The craziest thing ever done at Homecoming was probably way back in the late 19th century, when Dartmouth defeated Manchester College in a baseball game and spontaneously started a blaze on the Green -- the College's first Homecoming Bonfire. Plenty of other incidents since, whether violent, fun or just strange, have colored Homecoming weekend.
Many of these revolve around playful attempts to either deny or overly encourage the College's freshmen in their time-honored right to light and run around the bonfire.
Just last year some members of Dartmouth's rugby team encouraged freshmen circling the bonfire by running around it, too -- in the opposite direction.
Often traditions turn violent. The long-standing tradition of upperclass sabotage of the freshmen-built bonfire grew ugly in 1992, when a violent melee erupted on the Green between the two groups, some armed with baseball bats and hockey sticks.
The violence escalated until approximately 600 students, many of whom were heavily intoxicated, engaged in destructive behavior after upperclassmen threatened to storm the bonfire.
At times antics have been more political in nature. The 1987 Homecoming saw a group of female students who called themselves the "Womyn to Overthrow Dartmouth" sport witches' garb and pelt eggs at a speaker's podium.
In 1991, students bewailing a new College policy banning open alcohol sources handcuffed themselves to the bonfire, shouting "We want kegs! We want kegs!"
In 1984, The Jacko -- Dartmouth's comedy magazine -- tried to derail the bonfire by simply sending letters to freshmen from the "Office of the Dean of 'shmen" announcing that it was cancelled.
In 1998, one Safety and Security officer was assaulted by a student at the bonfire, who punched the officer in the rib cage and then hurled his portable radio into the crowd. Another officer was punched while breaking up a fight.
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.
One tradition that no longer exists is the humiliation and degradation of new students by forcing freshmen to wear beanies.
The freshmen beanies, later called freshmen caps, were unfashionable little pieces of headwear emblazoned with the class numerals.
In the 1950s, Dartmouth Night offered a way for freshmen to escape the annoying headgear: a tug-of-war with the sophomore class.
If freshmen were victorious, they could shed the beanies. If they failed this mission -- and upperclassmen usually banded together to ensure that they did -- the beanies had to be worn until Nov. 14.
In 1963, the tug-of-war turned violent when distraught freshmen, having lost the competition, burned their beanies and stormed Thayer Dining Hall.
The Class of 1973 appears to have been the last class required to wear 'freshmen caps,' according to College Archivist Kenneth Cramer in 1985.
