Since 1899, Dartmouth has had Green Key.
Originally called Spring House-Parties weekend, the event was first organized by the class of 1900. It involved several sporting events, many house parties thrown by the College's fraternities, and a prom-like formal dance that provided an opportunity to bring women to the all-male campus.
As with the other major weekends of Homecoming and Winter Carnival, busloads of women were brought in from local women's colleges such as Smith, Mount Holyoke, and Skidmore. During these weekends, the female students would generally stay in their dates' fraternity houses while the brothers found accommodations elsewhere. The name of each student and his date was listed in The Dartmouth every year.
At the time, freshmen were forbidden to take part in the weekend.
The weekend's name changed to Green Key with the founding of the eponymous junior service organization in 1921.
After the College canceled Green Key in 1924 due to the "rowdy" behavior of several students, it was the Green Key Society that helped revived the weekend in 1929 by replacing the weekend's variety show with a dance that would become a staple of Green Keys to come.
The future of Green Key was threatened once again in 1931 when Lulu McWhoosh, a student of Slippery Mountain Teacher's College decided to ride her bike around the Green naked one Sunday morning before church. McWhoosh's actions led to the administration canceling Green Key for the next three years.
Despite a brief hiatus during World War II, Green Key continued relatively without incident until the 1960s and the trend of "outdoor sleep," when large numbers of students would bring mattresses and blankets out to the school's golf course to sleep with their dates under the stars.
Though popularized in the 1960s, "outdoor sleep" was not a new concept, with record of an incident prior to this decade during which 69 students and their dates were arrested one Saturday morning at 4 a.m. for abusing the town's "normally-afforded pleasure privileges."
The tradition of "outdoor sleep" ended in 1965, when a local parent complained to the College that his son was being exposed to the couples' "less puritan" behavior. It was in this year that the administration sent golf course groundskeepers and policemen armed with sprinklers and bullhorns to chase away all students and their dates, effectively killing the tradition.
But the sixties weren't only a time of love. A 1967 visit during Green Key from former Alabama Governor George Wallace, who famously stood in a door at the university's desegregation in 1963, caused several student protests. Jeers during the ex-governor's speech grew with student aggression, culminating in a riot that surrounded Wallace's car, preventing him from leaving campus.
The 1960s saw more turmoil. In 1963, members of Chi Phi Lambda and Pi Lambda Phi fraternities engaged in a piano-smashing contest that involved attacking a piano placed in the center of the Green with sledgehammers. The sixties also saw the end of the cherished "Wetdown" tradition. Most popular in the early 1900s, the Wetdown involved the newly-elected members of student government being pelted with various food items and beverages as they ran across the Green. The tradition grew increasingly violent over time, and students began to flog the officers with belts as they ran, forcing the replacement of the Wetdown with the infamous chariot race in the mid-sixties.
At the time of the establishment of the chariot race, the Green was also used for intramural sports, meaning that the "Ben-Hur" style races between fraternities frequently tore up portions of the Green. Members of the respective fraternities would serve as the chariots' "horses" while onlookers threw eggs and water balloons during the race's three laps around the Green.
The event was extremely competitive. Fraternities frequently accused each other of sabotaging competitors' chariots, and in the 1976 race such accusations caused a fight to break out between the members of Zeta Psi and Beta Theta Pi fraternities.
The chariot race was replaced with the short-lived Greek games in 1984.
The Hums, an inter-fraternity singing competition that took place on the steps of Dartmouth or Webster Hall, was another cherished Dartmouth tradition dating back to the original House-Party weekend in 1899. The songs' lyrics were often critical or raunchy, and Theta Delta Chi's winning song "Our Cohogs," sung to the tune "This Old Man," ended the tradition in 1974.
The term "cohogs," a euphemism for female genitalia, referred to the College's newly arrived "coeds." The song began, "Our cohogs, they play one, 'cause of them we have no fun," and continued in the eighth verse, "Our cohogs, they play eight, because of them we masturbate."
Music has remained a strong part of the Green Key tradition, with bands at Alpha Delta's lawn party, Phi Delta Alpha's Block Party, and several other Greek organizations. Past bands that have visited the College during Green Key include The Shirelles, The Grateful Dead, Blues Traveler, and Anthrax. The Grateful Dead's 1978 concert drew "Deadheads" from all over the Northeast and lasted for over three hours.
The trend of bands visiting campus is by no means a new tradition. Duke Ellington entertained students in 1926 and jazz legends Artie Shaw and Tommy Dorsey visited campus in 1938, collaborating on the song "Green Key Jump" for the occasion. Country western singer Jerry Jeff Walker often visited campus for the weekend as well, and his signature remains on a wall at Theta Delta Chi fraternity today.
While much has changed about the nature of Green Key over the years, the wild spirit of the weekend remains very much intact.
