This weekend marks a monumental event in the history of the College as Dartmouth celebrates a century of the Homecoming tradition.
The festivities will officially commence tonight, the 100th Dartmouth Night in College history, on the Green with the quintissential Dartmouth tradition -- the burning of the bonfire.
From its innocent and humble beginnings, Homecoming has become the most sacred and celebrated tradition on the Hanover plain.
In its 100 years, Homecoming has seen everything from brawls and bomb scares to confusion and controversy.
In the beginning...
One-hundred years ago, College President William Jewett Tucker welcomed the Class of 1899 to the first-ever Dartmouth Night, which was held in Dartmouth Hall.
On that night in September 1895, Tucker gave his blessing to the Dartmouth Night gathering, saying it would "promote class spirit and would initiate freshmen into the community."
The first bonfire actually took place in 1888 when a jubilant crowd of Dartmouth faithful celebrated a baseball victory over Manchester by throwing anything they could get their hands on into a pile on the Green and setting it ablaze.
An editorial in The Dartmouth following the blaze denounced the act: "It disturbed the slumbers of a peaceful town, destroyed some property, made the boys feel that they were men, and in fact did no one any good."
Bonfire celebrations were usually spontaneous in the late eighties and early nineties, until the first organized blaze was held in 1893 after a 34-0 drubbing of Amherst by the football team.
In the early days of the bonfire, students did not just set fire to rails of wood.
In fact, it has been said that a rusty car bumper and several mattresses could be found at the center of the pile from time to time.
The first Dartmouth Night in 1895 was described by The Dartmouth as "one of the most delightful and interesting events which the undergraduate body has had the honor of participating in."
At the second annual Dartmouth Night in 1896, "Men of Dartmouth," written by Richard Hovey '85, was adopted as the official College song.
Dartmouth Night soon featured a distinguished speaker, lengthy speeches from alumni and the reading of telegrams from alumni from all around the world.
In 1907, the Dartmouth Night festivities were moved into the newly-finished Webster Hall.
Now the alumni speeches and the address of the night's distinguished speaker are held in front of Dartmouth Hall.
In 1904 yet another tradition was born as the freshman class ran around the bonfire as it burned.
In fact, the enthusiastic Class of 1908 circled the bonfire in their pajamas, while the rest of the College, Lord Dartmouth and Winston Churchill, looked on.
Wars and Pranks
Wars have had an impact on Homecoming weekend over the years.
In 1943, American involvement in World War II forced a scaled-down Homecoming celebration.
Not included in the shortened celebrations were the still-traditional reading of telegrams from alumni unable to attend Homecoming.
The Vietnam War, which fostered a lack of interest in Dartmouth Night during the late 1960s, forced the event to go on a five-year hiatus, from 1967 to 1971.
In the 1950s, the president of the Central Railroad Company in Portland, Maine, who was a Dartmouth alumnus, breathed life into the bonfire tradition.
Central Railroad offered free railroad ties to the College for the building of the bonfire, but only to those students who came to Portland to pick up the wood. Busloads of Dartmouth men made the journey every year.
Currently, the College has the wood delivered right to the Green for the building of the bonfire.
In 1954, Hurricane Hazel forced the cancelation of the bonfire, and in 1963, the Hanover Fire Department was forced to call off the bonfire because of the most intense dry spell to hit the area for 100 years.
One of the legendary Homecoming pranks occurred in 1968, when upperclass members of the Dartmouth Outing Club wandering around Robinson Hall discovered the kerosene that would be used to ignite the bonfire and replaced it with water.
The bewildered freshmen were stunned when the bonfire did not light after several torches were thrown into the structure, and only then did the D.O.C. pranksters come clean, allowing the bonfire to be lit.
Another famous bonfire incident took place in 1971, when a farmer from Etna donated his barn for the building of the bonfire. The Dartmouth faithful, however, apparently visited the wrong barn.
Two days later, a livid farmer arrived at the College with a police escort, demanding the return of his cow stanchions.
