Richard Hovey of the Class of 1885 wrote that Eleazar Wheelock founded the College with "a bible and a drum and 500 gallons of New England rum."
Indeed, common sources of alcohol are as much a part of Dartmouth's history as football and bonfires. But once, for just over a year, the College was a campus without kegs.
Effective September 1, 1991 the College banned kegs from the College's Greek houses and residence halls. For 14 tempestuous months, Bring Your Own Booze was the rule, and Safety and Security officers roamed the basements of fraternities and sororities during parties.
Eight-hundred students protested the no-kegs policy at a meeting in Webster Hall. Fraternities broke ties with the College. Even the Winter Carnival snow sculpture in 1992, a 26-foot Grinch sitting on a keg, protested the regulation.
The kegs eventually came back to the College, and the fraternities soon followed.
Now, in 1997, we are still feeling the effects of that period, though most probably do not realize it.
Although the no-kegs experiment was a failure, many of the College's alcohol regulations -- and much of the current campus culture -- were shaped in those key keg-less months.
The keg culture: the storm before the calm
A common sight prior to the banning of common sources was the keg truck, which made rounds delivering kegs to all of Dartmouth's fraternities and residence halls.
It was a "pickup truck piled high as you can imagine with kegs -- sort of a mountain of kegs and cases of beer," according to then-Editor-in-Chief of The Dartmouth David Herzenhorn '94. Ordering beer was "like ordering EBAs."
Dormitory parties were extremely wild before kegs were banned.
According to Dean of Residential Life Mary Turco, "Events were planned and executed in residence hall hallways and stairwells ... Beer would flow down the stairwells."
Dorm damage and "inebriates making noise" made residence halls a difficult place for some students to study or sleep, she said. And fraternity drinking was even wilder.
Dean of the College Lee Pelton said kegs were literally always tapped -- such that on any Friday morning, a fraternity brother could pour himself "a beer and have a bowl of Cheerios."
The $35 million threat
It was a decision made in Washington, D.C., not Hanover, N.H. -- that started Dartmouth down the path to banning kegs.
In 1989, the U.S. Congress passed the Drug Free Schools and Community Act, requiring all colleges and universities to ensure that local and state alcohol laws were upheld. The College risked losing upwards of $35 million in federal aid if it did not comply with the regulation.
The innocuous-sounding bill had massive implications for the College -- it "put colleges in a role of enforcement they had not previously been in," according to Pelton.
"Imagine how hard it is for a college to enforce a law that we all know is broken everyday," Pelton said. "It is an impossible task for this or any other college to ensure that no underage drinking occurs."
In February 1991, the College began deciding how to comply with the law.
The Interfraternity Council drafted its own proposal, which resembles the College's current alcohol policy. The IFC proposal included limiting guests, creating a new design for Dartmouth ID cards of students of legal age and self-monitoring by Greek organizations.
Then-Dean of the College Edward Shanahan dismissed the notion of complete fraternity self-regulation, saying it "has not worked in the past."
While Shanahan and the Greek houses grappled over what to do, the members of the IFC stated their staunch opposition to the banning of kegs.
But three months later, the College Committee on Alcohol and Other Drugs made the controversial recommendation that common sources of alcohol be banned.
Opening the floodgates
If you attended a party at a Greek house in the fall of 1991, your classmates were not the only people you would expect to see in the basement -- College Safety and Security officers prowled the scene as well.
Students were furious about the new enforcement policy.
More than 800 students protested the policy in a discussion with administrators in Webster Hall. And that winter, students built a 26-foot Winter Carnival snow sculpture of a Grinch perched on a keg to protest the ban.
Student Assembly President Brian Ellner '92 at the time said his "main concern was that there was very little student involvement" in the policy that had such a large impact on student life. Out of a 12- or 14-person alcohol policy review committee, only one or two members were undergraduates, he said.
When the policy took effect on Sept. 1, there was an immediately palpable result: more than 40 students were charged for violating the College's new alcohol policy in the first weeks of the term. Safety and Security was so overwhelmed by the number of complaints and violations, they hired three new part-time officers.
Most of the violations involved underage alcohol possession, and all of the students faced the possibility of College discipline. The Dartmouth reported incidents of "violent and inappropriate behavior" toward officers patrolling parties.
Three weeks into Fall term, The Dartmouth reported that the ban had not significantly reduced the amount of underage drinking, and Director of Health Services Jack Turco informed the newspaper that the number of students treated for intoxication had dipped only slightly.
