Established to celebrate the accomplishments of the graduating class and to emphasize the lasting bonds of friendship, Class Day exercises and ceremonies took place on the original campus from about 1855 until 1878 near a small white oak that President Totten planted in front of Jarvis Hall. Trinity's Class Day was likely introduced by Professor Samuel Eliot and modeled after Harvard's.

The program consisted of the conventional orations, class chronicles and prophecies, and planting the ivy along the college walls. The ceremony was held on the campus in front of the Chapel at 3:00 p.m. and was followed by a dance in the evening. Among the more amusing Class Day traditions were making fresh punch, smoking pipes, and the handing over of the mock lemon-squeezer by the graduating class.

Class Day continued as an annual event until the late 1960s.

Trinity College in the Twentieth Century (2000) by Peter and Anne Knapp, p. 20.

History of Trinity College (1967) by Glenn Weaver, p. 109.