Gracie Porter and other students pop the bubble on how they poured detergent into the Quad fountain to spread soapy suds across campus.
By Leah Steup | April 1, 2026
HUNTINGTON, IN. – A dozen hefty bags of powder detergent.
It’s an unusual Walmart order. But that’s exactly what Roush 1st Resident Assistant (RA) Bekah Overdeer bought at the Huntington Walmart in August 2025 for what Roush 2nd RA Gracie Porter called a “top-secret tradition.”
“I remember walking past people that we knew, and I was like, I just have a lot of soap right now,” said Overdeer. “The bags were not secured the best, and so it was leaking everywhere, like just powder trail as we went.”
Overdeer bought $50 worth of detergent—not for ordinary laundry, but to spread soapy suds across campus.
On Friday, August 29, 2025, Roush 1st residents woke up at 5 a.m., hauling a plethora of soap to pour into the fountain in the center of the Quad. Each year, different groups across campus scale the fountain to dump loads of detergent. Students use soapings to celebrate a wide variety of events: the first week of classes, finals, midterms, homecoming, the beginning of spring, theater performances, and even Halloween. It’s a beloved campus tradition. But the acidic detergents leave their mark on the nearby plants.
“I like soaping the fountain,” said Collin Hobbs, an associate professor of biology at HU. “I think it’s a fantastic university tradition, but it is bad for the plants.”
Detergents break down lipids like grease and wax, useful for cleaning but harmful to plants. Plants contain lipids in their cell walls. So, prolonged contact with soap dissolves these walls.
The damage is especially noticeable on evergreen plants like boxwood bushes, which bloom year-round.
Hobbs works with Horticulture Club students to regularly replace the other plants. In May, they plant summer annuals, including vincas and salvias. They plant tulips every other fall.
Tulips are technically perennials. Perennial plants last for years, whereas annual plants require regular replanting. But the harsh Indiana climate effectively makes them annuals.
“If they’re down like Florida or Mexico, they would be perennial there,” said Gilbert Young, the supervisor of horticulture at Foellinger-Freimann Botanical Conservatory. “But here, since they have a cold climate in the fall and winter, the cold kills, and they just can’t handle the frost or freezes.”
The conservatory has an event similar to HU’s fountain soapings. Every summer, the city of Fort Wayne hosts Open Streets, an event for families that encourages eco-friendly transportation.
Event organizers set up a bubble machine on the conservatory’s lawn. It produces a ton of soap that burns the lawn for a few weeks.
The August 29th soaping last semester left a similar burn on plants—and students’ memories.
“It was one of my first impressions of college, because that was the first week, and so I was like, ‘Oh, people do that here!’” said Grace Fausz, a freshman commuter student majoring in pre-law.
Roush 2nd RA Gracie Porter noticed how the floor environment changed after Roush 1st soaped the fountain. She said the experience helped the girls to bond.
At 5 a.m. on Friday, August 29th, 2025, around 20 Roush 1st residents woke up to an early alarm. They met in the lounge before heading out to the fountain with a giant tub of detergent bags.
Most were still wearing pajamas and slides.
They hurdled over the fence with a small stool, stepping gingerly to avoid the blooming flowers. Then, the girls jumped the moat and clambered up the wet rocks to the top.
They counted down, then poured a dozen bags into the fountain’s center at once. The soaping only took about 10 minutes, but its effects lasted the entire day.
Roush 1st residents poured enough detergent into the fountain to make giant soap bubbles float down the Mall for hours.
Roush 1st RA Bekah Overdeer remembered two dining staff workers who rode a golf cart to the fountain that morning because they could see the soap from the Dining Commons. She said people’s excited reactions were her favorite part of the soaping.
But some students said they’ve seen bigger.
Elijah Persinger, student body president and former Wright 1st resident, said he once saw suds land in the Wright parking lot—nearly three football fields away from the fountain.
Persinger was one of the culprits behind a soaping last school year during Admitted Students Weekend. On Friday, April 10th, 2025, around midnight, Persinger and other Wright leaders led incoming freshmen on a late-night excursion to the fountain.
“We decided it’d be a fun idea to show them soaping the fountain, because that’s kind of a tradition here,” said Persinger. “It’s always done right around finals and sometimes midterms.”
And, in October 2022, students poured red dye into the fountain to celebrate Halloween, a less common tradition.
Andrew Martin, Forester Village resident director and former Wright 3rd resident, said the dye made a spooky effect—like blood was coming out of the fountain.
The tradition started before the university even built the current fountain. The original fountain was smaller and had a short, circular rock boundary instead of a fence.
But on July 27, 1986, an electrical malfunction killed R. Lee Showen and Carol Escher, a young couple taking a walk on campus. They were not Huntington College students.
The university designed a new, safer fountain and built a fence for protection. They named it the Showen-Escher Memorial Fountain.
“There is a little bit, I think, of controversy about soaping the fountain among some, because they view the fountain more as a memorial site than a collegiate fountain,” said Ann McPherren, professor of business and economics and a faculty member since 1981.
But she said most people recognize that students soap the fountain to spread joy and create a fun spectacle for campus residents, not to disrespect a memorial.
Soapings even celebrate theater shows.
Renee Preston, a senior theatre performance major and Roush 1st resident, has soaped the fountain three times. Her second time was after the final Newsies performance in April 2025.
Preston and her roommate, Ava Curtis, a senior social work and theatre major, bought soap for a group made up of Newsies cast and crew members, as well as some high schoolers performing in the musical. They poured it into the fountain late at night on Saturday, April 5th, after the show’s closing.
“It’s a surprise tradition,” said Preston. “So, it’s normal for someone to do it at some point in the school year, but there’s not a specific group or day that it happens.”
But the soapy suds have become a less common sight on campus.
In the 2024-25 school year, soapings happened so regularly that students lost count. Some recalled 10 soapings; others remember six or seven.
But in the 2025 fall semester, Roush 1st was the only group to successfully soap the fountain.
“The sad thing is, I think it’s slowly declined as my time went on here,” said Martin. “I do hope someone brings it back because it is a classic campus tradition.”
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