Taking a cue from Ben-Hur, Saturday's Fieldstock event will revive chariot races, a College tradition begun in 1966 that was eliminated in 1984 due to safety concerns.
The chariot races began as a replacement for the Wetdown Ceremonies, in which the newly elected members of student government were pelted with various food items and beverages as they ran across the Green. The Wetdown tradition grew increasingly violent over time as students began to flog the officers with belts as they ran. As a result, the administration suggested the chariot race as a less-violent alternative.
Dartmouth students embraced the idea, and the chariot races soon became a battleground for the Greek houses. The races took place during Green Key weekend, and involved teams of students harnessed to vehicles bearing charioteers. Fraternities created many of the chariots, although residential halls also entered teams in the competition.
Each Greek house had a chariot that they either refurbished or completely remade each year, Peter Zelten '86 said. The chariots were rickety vehicles with two wheels and a seat, assembled with parts from old rocking chairs, cider barrels and kegs. The chariots were designed to resemble Roman designs and were given ambitious names like "Thunderbolt" and "Wild Thing."
The construction of the chariots was a large part of the competition in itself. Some of the entries were quite elaborate and well-engineered, while others were not. Because the course required contestants to make sharp turns at high speeds, the weaker chariots would often cross the finish line in pieces.
At the end of the race, the fastest, slowest and best-looking entrants all received prizes.
According to Zelten, it was usually the fraternity's recent pledges who were tasked as the horses to pull the chariot around the Green.
"It was common practice for the upperclassmen to line the course and pelt the pledges with cups of the College's favorite beverage, water balloons and an occasional rotten egg or tomato to raise the level of difficulty of the course," Zelten said.
Stephen McAllister '77 was one participant targeted by the zealous crowd.
"Having forgotten to wear goggles of some sort, I exited the course unceremoniously when I took a direct hit of a bag of flour to the face which caused a virtual white out," he said.
Certain fraternities were annual powerhouses in the race.
"Sig Ep was always good because it was full of track team members," McAllister said. "Beta [Theta Pi] was also good -- it was full of football team members."
The races originally took place on the Green but eventually had to be moved to a field by the Connecticut River due to the turf damage caused by the contest.
Fraternities frequently accused each other of sabotaging each other's chariots, and in the 1976 race, a fist fight broke out between the members of the Zeta Psi fraternity and Beta Theta Psi.
In the 1984 Green Key issue of The Dartmouth, Zelten, then Interfraternity Council Special Events chairman, said that the administration had pressured the IFC either to abandon chariot races altogether or downscale them significantly after three consecutive years of injuries. That year, the chariot race was reduced to one lap and became only the final leg of a six-part event called the Greek Games, which included hurdles, a wall climb and a ropes course. In previous years the races had been two or three laps.
"I was determined not to have my term be connected to the death of another rich Dartmouth tradition, so with the backing of the student community we eventually negotiated a compromise with the dean," Zelten said. "The hope was that by transforming the format somewhat, we could retain the best of the tradition and eliminate the worst."
A few years after the chariot races became part of the Greek Games in 1984, the chariot races disappeared from Dartmouth altogether.
Joe Davis '72 said he was not surprised to see how quickly the former Green Key staple vanished.
"It doesn't take a lot for a tradition to die at a place like Dartmouth -- within four years, there's no one around who remembers [the chariot race] except the administration, and they were probably glad to see it go," Davis said.
This weekend's Fieldstock chariot races are sanctioned and partially funded by the College, and the administration has chosen to enforce strict safety regulations.
The event guidelines show many changes from the original games: each chariot will be limited to five participants -- a driver and four "horses." The chariots will race on a straight course and participants will be required to wear helmets, mouth guards, goggles and closed-toe shoes. Alcohol has been banned from the event, and Safety and Security will be on hand to regulate the crowd and prevent onlookers from throwing or spraying unauthorized objects.
John Lee '78, a studio art professor, said that he was surprised that the sophomore class is reviving the tradition because he remembers the races as "one continuous crash," not the safety-conscious endeavor that this year's event is aiming to be.
"It seems to me that the things that made them interesting to many people are precisely the kinds of things that will have to be eliminated," Lee said.
