One of the more startling parts of the mostly solemn Founder's Day ceremony is that of the early morning ice cream served beside Mary Lyon's grave site. One might be hard pressed to think of an odder tradition, at Mount Holyoke or elsewhere.

The rumor becomes real - In the 1910s, some upperclasswomen thought that it would be amusing to tell the freshmen that if they were to go to Mary Lyon's grave at 6:00 am on Founder's Day they'd find the trustees of the college churning ice cream. Of course, 6:00 am found the more gullible of these freshmen looking in vain for ice cream churning trustees. The humor of misleading the freshmen was apparently too great to pass up doing again, so this rumor was perpetuated for about a decade, with year after year of trusting freshmen rising early in the hopes of ice cream. Around 1920, however, a group of seniors took pity on these few but inevitably credulous freshmen and actually were waiting, at 6:00 am, with ice cream. The next year, of course, the rumor had been verified, and many more freshmen showed up. With this new popular start to Founder's Day, the school decided to officially pick it up as a school-endorsed happening. Now, as the original story had stated, college trustees really were serving ice cream on Mary Lyon's grave site at 6:00 am on Founder's Day. During World War II this practice went on hiatus as part of wartime economy, but returned afterwards.

The modern development - Today, ice cream is still served in the early morning (usually still at 6:00 am, but some classes opt instead for a slightly late hour like 8:00 am). While supposedly open to the whole school, there is an understanding that this is now a senior event. Seniors go in their academic robes. As there is no longer the same sort of gathering around the grave as in times past, this is the senior's informal time to take a moment to pay her respects. The senior class invites school officials to scoop out the ice cream, and it has become standard to ask the college president and dean to be the official ice cream scoopers.