Girls.

Alice Gladden, the daughter of a nationally renowned Congregational minister, and Grace Latimer Jones took the reins of school leadership shortly after it was founded. They worked together for nearly a quarter of a century, and after Miss Gladden’s death in 1926, Mrs. McClure continued alone for 12 more years to establish a way of life for their students. The influences of Miss Gladden’s and Miss Jones’ backgrounds are evident in practices that continue to distinguish CSG and to tie generations of alumnae to one another.

Perhaps the oldest such practice is that of the Assembly. From the earliest times, morning prayer was held daily, and services were written by the Headmistresses. Formal Assemblies began when Miss Gladden adopted the form with which all alumnae are now so familiar. It opened with the Invocation, followed by a responsive reading, a hymn, a prayer, and closed with a Response. The responsive reading that first morning in 1904 is one still used nearly a century later. Today, once a week, each school division meets for a program that ranges from student presentations to professional performances and is intended to augment the girls’ studies.

The “dittoed sheet” used by our early headmistresses and the various editions of The Book of Services have evolved along with the school to reflect a range of religious and secular traditions.

The unicorn, the symbol of purity in heraldry, is particularly appropriate as a symbol for a girl’s school. It was, however, as a figure in the old Gothic legend of The Lady and the Unicorn that it was chosen for the crest of the Columbus School for Girls’ coat of arms.

The best known representation of the Lady and the Unicorn legend is seen in the Cluny Museum in Paris, France, where there are six beautiful tapestries known by that name. The story that these tapestries tell is one of infinite charm.

In an enchanted wood dwells a lady, tall, of noble bearing, and wondrously fair. Around her, among the myriad little flowers, the beauties of the mystical forest circle, little animals disport themselves. On each side of the lovely lady, who is attended by a demure maid, stands, rampant, a faithful beast, upholding the standards of maidenhood. These guardians are the lion and the unicorn, but it is the swift, fierce unicorn that is especially famed in many an old legend as the protector of fair young womanhood.

In the coat of arms of the Columbus School for Girls, there are portrayed three roses, symbols of girlhood; and above them, rampant, as if on guard, is the protector of girlhood, the faithful and mythical unicorn. The unicorn was never used alone as a school symbol until the 1970s, when the increase in women’s athletics created the need for an active mascot of the school.