In the 110 years since the first Green Key Weekend, the College has seen scandals break, new policies emerge and old traditions fade. Despite these changes, the festival's original spirit has remained intact, with raucous parties, piles of free food and distinctly Dartmouth celebrations.
Dartmouth's first spring weekend festival, called Spring Houseparties Weekend, occurred in 1899, when students at the then all-male College invited female dates to campus to celebrate a party-filled weekend at fraternity houses. While women traveled to Hanover from around the country, the majority of the hundreds of female visitors hailed from women's institutions in New England, like Smith College, Mount Holyoke College and Skidmore College.
Unlike today, when students have the freedom to spend late nights as they choose, undergraduates at the turn of the century had to deal with the College administration's stringent rules, which established a curfew for women and forbade men from going above the first floor of fraternity houses when women were spending the night.
While members the Class of 2012 today enthusiastically await their first Green Key Weekend experience, freshmen in the past were banned from participating in any of the weekend's events.
Over the next twenty years, the weekend became an integral part of Dartmouth culture. By 1920, staple events included a spring prom ball, tea and supper dances, musical productions and inter-collegiate sports competitions.
Hanover mayoral elections coincided with the big weekend through the 1920s, and "Prom Girls," who visited the College as students' dates to the Junior Promenade, were allowed to vote in these elections, due to an 1898 New Hampshire statute.
The Green Key Society was officially established in 1921 to organize and host many of the weekend's events. The Society, which was intended to facilitate entertainment for guests and make sure the student body acted in line with the College's standards, formed after two secret societies merged and voluntarily agreed to discontinue their former organizations. The society "at once received the hearty support of the Administration," according to an article published in The Dartmouth in that year.
The administration cancelled the "Junior Promenade," a dance which had replaced the prom ball, in 1924, after neighbors and town officials complained about the noise coming from the event. The Green Key Society helped restore the weekend in 1929, but it was again cancelled in 1931, this time for a three-year period. Either the 1924 or 1931 weekend -- sources disagree on which -- was cancelled, partially because of a young woman named Lulu McWoosh who reportedly bicycled around the Green naked just before Sunday church services the year before. McWoosh's alleged exploits mark one of the earliest documented accounts of "streaking the Green."
In 1963, a piano-smashing contest was held in the center of the Green between the sledgehammer-armed members of Chi Phi and Pi Lambda Phi fraternities.
A trend known as "outdoor sleep," in which students and their dates brought mattresses and sleeping bags to the golf course for a night of romance, was also popularized during the 1960s. This tradition came to an abrupt halt in 1965 after a local parent complained that his child, who had wandered onto the golf course, had been exposed to inappropriate behavior. In response to the complaint, the College began to send police officers to the golf course to chase away the young couples.
A series of riots two years later led to the cancellation of another major event, the Green Key Ball. To protest an on-campus speech by the segregationist governor George Wallace, students surrounded the speaker's car and prevented him from leaving campus, causing the administration to cancel the ball, though not other weekend events.
Another event, the "Wetdown Ceremony" in which students threw food and water at newly elected student government representatives, was replaced by the Greek Games in the mid-1960s due to its increasingly violent nature.
The Greek Games were notorious for featuring heated competitions. Events ranged from traditional inter-fraternity contests, such as bike races, to more perilous undertakings in which underclassmen ran through human walls of seniors.
Chariot races later replaced the Greek Games for about two decades. These races featured fraternity members racing around the Green as "human horses," while students bombarded them with fruit from the sidelines. Rumors of cheating frequently surrounded the event, and, in 1976, a fight broke out between Zeta Psi and Beta Theta Pi fraternity members due to accusations of unfair play.
In 1992, Rolling Stone magazine published a feature on Alpha Delta fraternity and its involvement in Green Key Weekend. The house's Green Key lawn party and live musical events are still traditionally well-attended by students looking for a place to socialize outside and listen to live music. AD's party has featured many popular bands, including Anthrax in 1982 and Blues Traveler in 1988.
Other notable acts who have made appearances at Green Key Weekend over the years include Earl Fuller's Jazz Band in 1929, Tommy Dorsey and Artie Shaw in 1938 and the Grateful Dead in 1978. The Grateful Dead's appearance drew self-proclaimed "Deadheads" from across New England.
One of Green Key Weekend's longest traditions was the Hums, an inter-fraternity singing competition that began during the weekend's inaugural spring. During the 1970s, though, the songs' lyrics became increasingly controversial, with the title of the winning song in 1974 referring to female students with a euphemism for genitalia. Due to the uproar that followed, the College decided to discontinue the competition that year.
Along with fraternity parties, barbecues and performances, students have recently begun to incorporate fundraisers and other philanthropic events into the weekend's schedule. In 2007, 40 teams took part in a Lose the Shoes barefoot soccer tournament to raise money for Grassroots Soccer, which supports a community-based HIV prevention program in Africa.
This year, the Green Key Society has increased its involvement in planning events for the weekend, with plans to reinstate the Green Key Ball after a 40-year hiatus to celebrate the landmarks of 80 years since the first Ball and 110 years since the inaugural Green Key Weekend.
Traditions have come and gone, but Green Key Weekend still remains an essential part of many students' "Dartmouth experience."
