The 5:30 Clap

At Duke East Campus in 2019, Term One, a very strange phenomenon began... every day at precisely 5:30 PM all of Duke East would join together for a thunderous clap.

How it Began

On a couple of occasions, a group of TiPsters would begin to clap for their friend/s at mealtime in the Marketplace. There is nothing unusual about this, however, it was discovered that when a small group of TiPsters would clap, other TiPsters would join in until the entire population of TiPsters was clapping along. Soon, TiPsters began to discover this tendency and decided to test it by clapping randomly. This yielded the same result. So, soon, TiPsters were testing this quite often, leading most people to expect a clap at almost every meal. Now, how this evolved to the 5:30 Clap is unknown. But within a couple of days, this became an activity that occurred every day at exactly 5:30 PM.

The Process

How did TiPsters know when it was time to begin? The two clocks in the Marketplace were broken, and TiPsters weren't allowed on their phones at mealtime. Nevertheless, there were always one or two TiPsters bending this phone rule when 5:30 came. They would be the ones to start the clap and upon their cue, everyone else would realize that the time had come again and join in. The general length of the clap was non-specific, with some days lasting only 15 to 30 seconds. However, on the last day, the clap lasted longer than a minute. (A small group of 3 TiPsters went much longer in a battle to see who could last the longest. It has been heavily disputed whether Katie Maddox or Madeline Ludwig won the battle since they both stopped clapping at around the same time. Yet, it is known that they managed to go for 23 minutes straight.)