Dartmouth College traditions
Dartmouth Night starts the college's traditional "Homecoming" weekend with an evening of speeches, a parade, and a bonfire.
During the circling of the bonfire, upperclassmen encourage the freshmen to "touch the fire", an action legally considered trespassing and prohibited by police officials present.
An editorial in The Dartmouth criticized that fire, saying, "It disturbed the slumbers of a peaceful town, destroyed some property, made the boys feel that they were being men, and in fact did no one any good.
Early on, the tradition of reading out telegrams (later e-mail messages) sent that night from alumni clubs around the country began.
This was an athletic event centered on skiing, a sport which the Outing Club helped to pioneer and publicize on a national scale.
Special trains made runs to transport women guests to Dartmouth, and National Geographic Magazine referred to it as "the Mardi Gras of the North".
The movie is remembered mostly for its extracinematic associations; F. Scott Fitzgerald and Dartmouth alumnus Budd Schulberg were hired to write the screenplay.
Winter Carnival takes place each year on a weekend in February and include such events as ski competitions at the Dartmouth Skiway and Oak Hill Ski Center; a polar bear swim; a cappella and jazz concerts; a human dogsled race; a drag ball; and a showing of the 1939 movie.
Other traditions ending in the 1960s include the "Wetdown", in which newly elected members of the student government were beaten with belts as they ran through a gauntlet spread across the Green.
Members of the respective fraternities would serve as the chariots' "horses" while onlookers threw eggs and water balloons during the race's three laps around the Green.
Tubestock was an unofficial tradition, never endorsed by the college, that occurred each summer for about two decades prior to 2006, when it was canceled due to new town and state laws.
[33] The Dartmouth Editorial Board quickly condemned the action and cited the rapid formation of "Save Tubestock" student committees.
[34] The Dartmouth reported on July 11, 2006 that a final town meeting had permanently put an end to Tubestock for those who did not wish to be arrested.
"[36] Established in 1935 to promote interest in the Dartmouth Outing Club, First-Year Trips is one of the largest pre-orientation programs in the country, involving over 90 percent of students in each incoming class.
Today, Trips takes place in the two weeks prior to the standard orientation week, and involves a three-night, four-day trip of hiking, kayaking, canoeing, biking, rock climbing, organic farming, nature photography, among other activities, culminating in a tradition-filled night spent at the College-owned Moosilauke Ravine Lodge.
The First-Year Trips program incorporates many traditions, including a screening of the 1937 ski film Schlitz on Mt.
Washington[37] and the singing of the "Alma Mater" and the dancing of the Salty Dog Rag to a song of the same name by Red Foley (mp3).
(The Salty Dog Rag, which is a traditional American dance, was brought to Dartmouth by Mary Heller '76, who learned it when she attended The Putney School.
Except for a rare move to a rain location and the period from about 1932 to 1952, when Commencement took place in the Bema, the ceremony has always been held on the Green or in one of the spaces adjacent to it.
The graduating class walks in a procession up East Wheelock Street to the Green, where for more than 100 years they have formed a gantlet through which the faculty pass on their way to the front of the ceremony.
Part of the first parcel of land owned by Dartmouth College, the Green was originally a dense forest of tall trees.
To protest the townspeople's failure to remove their cattle at night, students regularly would herd the animals into the basement of Dartmouth Hall and hold them hostage.
[43][44] At Dartmouth, there are a variety of traditions and practices associated with streaking, described by one campus newspaper as "virtual prerequisites for graduating from the College" and "an essential part of the whole experience".
[45] The first known occurrence of streaking occurred in 1924 or 1931 (varying accounts have been published) and was performed by a non-Dartmouth student named Lulu Mcwoosh, who rode a bicycle nude around the campus before church services, causing the annual Green Key Weekend to be canceled.
[50] In the state of New Hampshire, one is guilty of a public indecency misdemeanor if one "exposes his or her genitals ... under circumstances which he or she should know will likely cause affront or alarm",[51] rendering streaking illegal.
[52]On August 12, 2005, a Bulgarian exchange student from Trinity College at the Tuck School of Business named Valentin Valkov drowned in the Connecticut River, presumably attempting the Ledyard Challenge.