Many students, now expected to bring their own beverages, turned from beer to hard liquor, according to Pelton, who arrived at Dartmouth from Colgate University in the midst of the controversy.
With tightened security in Greek houses, drinkers migrated upstairs, where Safety and Security could not patrol.
And along with the keg ban came a new phenomenon, the closed party -- for the first time in the College's history, students needed to be on a guest list to gain admittance to parties hosted by Greek organizations.
Angry students claimed the Greek system was becoming exclusive and fragmenting the campus, especially since "Dartmouth had always prided itself on the fact that anyone could go to any party," Herzenhorn said.
As the ban continued, fraternities devised all kinds of convoluted systems to circumvent it.
Rolling Stone magazine reported that one fraternity had a plumber install a keg so the faucet flowed with beer to escape detection.
And some houses developed alarm systems with buzzers and flashing lights that enabled members to notify underage guests when Safety and Security or Hanover Police arrived.
Underage students continued to drink while kegs were banned, but they had to be a lot sneakier. And as the popularity of fraternity parties decreased, attendance at alcohol-free social events surged.
One student told The Dartmouth that alcohol-free outlets were overwhelmed with students no longer entertained by the fraternity scene.
Programming Board Chair Kristin Morrow '92 said the Friday Night Dance Clubs and the Hovey Grill "enjoyed unparalleled success," and attendance at all Collis Common Ground events was increasing.
Meanwhile, some fraternities thought they would be happier if they had nothing to do with the College.
Fraternities secede, policy changes
Alpha Delta, Sigma Alpha Epsilon and Sigma Nu fraternities, tired of obeying a set of College rules in which they did not believe, decided they would rather set their own. In the winter of 1992, all three houses declared their independence from the College.
In the wake of the newly instituted rush policy, which made students wait until sophomore year to join Greek organizations, many students thought the keg ban was yet another attack on the Greek system, Turco said.
The newly independent houses were freed of the Safety and Security patrols, but many found it more difficult to deal with Hanover Police.
The College soon mandated that no enrolled student could live in nonaffiliated Greek houses, which could have made fraternities starve for rent money. All of the fraternities reaffiliated with the College.
After one month of the ban, the College decided it was no longer necessary that Safety and Security patrol all registered parties in Greek houses, only suspected unregistered events.
In February 1992, a subcommittee of the CCAOD began preparing recommendations to advise Pelton on how the College could better enforce the alcohol policy. It was becoming apparent that there might be other ways than a keg-ban to bring the College into compliance with federal law.
The College conducted a survey that showed most students had a very limited understanding of the alcohol policy, with many of them doubting the policy was being enforced consistently or that it effectively reduced underage drinking.
That May, a task force on alcohol policy began considering a proposal that would bring back common sources of alcohol and allow Greek organizations to self-monitor.
In the meantime, life at the College continued without kegs. Students were forced to borrow kegs from the University of Vermont in order to hold the annual Keg Toss on the Green during Green Key Weekend 1992.
The return of the keg
In November 1992, after 14 months without common sources, the task force announced that it had accomplished the seemingly impossible task of bringing back kegs with the full approval of all members.
Pelton said returning kegs in a controlled manner would increase control over students' consumption of alcohol. "I would much rather have parties with beer rather than hard alcohol," he said.
Students agreed that it was far better to have communication between students and administrators than to have edicts handed down with little or no student input.
The president of the IFC said the administration returned kegs not as a concession but rather as an attempt to increase control of alcohol consumption.
The committee also created the self-monitoring system in use today. Pelton said he struck a bargain with students, agreeing to take "Safety and Security out of the dominant role of enforcement."
In its place, student monitors trained by the Coed Fraternity Sorority Council became responsible for controlling the flow of alcohol, and students of legal drinking age would be clearly identified by bracelets.
At CFS parties, beers were to be served by bartenders trained by the College.
The new policy also created the two-tier system and the formula to calculate the number of kegs still in existence today. All kegs must be registered and tagged by the Office of Residential Life, and all kegs must removed from the house by 2 p.m. the day after the social event.
Only 27 seats were filled at the new policy's official unveiling in Spaulding Auditorium, a stark contrast to the mob of 800 who showed up at the previous winter's debate in Webster Hall.
Pelton, who did not ban the kegs but was responsible for bringing them back, said in retrospect the ban was a mistake.
