More so than any of the College's other big weekends, Green Key brings to mind infamous comparisons to the movie "Animal House." Created by Chris Miller '63 -- who was known as "Pinto" to his Alpha Delta fraternity brothers -- the movie was inspired by Miller's own Green Key experiences as a brother at AD to celebrate the mindless fun and incredible debauchery of those days.
Yet these days an almost eerie parallel can be drawn between Delta Tau Chi's battle with the Faber College administration and the uncertain future of Dartmouth's own Greek system. This Green Key weekend reminds us that the College's "Animal House" legacy may be in jeopardy.
"'Otter, they're really serious this time,'" Miller said, quoting a scene from "Animal House" in reference to the Committee on Student Life Report to the Trustees released in January.
"It sounds really insistent... they're not taking half measures this time," he said in a recent telephone interview with The Dartmouth from his home in Sherman Oaks, Calif.
Miller expressed mixed reactions to the proposed changes to the Greek system on campus.
"At Dartmouth, more than any other college, there is a long and proud tradition of 'Boy, do we know how to have fun,'" he said. "At the same time, these are not all bad changes."
Miller pointed to the highly publicized alcohol-related deaths that have occurred at other colleges in recent years. The Trustees and administration cannot be blamed for wanting to keep students safe, he said.
"Things may have gotten out of control," Miller said. "Some of the things I've heard done [through the media] are so f---ing stupid. When rowdy behavior crosses the line, then the students have no one to blame but themselves."
Miller stressed that he was not just talking about Dartmouth, for what he sees playing out at the College is happening at other institutions across the country.
"If people are going to die, then the administration has got to do something."
At the same time, Miller said that he felt "caught between a rock and a hard place" on the issue of the Greek system.
"No one is more supportive of the right to go crazy and party," he said.
Miller said students from the College go on to become surgeons or lawyers or pursue other occupations that do not allow much room for insanity. He called students' time at the College, therefore, "a window of opportunity to go nuts."
"And everyone ought to go nuts in their lives," he said.
Miller also saw some of the proposed changes to the College's Coed Fraternity Sorority organizations as ineffective and even counteractive.
He saw the Committee's recommendation to remove tap systems, mass refrigeration units and permanent bars from CFS houses as having a limited effect on campus alcohol consumption.
"The urge to party and raise hell is not going to go away because you remove tap systems," he said. "It might have the effect of some reduction, and it will make it less convenient maybe for those whose cup of tea is a cup of beer."
In fact, Miller warned that it might not be a good idea to attempt to suppress too much student "rowdiness." It could lead to an explosion, he said.
"The harder you make it to party, the less you accommodate the realistic behavior of college students," Miller said.
"There is probably some law of physics that hasn't been invented yet that says the total level of party energy in a class at Dartmouth cannot be altered," Miller said. "The pressure build-up is going to come out somewhere. I think what would result could be worse than what is now perceived to be the problem."
However, Miller said, given today's realities, he thought the proposal to have a licensed server at every registered party to dispense alcohol was a good one. Not only would it prevent underage drinking, he emphasized that if someone has reached a certain level of drunkenness, the server could cut him or her off.
Miller criticized the proposal of placing a non-affiliated Undergraduate Advisor -- which will not be instituted, according to Dean James Larimore -- in every CFS residence, pointing to the possible atmosphere of distrust the situation could create.
"Sounds like they're putting a 'narc' in the place," he said.
Most of all, Miller said, the administration sounds "over-zealous."
"It sounds like they're going too far by a lot when they're planting spies in frats and dismantling taps," he said. "It's like the behavior of some nasty dictator."
In describing how he thinks the administration could better handle the situation, Miller used the analogy of learning how to ride a motorcycle. Left turns were scary for him, he said, because the bike tilted low to the ground. He explained the way he finally learned to make the turn was to "go with the motorcycle" instead of against its natural motion.
"It's this big hard metal fact that you're sitting on top of," he said. "You have to go with it, tilt with it, respect the motorcycle and learn to co-exist with it."
"Now change the motorcycle to the Dartmouth student body," he said.
Miller described that "back in the day" there existed an unspoken understanding between the administration and the fraternities. As long as the fraternities displayed a little responsible self-management, the administration left them alone, Miller said.
He added that he thought it worked well and that the students respected the administrators for understanding who they were as college students.
Still, Miller recounted one incident from his college days that brought him face to face with the dangers of alcohol.
After a night spent partying at Skidmore College, he and his friends started the long drive back "basically loaded with alcohol."
Miller said he woke up at one point to see the driver just passing out. The driver's head hit the steering wheel, but it didn't wake him up, Miller said.
Somehow, Miller reached across and steered the car to safety.
"I don't know what would have happened," he said, "but it wouldn't have been good. It's scary. The fun ends when the amputations begin."
However, Miller said he did not remember any hazing-related deaths or other serious safety issues occurring during his time at the College.
"There was a lot of crazy behavior... a lot of rowdiness and a lot of fun, but I don't recall that there were deaths or grievous injuries that the administration building was ever blown up," he said.
"The consequences were never that great for us," Miller said.
In a previous interview with The Dartmouth, he said Green Key was the best weekend of the year.
"It always happened after the hard, cold, muddy months, when everything was fresh and beautiful," Miller said.
"We would just fling open the doors and have a hell of a weekend," he said.
Many of the best-known and craziest scenes from "Animal House" were inspired by Miller's own Green Key experiences.
The scene in which John Belushi drenches himself in mustard is one of those, according to Miller. The Sunday morning of the weekend, with the party still raging, a brother discovered an industrial-sized bottle of mustard and poured it all over himself.
He then proceeded around the party on all fours, biting women's backsides and shouting, "I am the Mustard Man."
Miller said the movie scene in which a Delta Tau Chi brother skis down the stairs as the band breaks into "Shout" also originates from another Green Key Weekend at AD.
Still, other Green Key incidents were perhaps too wild for the film. Miller recalled one Green Key Weekend when a drunk College student hijacked a bus full of women. The student left the women in White River Junction and hitchhiked back to campus.
Miller's final take on the future of the Greek system?
"I have no idea what the future is," he said. "It's so important to have that crazy fun, but you have to keep limits intact.
"I've got no easy answers."
