Understandably, the Dartmouth Winter Carnival, which began in 1910, used to be kind of a big deal. Big enough, indeed, to attract coverage from Life Magazine, The New York Times, the Boston Globe and even Playboy. And more importantly, as far as the men of Dartmouth were concerned, Carnival was big enough to attract women from colleges all over the Northeast, including Wellesley, Vassar, Skidmore, Mt. Holyoke and Smith.
To honor the thousands of women making their annual pilgrimage to Dartmouth -- and perhaps to attract more -- Dartmouth started holding its high-profile Queen of the Snows beauty pageant.
The Carnival Queen competition, which became a hallmark of the celebration during its golden years, involved around 50 contestants decked out in ski suits and parading before a panel of judges drawn from professors and administrators. The winner, named Queen of the Snows, was awarded a silver cup and became an instant media darling who earned national press coverage during the 1940s.
The 1947 issue of Sport Magazine proclaimed: "With a classic profile, a pair of blue eyes or a winning smile, rarely does anyone steal the show from the Queen. There have been queens of all sorts. Girls who like to cook, girls who like to dance and even girls who like to ski!"
By the 1950s, Carnival had become a huge tourist attraction, and women arrived by the thousands via buses, trains and boyfriends with cars. An invitation to the event became a point of pride, and the women, who all received green and white scarves, coveted invitations to the Carnival. Special parlors were added to the trains in Springfield to transport Smith and Mt. Holyoke students comfortably.
Once the women arrived on campus, they were put up in fraternity houses and dorms, which were chaperoned to prevent any inappropriate fraternization. Women also attended Saturday classes with their hosts and took in ice shows and musicals performed over the weekend.
In its 1960 Winter Carnival edition, The Dartmouth printed the following notice to its visitors: "Welcome to Hanover and the gala 50th Winter Carnival. Mrs. Westerberg informs us that you're one of an estimated 2000 young women who have invaded Hanover. Just one thing... Are you over 14?"
In 1970, the pageant once again captured the spotlight when a skydiver plummeted to the Green from 3,500 feet to place the crown on the Queen's head.
The next year, Playboy traveled to Hanover to shoot its "Playmate of the Month" issue. The magazine then paid the brothers of Bones Gate fraternity with half a keg to sculpt a statue of the playmate on their lawn.
In 1973, however, the Queen of the Snows contest was abolished by the Winter Carnival Council with the advent of coeducation at the College. The council cited "changing attitudes toward the role of women in contemporary society" as the reason.
Still, the attitudes of many male students did not change. Conscious of the eight-to-one ratio of males to females in those first days of coeducation, many men continued to bus women in for the celebration, and the men were less than hospitable to their new female classmates.
"There were fraternities who went around putting notes under the doors saying 'cohogs go home,'" Martha Hennessey '76 said. Hennessey was a member of the first class to accept freshman girls.
"They continued to ship women in. The first women weren't supposed to be dates of Dartmouth men; we were supposed to be Dartmouth men ourselves," Hennessey said.
She speculated that men were intimidated by the strong-willed first class of Dartmouth women and by the fact that they would have to see them again.
"The difference between the women brought in from other places and those who were from Dartmouth would be that the men knew they had to be more responsible around us. We were people they would see again," Hennessey said. "And certainly during Winter Carnival there was a lot of craziness, as I imagine there still is."