Premature blazes have also plagued the bonfire tradition over the years, like in 1976 when the bonfire burned down two days prior to the scheduled Dartmouth Night celebration.
Into the Eighties
The 1980s saw controversies and a significant reshaping of many Homecoming traditions.
In fact, it was not until the 1980s that the term "Homecoming" was commonly used to describe the weekend.
The Dartmouth called its annual special issue the "Dartmouth Night Issue" until 1987, when it switched the title to "Homecoming Issue."
In 1982, a bomb scare forced the Class of 1986 to abandon the structure in order for it to be searched for dynamite. The structure was disassembled with a cherry picker, and the wood was never burned. No bomb was found.
A town ordinance passed in 1984 meant that the Class of 1988 would be the last class to build a bonfire with as many tiers as the numeral of their class year.
For safety reasons, the town of Hanover limited the bonfire structure to a height of 60 feet.
The last 100-tier bonfire had been built in 1979.
In 1987, about ten women, calling themselves "Womyn to Overthrow Dartmyth" and the "Wimmin's International Terrorist Conspiracy from Hell," protested during Dartmouth Night.
The women, who were dressed as witches and had skulls painted on their faces, threw red hard-boiled eggs in front of the speaker's podium.
According to the women involved, the protest was intended as a response to discrimination against women at the College, the administration's patriarchal structure and the bonfire's phallic symbolism.
In 1988, the College, responding to safety and environmental concerns, replaced the creosote-coated railroad ties used to build the bonfire with "landscape ties," which are heavier, cleaner and considered environmentally safer.
However, the landscape ties also have another property, as the freshman Class of 1992 discovered -- they do not burn as quickly.
The Class of 1992 bonfire did not budge, and many surprised students awoke on Saturday morning to find the charred structure still standing.
Controversy Revisited: The Violent Nineties
The past five years has seen perhaps the most turbulent events in the history of Homecoming.
In 1991, about 100 students, protesting the College's new, more restrictive alcohol policy that banned common source alcohol like kegs, tried to persuade the Class of 1995 not to build a bonfire. When the construction proceeded as scheduled, the angry protesters pelted the structure with eggs and shaving cream.
Later, some protesters handcuffed themselves to the bonfire and shouted, "We want kegs! We want kegs!"
In 1992, a violent melee erupted on the Green between freshmen of the Class of 1996 building the bonfire, and upperclassmen who tried to sabotage it.
The freshman class traditionally has always built the bonfire, and attempted sabotage by upperclassmen has been a tradition for almost as long.
But that fateful Wednesday night in 1992, tradition turned ugly, as approximately 600 students, "many of whom were heavily intoxicated, engaged in violent destructive behavior" according to the Hanover Police Department.
Hanover Police said the incident was started by "upperclassmen storming the bonfire structure protected by the freshmen."
Hanover Police reported students wielding baseball bats and hockey sticks, and also using bags of vomit and human feces as projectiles to fling at the bonfire and at each other.
Dean of the College Lee Pelton suspended construction of the bonfire for a full day, and, although the bonfire proceeded as scheduled that year, the brawl of 1992 has had a lasting legacy on the building of the bonfire.
Now, the wood is delivered later, giving students fewer days to build the bonfire, but also giving fewer days for potential problems to occur. Also, the bonfire structure is no longer guarded by the freshman class at night, as all construction must cease at dusk and the bonfire must be abandoned until the next morning.
In 1993, the freshman Class of 1997 turned violent too. During the Freshman Sweep, the freshman class's wild run through town leading up to the Homecoming Parade, several rowdy '97s ran through Hanover, jumping on top of car hoods and roofs and even uprooting street signs.
A picture in The Dartmouth from Homecoming Weekend 1993 shows a '97 running around the bonfire carrying an uprooted stop sign.
Last year, the building of the bonfire and the freshman sweep proceeded without incident.
Over the years, administrators, faculty and students at the College have come and gone, and some of the Homecoming traditions have been altered. But the meaning of the weekend has largely remained the same.
This weekend, the College celebrates 100 years of a rich and storied heritage. It promises to be a memorable few days.
