This weekend Dartmouth celebrates its 74th Green Key Weekend, a festival of fun, games and traditions.
Prior to coeducation, one of the original purposes of the celebration was to bring women to the College. But Green Key Weekend has evolved into Hanover's most popular and anticipated spring event.
The weekend has undergone various changes since its humble beginnings in 1899, and it leaves behind a history filled with incidents ranging from the unbelievable to the downright bizarre.
The early years
The College's first formal spring celebration took place in 1899 and was centered around a formal dance, the Junior Promenade.
The Class of 1900 organized the Spring Houseparties Weekend in May of 1899 as a way to bring women to the College and celebrate spring.
The four-day weekend included fraternity parties, sporting events and the prom, which became an annual springtime tradition until it was unceremoniously canceled in 1924.
The faculty and administration opted to end the prom tradition because of the alleged misconduct and wild behavior of Dartmouth men and their dates during the dance in previous years.
In 1921, the Green Key Society was formed when two sophomore societies merged. The Green Key Society hosted a spring variety show from 1921 to 1928, and this helped fill the void left by the ending of the prom tradition.
In 1929, the prom, otherwise known as the Green Key Ball, was reinstated and placed under the supervision of the Green Key Society. The administration deemed the Green Key Society the only campus organization that could ensure a peaceful weekend.
The Green Key Handbook states the purpose of the prom. "Coming in the last month of the junior year of the Green Key men, the Prom provides a fitting climax to a year of College service and adds to an ever increasing number of happy memories."
Freshmen were excluded from Green Key activities. They were not allowed to have dates or attend fraternity parties. In fact, freshmen had to spend the weekend in the main room of Thayer Dining Hall.
Traditions are born
As Green Key Weekend grewin popularity, many traditions were born.
Hums, which started out as a serious evening of singing in 1899, became a competition among the fraternities by 1937.
The contest was judged by music professors and other College officials, and it became an annual tradition of Green Key Weekend.
Hums was suspended in the early 1970s because of political activities on campus, but it was revived in 1973.
Also in the 1970s, the content of Hums songs began to shift from serious to more humorous.
But this also created controversy in 1976 when the victorious Theta Delta Chi fraternity enraged members of the campus community, particularly women, with the song "Our Cohogs."
Alpha Theta fraternity was condemned by an administrator in 1978 for a song which criticized the judges of Hums.
The site of Hums was also moved in the 1970s. Previously held at Dartmouth Hall, the location was switched to the porch of the winning Greek house from the year before.
Another tradition which became popular was the "Wetdown Ceremonies" which started in the 1880s and grew in popularity during the first decades of the 20th century.
Newly elected student government officers ran across the Green and were pelted with various beverages and other debris.
As the Wet-down tradition evolved, the event became more rowdy, as the officers were flogged and whipped with belts as they ran across the Green.
Perhaps the most popular tradition of Green Key was born in 1966, when the Chariot Race was introduced as an alternative to the Wetdown.
The Chariot Race, which was a competition between Greek houses, consisted of three laps around the Green, with the fastest chariot and the most colorfully decorated chariot winning kegs of beer.
Over the years, chariots were constructed out of almost every substance imaginable, including old rocking chairs, cider barrels, wicker baskets and, of course, kegs.
As the Chariot Race evolved, another tradition was born: the chariots were pelted with various substances, most traditionally flour and eggs, as they raced around the Green. This was a legacy of the defunct Wetdown Ceremonies, which were outlawed in 1969.
The shabby chariots rarely held up for the entire race, and at least one chariot had one or more wheels fall off each year.
In 1984, the Chariot Race was discontinued, as the College looked to hold a tamer competition among the Greek houses. A six-event relay called the Greek Games was held, butdied in the late 1980s.
Another interfraternity competition was a bicycle marathon from Hanover to Amherst College between Psi Upsilon and Beta Theta Pi fraternities. The marathon was held for the first three decades following the first Green Key Prom. Brothers would take turns riding the bike while others followed in cars filled with beer and water to drink.
An interesting tradition of the 1960s was the ever-popular piano-smashing contest. Chi Phi (now Chi Heorot) and Pi Lambda Phi fraternities competed to determine "the champion piano smashing team at the College," according to a previous issue of the Dartmouth.
Bands and entertainment
Another hallmark of Green Key has beenthe plethora of musical performances given during the weekend.
In 1919, the Earl Fuller Jazz Band performed on campus Green Key Weekend.
