Undegraduates at Georgetown aren't supposed to step on the university seal. (Which is really only on the ground on two places.) If you step on it, they say you won't graduate. Even as an alum, I have a hard time walking on it.

At my undergrad there is a small archway that leads from the campus to Main Street where some of the houses are that you aren't supposed to walk through until you graduate. I don't really know why actually. It might be bad luck or it could have been some tradition from back in the day. All I know is that it is pretty hard thing to remember not to walk though when you have been drinking a few beverages.:p

As for seals in sidewalks I have never seen that. The only thing that I have seen is letters that were put into the concrete sidewalk.

We have ours on the sidewalk outside our house, and so do all the other houses at Hillsdale. AND we walk on them.

At Iowa State, if you walk over the bronze zodiac on the north entry of the Memorial Union, they say you'll fail your next test unless you throw a penny in the fountain of the four seasons (which is just outside the entry).

Funny thing is, the architecht who designed the zodiac designed it slightly raised with the idea that generations of students walking on it would wear it down to floor level.

University of Chicago also has a crest on the floor outside Mandel Hall that you're not supposed to walk on (on pain of not graduating). Sounds like a pretty widespread tradition.

The "Class Gateway" entrance to the College Green at Ohio University has a large bronze inlaid "Great Seal of the State Of Ohio" on the little "patio" between the two gates (the second gate would be to the left out of the frame below) -- under the quote from the Ordanance of 1787 which chartered the University.

http://www.ohiou.edu/athens/bldgifs/clsgate.jpg

Everyone walks over it as far as I know.

I jumped on it many times out of anger.

I was supposed to graduate in 2 years, but it took 4.

-Rudey
--I was deeply hurt.

My school's seal was in the center of one of the quad's. If you stepped on it you would fail your next exam. I always saw everyone, myself included, walk around it until one day some guy was just sitting on it reading a newspaper. When asked why, he said he was done with all of his exams and was ready to graduated and was making up for all those times that he walked around it.

I think it is. A related tradition in many schools is to have your picture taken, after graduation, in cap-and-gown and holding your diploma standing on/under the forbidden spot.

Funny. Although it wasn't a forbidden spot, I have a picture of our oldest daughter when she graduated from Ohio and she is probably standing on the seal because the Ordinance of 1787 is over her shoulder.