For over 60 years, the men of Dartmouth had one mission for Winter Carnival -- women.
Carnival may have been started as a sporting and skiing day, but before coeducation, acquiring a date for the annual Carnival balls and dances was the primary concern for sheltered Dartmouth men.
The Dartmouth, in 1968, referred to the Carnival as a weekend of "skiing and wenching."
Carnival was a time for the male students to acquire dates for the weekend. Unlike today, date-oriented events, such as formals and dances, were the most popular part of the weekend.
Tickets for the Carnival formal dance went on sale two weeks in advance. Students waited in line overnight to purchase Carnival Glee Club concert tickets for themselves and their dates.
Almost since the start of the Carnival tradition, women flocked to the College as dates for Dartmouth men. The record number of weekend guests was set in 1955 when 1,728 women visited Hanover for Winter Carnival. That year College enrollment was about 2,850 -- nearly two-thirds of Dartmouth students had dates.
Most of the imported dates came from New England women's colleges, such as Smith College, Wellesley College and Colby Junior College.
Make room for the women
Fraternities were vacated each year to accommodate the female guests. In 1969, half the fraternities on campus were vacated to house women for the weekend.
On several occasions, a number of residence halls were assigned to the anticipated female guests. All students living in those buildings were required to move out from Friday morning until Sunday afternoon. Evacuated freshmen had a difficult time finding places to stay, as they were not permitted to stay overnight in fraternities.
Some schools required room confirmations before letting their female students venture to Hanover for the weekend. These schools wanted to ensure their students would not be staying in dormitory rooms with male students.
Special trains with extra cars ran to White River Junction and Norwich from Boston and New York on the Friday of Winter Carnival.
Dartmouth men would crowd at the stations to await the arrival of their dates.
In 1932 Dartmouth received an urgent wire from the Boston Post warning that 50 "girls" had missed a special train that was supposed to arrive in Norwich early enough for the dates to see the Carnival's opening festivities.
"A check-up of the fraternity houses last night revealed that such was the case, Chi Phi suffering the heaviest casualties with 15 among the lost, strayed or stolen," an article in The Dartmouth read the following day.
But most of the 50 dates were able to catch a later train.
From 'round the girdled earth...
Winter Carnival was not just an attraction to women in New England -- women from all over the country came to Hanover for the festivities.
One year, as an "added attraction," certain hometown newspapers in cities all over the country published pictures of all the girls from the area who went to Hanover for Dartmouth's Winter Carnival.
Some women who voyaged from greater distances had to fly in for the weekend.
In 1968, brothers at Kappa Kappa Kappa fraternity pooled money to fly one brother's date in from California. They sold their blood for $15 a pint to obtain the funds.
The Tri-Kap brother's date became Winter Carnival Queen that year.
Even though a majority of men "imported" dates for Carnival weekend, not all were successful in finding dates to make the trek up to Hanover.
The Dartmouth used to hold an annual "shoot-down letter" contest, and men sent in letters from women declining their weekend invitations. The most pathetic letter won the recipient a pair of tickets to a concert over the weekend -- an ironic prize for a dateless man.
The 1971 editors of The Dartmouth chose this letter as its winner: "Dear Kelly, Please don't be hurt or angry but I can't come to Winter Carnival. I just don't think we're right for each other. I hope I didn't lead you on. If I did, I'm sorry. Margee."
But some men had dozens of women trying to come up for Carnival -- and not all were invited.
In 1952 friends of Robert Daly '54 wrote to women's dormitories at Green Mountain College, Skidmore College, Smith College, Vassar College and Wellesley College offering a chance to come up to Dartmouth for Winter Carnival and be Daly's date.
Daly was confused when letters poured in for a week from college women offering to be his lucky date.
A woman from Skidmore even offered to come to Carnival and bring 10 of her dormmates.
Eventually, Daly got seven dates for Winter Carnival weekend. He said he could not decide on the "most interesting and honest expression" of interest in the letters, so he chose the seven best.
Queen of the College on the Hill
One of the most central events of old Dartmouth Winter Carnivals was the selection of a Carnival Queen.
Forty to 50 women entered the contest each year, and the winner appeared at the Glee Club concert and gave out prizes at events all weekend long.
While the Carnival Queen became the center of attention all weekend, her date transformed into the "perennial loser" because the queen would be so busy with duties that he would hardly get to see her.
But former Associate Director of the Alumni Programs Jim Tonkovich '68 told The Dartmouth in 1985 that when a Dartmouth student's imported female was chosen as queen, it was "a huge ego trip for the date and a big plus for his fraternity," especially if they could get her to return the following year to be a hostess for their rush party.
The Carnival Queen contest became controversial in the early 1970s before coeducation, and it was ended before the 1973 Carnival, the first Winter Carnival with women as fully enrolled undergraduate students.
The last queen -- entered as the "property of Kappa Kappa Kappa fraternity" in 1972 -- was described by The Dartmouth as "eminently brainless and beautiful, carrying her full-bosomed body with grace and perfect ease."
She was greeted with yells of "What a lay!" and "What boobs!"
That year, a flyer circulated throughout residence halls that read: "Intelligence isn't necessary, as this year we are concentrating on beauty ... for the Carnival Queen."
In 1973, the Winter Carnival Council voted to abolish the contest, citing "changing attitudes towards the role of women in contemporary society."
