If asked, most informed Dartmouth students will usually cite this approaching weekend as their favorite. Personally, I tend to waver back and forth between Green Key and Winter Carnival, but that's mostly because I have the unique privelege of risking life, limb and teeth while participating in the keg-jump. Nevertheless, few people would dispute Green Key's transcendence in the pantheon of Dartmouth weekends.
What accounts for this popularity? After all, Green Key has absolutely no point whatsoever. Unlike its sister weekends, there are no bonfires or polar bear swims, no football games or ski races. Nor is there any connection to the Green Key society, despite the nominal similarity. Yet this wasn't always necessarily the case. In the old days, the weekend featured a number of events that was planned by the society, including chariot races and a prom. Of course, each of these were conducted with the sole purpose of attracting women to the campus after three cold winter months of painful celibacy. It was, in effect, a gigantic booty call worthy of the likes of Sir Mix-a-lot.
Luckily for the sexually starved men of Dartmouth, it seems that several intrepid women answered the voices crying in the wilderness. An editorial in The Dartmouth observed in 1938 that "Hanover is God's gift to women this weekend, as hundreds of the proverbial fair sex invade the New Hampshire plain from the world at large. By train, car, hook or crook, the belles will barge into this normally peaceful hamlet." Man! Those were the days! If only I could have the same success finding a formal date.
With the advent of coeducation, this need for a nationally advertised booty call has followed the same nostalgic path as Dartmouth's Indian mascot and other now-defunct traditions. But so too has any real purpose to the weekend. And yet, in a very important way, Green Key survives today as one of Dartmouth's most purposeful occasions. If the world-famous Winter Carnival is a celebration of what Dartmouth is (the raging Ivy Leaguer of the snowy north), then Green Key is a celebration of the Dartmouth we all wish it could be. It is sadly ironic that a school reknowned for its "outdoorsy" mentality is largely precluded from enjoying those outdoors by virtue of our climate. This past spring has been an especially miserable reminder of our sub-arctic latitude, a Job-like trial of our collective patience. This is why Green Key is, and will continue to be, a kind of healing salve for our ailing Dartmouth spirits. And nowhere is that recovering spirit more manifest than at the AD lawn party.
There will be no real organized "event" on AD's lawn this Saturday, other than a bunch of students enjoying the weather, each other, good music and an occasional froth-dog. But for the first time in ages, Dartmouth students will mingle outside, shed their polar fleeces, and enjoy the rural environment for which we're famous. This, in and of itself, is an event, for it marks the beginning of an all-too-brief period of warmth where suddenly a trip to the fire tower is as attractive as a game of pong, and when both men and women come to the tardy realization that we, in fact, attend a school of very attractive people. So, in a sense, that sexual energy inspiring the first Green Key still lingers with us today. These things, and more, are indeed worthy of celebration.
It is probably appropriate that Green Key's central event on the lawn of AD lacks the kind of organization characteristic of bonfires or keg jumps. Such coherency might distract from the larger, more encompassing event that we annually reserve this weekend to recognize: good weather, great people and an awesome college.
I'll see y'all on the lawn.
