Coated with thousands of layers of paint over the decades, "The Rock" is a student tradition dating back to the late 1940s. Students repeatedly paint it to promote student events, including dances, pep rallies, student elections, parades, fraternity and sorority functions and a host of other campus activities. The current rock is a portion of a much larger outcropping that was originally located across from the North Campus quadrangle and removed for construction of the Life Sciences building in 1958. Forty years later it was put into storage during the UCONN 2000 construction program. The Rock was relocated to its present site in 2008.