In 1953, the closing of laptops and shuffling of papers didn’t signal class changes – it was a 71-year-old janitor named Charles Campbell.

Campbell – known to students as Charlie – rang the University’s Chapel bell to signal the beginning and end of classes. According to a 1953 Red & Black article, since he didn’t own a working watch, he was “almost always” on time to ring the bell 17 times daily for the nearly two decades he served as “sole caretaker of the bell.”

The history of the Chapel bell is almost as unique as the thousands of students and visitors who have heard the deep bellow of one of the University’s oldest traditions.

In 1832, the Chapel was built at the cost of $15,000 to replace another chapel that had become too small for the University’s needs. Until 1913, the bell sat in a cupola atop the Chapel, but was later moved to the location behind the building where it now stands.

The bell was initially used strictly for religious purposes, as well as a signal to notify students to transition from class to class. But according to campus planning coordinator Janine Duncan, the bell had other uses as well.

“For a while it was used as an air raid siren during World War II when they were trying to figure out what notification methods worked best,” she said.

The one thing that has remained constant over the years is the traditional ringing of the bell after football victories.

“Football used to be played on Herty Field, and that’s right next to the Chapel, so everyone could hear it,” said facilities and house manager Erin Tatum, who manages the Chapel.

In the 1890s, it was the duty of freshmen to ring the bell after a victory.

“There are funny stories like how freshmen had to ring it for various reasons and how the rope would go missing because one of the guys didn’t want to ring it all night,” Duncan said.

Since then, the ringing of the bell has become a tradition rather than a chore.

In “A Walking Tour of the University of Georgia,” University historian Nash Boney wrote the bell is now only rung “to mark athletic victories or other special occasions.”

Junior Elizabeth Madani from Woodstock believes the ringing of the bell should be reserved for something meaningful.

“In my eyes, it’s something we would ring if there’s some type of personal accomplishment or something that affects students as a whole,” Madani said. “For example, I can understand if people ring it at graduation or after we win a football game.”

According to Tatum, some of the reasons people ring the bell now are to acknowledge weddings, football victories and even good test grades. But after fans excessively rung the bell following a Georgia victory over Florida in 2007, the bell came out of its A-frames and fell onto the protective floor.

“It almost shot through the floor and if it had done that, it would’ve killed the people underneath it,” Duncan said. “The structure had to be re-done to properly support the weight of that bell.”

Over the course of two months in the summer of 2008, the bell was renovated and a completely new bell tower was built. Although the entire tower had to be replaced, the bell was not damaged.

As the bell gets older, more and more stories about it emerge.

“Back when the bell was still in the cupola of the Chapel, a guy got a bottle of gin, broke into the Chapel, got drunk and rang the bell all night,” Duncan said. “It drove people nuts.”

In the 1950s, a band of Georgia Tech students were caught trying to chop down the bell tower with axes.

But despite the various experiences with the Chapel bell, Duncan said all traditions evolve over time.

“What I learned when I was researching [the bell] is that its symbolic meaning changed as the decades changed,” Duncan said. “I even found one record when it was rung for a loss. People just began to put extra meaning on it, and that happens to any sort of site, object or structure as decades progress.”