Several students were injured on Class Day, the day before graduation, by shards of the clay cups that were smashed instead of clay pipes.
Four or five students were rushed to the Dartmouth Medical Center for stitches, Dean of Student Life Holly Sateia said.
The clay cups replaced the more than 100-year-old tradition of breaking clay pipes on the stump of the Lone Pine, located on a hill above the Bema. The injuries have brought the new ceremony's future into question.
Sateia said the Class of 1994 will have to decide whether or not this "new tradition can be managed and made safer." If the class finds it cannot, it will be asked for other alternatives, she added.
After the '93s drank a toast to themselves, administrators and the Senior Executive Committee asked them not to smash the cupts to keep them as momentos.
Sateia said when the clay cups arrived, tests were conducted to access their breakability. When testers were cut by shards, Bridget Eng, president of the Senior Executive Committee, sent an electronic mail message and a letter to the class warning seniors of the danger. Eng again discouraged seniors from smashing the cups after proposing the toast at Class Day.
Cups were substituted for the pipes this year after a committee of administrators, faculty and students voted in April to formally end all support of the pipes tradition.
The long-standing clay pipes ceremony became controversial on campus after some Native American students said the pipes are considered sacred objects in their culture and smashing them is considered sacrilegious. Last year, the Class of 1992 held a candlelight ceremony in the Bema on the night of Class Day after voluntarily choosing to abstain from the clay pipes tradition. This year, seniors also held a candlelight vigil.
Sateia said the candlelight ceremony is the tradition that had the most significance for seniors during the last two years, and it may prove to be the more lasting tradition.
"The candlelight ceremony seems and feels more like a tradition," Sateia said. "It was a pretty ceremony."
Heidi Gamer '95, a Green Key member who helped organize Class Day, said students were hurling cups against the Lone Pine and tearing away chunks of the stump. The large shards were posing a danger to many students who were only wearing sandles and tevas. Gamer said several students were cutting themselves by smashing the cup while still holding it in their hands.
"I was frightened watching some of my sorority sisters walk away with large gashes," Gamer said.
The decision to use the clay cups was made only a week before Class Day and many pottery businesses had refused to fill the order for 1,100 cups.
