If you build it, they will come. And if you burn it down in the middle of the Green, they will come by the truckloads.
Every year for Homecoming weekend, masses of alumni return to the College to bask in Friday night's glorious inferno and to cheer on the Big Green in Saturday afternoon's game.
"More alumni come back than on any other weekend," said David Orr '57, senior associate director of alumni affairs. "Green Key and Winter Carnival weekends are really student oriented."
Between 35 and 40 classes will return to the College this weekend for their class reunions.
"I think that's what Homecoming is," Burgwell Howard '86 said. "It's coming home to something that's warm, that's comfortable, that's exciting."
Howard, who worked for six years as the associate director of Alumni Affairs, left the College this year to study at Stanford Universtiy.
"The weather here is pretty plush, 70 degrees and sunny," he said. "I'm going to miss freezing to death in the stands, you know, and the preponderance of L.L. Bean barn jackets and J. Crew jackets too."
Howard said his first Homecoming left him awe-inspired.
"I remember coming home at 4:30 or 5 in the morning and seeing people standing around the embers," Howard said.
"And the next morning, they were gone. I remember thinking, where are the little elves who took away the embers? I mean, I guess they're the same people who put up the little yellow rope and move the information booth."
Edward Emerson '26 has not missed a Homecoming game since his freshman year in 1922.
"I think I remember best the first game," Emerson said.
Emerson said, despite other changes, the prices for the football games have remained relatively steady. "They were $5. Those have been held down pretty well, considering the inflation of everything else."
Emerson said in 1929 he paid $532 for a new Ford.
John Yusen '29 said he remembers "being at the bottom of the stand and feeling everybody pressed against me, ... chanting 'Rush the field!' And staring down at the faces of the Hanover Police, who were saying, 'Don't!'"
Since their inception, the main Homecoming traditions -- the bonfire and the big game -- have only been interrupted during war times.
Orr said he remembers Homecoming crowds dwindling during the Vietnam War.
"We were saying to ourselves, 'Times have changed. Let's put this one on the shelf for a while,'" Orr said. He said students asked to recommence the tradition 1972.
Since then, crowds have increased as the weekend became an increasingly important way for alumni to remember their school.
"I can remember standing in front of the stands and listening to the speeches but [this was in the '50s] we didn't have the crowds that you guys have today," Orr said. "It's just bigger nowadays than it was."
Some alumni said Homecoming had not always been the most important weekend of the Fall term.
Jeff Sassorossi '75 said during his undergraduate career there were bonfires every weekend and the biggest party weekend was not Homecoming, but the weekend at the end of the football season.
But Sassorossi said he now enjoys the celebrations.
"I think it's great. I really do enjoy Homecoming," he said.
Rob Mairs '91 said the weekend is a good time to look back at your time at the College.
"More than Winter Carnival or Green Key, I think Homecoming became the focal point of nostalgia," Rob Mairs '91 said. "As a senior, I remember just standing there watching the freshmen run around the bonfire half-naked."
Howard also said the bonfire takes a special place in alumni hearts. "You mention the bonfire to any Dartmouth alum and they get a smile on their face and they think back."
This year, the weekend will feature reunions for almost 70 years of classes.
Besides mini-reunions organized by classes, the Dickey Center for International Understanding will be hosting a symposium on "Internationalism at Dartmouth: An Athletic Tradition."
Director of the Dickey Endowment Martin Sherwin said he and Director of Athletics Richard Jaeger conceived of the idea for the symposium.
"It occurred to me in a conversation with Dick Jaeger that Dartmouth has had a tradition of inernationalism in many areas, including athletics," Sherwin said. "This is sort of to take stock of that."
Saturday morning the Class of '51 will also sponsor a seminar in the Collis Common Ground on "Using the Superhighway: Dartmouth's Information Service."
