The College will celebrate Dartmouth Night for the 102nd time tonight as the Class of 2001 joins upperclassmen and alumni in participating in one of the College's most history-filled weekends.
Both students and alumni look forward to Homecoming weekend. But, in fact, it was not until the 1980s that the term "Homecoming" was commonly used to describe the weekend.
Before then, it was called Dartmouth Night -- the night which is still the focus of the weekend's festivities.
The early years
It was 102 years ago -- in September 1895 -- that College President William Jewett Tucker introduced the first-ever Dartmouth Night, which was held in Dartmouth Hall.
Tucker welcomed the Class of 1899 and gave his blessing to the crowd, saying it would "promote class spirit and would initiate freshmen into the community."
At the second Dartmouth Night, "Men of Dartmouth," written by Richard Hovey of the Class of 1885, became the official College song.
In the early years, the solemn ceremonies were held in the chapel in Dartmouth Hall and later in Webster Hall, with speeches lasting up to nine hours. The evening was later moved outside and held on the Green.
Dartmouth Night initially consisted of reading telegrams by alumni from around the world, speeches by the College president and guests, singing by the College Glee Club, parades led by the marching band, fireworks and the traditional bonfire.
In 1907, the Dartmouth Night festivities were moved into the newly-finished Webster Hall and the alumni speeches and the address of the night's distinguished speaker were held in front of Dartmouth Hall.
Bonfire takes center stage
Earlier, in 1888, the first bonfire took place after a Dartmouth baseball victory over Manchester the crowd celebrated by throwing anything they could get their hands on into a pile on the Green and setting it ablaze.
The first organized bonfire was held in 1893 after the football team routed Amherst, 34-0. Since then the bonfire has grown in size and significance.
The bonfire tradition has a history of pranks, strange occurrences and even violence.
Winston Churchill and Lord Dartmouth were special guests at the College in 1904 when pajama-clad students ran around the bonfire and a new Dartmouth Night tradition was born.
In the 1950s, a Dartmouth alumnus, also the president of the Central Railroad Company in Portland, Maine, 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.
Currently, the College has the wood delivered right to the Green for the building of the bonfire, but in the 1950s, busloads of Dartmouth men made the journey every year.
One famous bonfire incident occurred in 1968 when three members of the Dartmouth Outing Club replaced the kerosene that was to be used to light the fire with water.
This delayed the lighting of the bonfire for 20 minutes.
The fire was lit temporarily when the torch was thrown, but was extinguished when someone threw more "kerosene" on it.
The DOC pranksters eventually gave in and told the freshmen where the kerosene was.
Another famous bonfire incident took place in 1971, when a farmer from Etna donated his barn for the building of the bonfire.
But a case of mistaken barn identity turned the farmer's donation into a Homecoming disaster.
Dartmouth students visited the wrong barn and two days later, a livid farmer arrived at the College with a police escort, demanding the return of his cow stanchions.
While the kerosene incident delayed the lighting the bonfire in 1968, in other years, problems were caused by bonfires which were a little too eager to get started.
In 1976 the bonfire was lit prematurely and burned down two days prior to the scheduled Dartmouth Night celebration.
Wars and weather
put tradition on hold
The two World Wars led to scaled-down ceremonies as focus shifted to concern for the troops abroad. Hurricane Hazel also forced the bonfire to be cancelled in 1954.
In 1963, Hanover Fire Department ordered the cancellation of the bonfire due to the worst dry spell in over 100 years.
Dartmouth Night went uncelebrated for five years during the Vietnam War in the late '60s due to lack of interest.
Homecoming violence
In addition to pranks and unusual circumstances, violence has often surrounded the bonfire and Homecoming events.
A dynamite scare in 1983 forced the Class of 1987 to disassemble the bonfire piece by piece.
Fortunately, no explosives were found and the structure was rebuilt.
In 1987, about 10 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 1991, Students protesting the College's restrictive alcohol policy threw eggs and shaving cream on the fire.
They did so only after failing to persuade the Class of 1995 not to build a bonfire in protest of the new alcohol policy that banned common source alcohol like kegs.
Later, some protestors handcuffed themselves to the bonfire and shouted, "We want kegs! We want kegs!"
The long-standing tradition of upperclass sabotage of the freshmen built bonfire turned ugly in 1992, when a violent melee erupted on the Green between the two groups.
The violence escalated until approximately 600 students, many of whom were heavily intoxicated, engaged in destructive behavior after upperclassmen threatened to storm the bonfire.
Students wielded baseball bats and hockey sticks during the incident. As a result of the violence, construction of the bonfire was halted for one day.
Violent and unruly incidents during Homecoming have not been limited to the bonfire.
During the Freshman Sweep in 1993, members of the Class of 1997 jumped on the tops of cars and uprooted stop signs.
Since the incident, the Sweep has become a much more controlled activity in which freshmen are led by members of the Green Key honor society as well as Safety and Security officers.
Despite the troubled past of many Homecoming traditions, Homecoming and the Dartmouth Night ceremonies have run smoothly during the past two years.