Mel Hallewtt and his Melodies became the first Big Band to come to Dartmouth during Green Key Weekend in 1933.
Two more Big Band talents, Tommy Dorsey and Artie Shaw appeared in 1938. Shaw's performance was especially memorable as he created a song especially for the festival, the "Green Key Jump."
Rock n' roll made its first appearance in 1962, with three bands playing in the then-new Hopkins Center, and in 1963 the Sherelles performed during Green Key Weekend.
But perhaps all of these acts paled in comparison to the show given by the Grateful Dead at Thompson Arena during Green Key Weekend 1978. The three-hour show brought the house down and also attracted so many "Deadheads" to Hanover that an editorial in The Dartmouth following the concert said the concert was like a foreign event to some students.
From the weird to the sublime
Green Key Weekend has had its share of memorable events, many of them simply bizarre.
In 1931, Lulu McWhoosh, a student at neighboring Slippery Mountain Teacher's College, rode around the Green naked on her bicycle before church services. Many men were delighted, but the College was not pleased. Green Key Weekend was canceled for three years.
In 1948 166 female students from Colby Junior (now Colby-Sawyer) College admittedconsuming alcohol on school grounds the weekend before Greek Key Weekend. The women were sentenced to one-week campus confinement, and despite an appeal from the stunned men of Dartmouth, Colby Superior Court would not allow the women to attend Green Key Weekend.
Other bizarre incidents have involved the College golf course. In 1954, Hanover Police raided the golf course at 4 a.m. and closed it because of "misuse of the town's normally afforded pleasure privileges" by 69 students and their dates.
Hanover Police were in the area at the time because an hour earlier, then-Police Chief Andrew Ferguson found a student in the middle of the eighth hole, snacking on hot dogs, rolls, mustard, cupcakes, coffee and Canadian Club. The student also had Alka-Seltzer, heroin and marijuana.
In the 1960sthe "outdoor sleep" was a popular golf course tradition. Women, some of whom did not have a place to stay for the weekend, joined their dates out on the golf course to sleep. Students brought sleeping bags, pillows, blankets and even mattresses for the festivities.
The College, in response to complaints of Hanover residents whose sons were being exposed to the "less puritan" aspects of life as a Dartmouth student, sent caretakers with bullhorns and sprinklers to scatter the sleeping students at dawn.
The students grew tired of having to escape being soaked, so the tradition was abandoned shortly thereafter.
Another incident caused the prom to be discontinued in 1967. Ex-governor of Alabama George Wallace, a figure nationally recognized for his efforts to block desegregation in his home state, was taunted and ridiculed by protesters during a speech he gave at Webster Hall.
Soon a riot ensued, with an angry mob of students forming a ring around Wallace's car for several hours and refusing to let him escape. In the wake of the incident, the Green Key Ball was canceled, never to be held again.
In 1976, the Chariot Race turned ugly as a melee erupted between brothers of Beta Theta Pi and Zeta Psi fraternities after one fraternity demolished the other's chariot. The true story has never emerged, mainly because each house accused the other of "trashing" its chariot.
Brothers of one house often plotted revenge against other houses which "have unjustly wronged us in the past" according to one zealous plotter in 1981. Such revenge could range from throwing "ammunition" at the other house's chariot or even inserting a pole in the spokes of a chariot's wheel.
These developments eventually contributed to the end of the Chariot Races in 1984.
New traditions
The face of Green Key has drastically changed since the last Green Key Ball in 1967.
Now the weekend centers around outdoor bands, sporting competitions and the multitude of fraternity parties.
There has been a shift in recent years away from a celebration of the Green Key Society toward a general celebration of spring with bands and parties all over campus.
Pam Banholzer '81 told The Dartmouth in 1980 that "the function of Green Key Society in Green Key Weekend has totally fizzled out."
Eight fraternities fell victim to a Hanover police sting operation in one night over Green Key Weekend in 1987.
Eric Konigsberg '91 wrote an article for Rolling Stone Magazine in September 1992 about Alpha Delta fraternity, using Green Key Weekend as its backdrop. An accompanying picture had a caption which said, "Drink Till You Boot: Green Key Party 1989."
The Greek houses sponsor parties like other regular weekends at Dartmouth, but the special events of Green Key Weekend still make it unique.
Last year's Green Key was interrupted by a campus-wide blackout last year on Saturday afternoon, but the power outage lasted only an hour, and the rest of the weekend went smoothly.
