On Arkansas’ Senior Walk, Your Name Lasts Forever

Graduation isn’t the only thing on the minds of seniors approaching the end of their time at the University of Arkansas.

They’re also passionate about having their names immortalized on the Senior Walk, a series of walkways that wind over five miles through campus and bear the names of every University of Arkansas graduate.

It’s said that the tradition of engraving graduating seniors’ names into the walkways at the university began with the Class of 1905. A few years later, the Class of 1904 added their names, and the tradition took off. Today, you’ll find the names of every graduating senior from 1876 (the first UA graduates) to the most recent grads engraved in the walkways — that’s over 170,000 names and counting.

Each year, usually the summer after graduation, the University Physical Plant employees update the Senior Walk. The process costs about $250,000 each year and takes about 60 days. It includes tearing up the existing concrete, pouring new concrete, curing it, and sandblasting the names into the new concrete with a machine known as the Sand Hog. The Sand Hog was created by UA Physical Plant employees in 1986 to eliminate the slow, labor-intensive, and expensive process of stamping the names by hand into wet concrete.

Logistically speaking, the tradition is getting trickier. There are about 6,000 new names (and growing) to add every summer, which requires roughly 500 feet of walkway compared with the 200 feet required for the smaller class sizes just 20 years ago. Currently, Arkansas has planned walkway locations through the Class of 2021, but it’s obvious this coveted and highly protected tradition will find its way far beyond that date.

In the SEC, It Just Means More.

To the University of Arkansas, It Just Means More Tradition Measured in Years and Miles.