Actresses, chief executives, congresswomen and Olympic gold medalists: It's no exaggeration that many female alumni of Dartmouth are kind of a big deal nowadays.
What you probably did not know is that 37 years ago at Dartmouth, these accomplished women may have received a welcome that went a little something like this: "Our cohogs, they play four/ They're a bunch of dirty whores/ With a knick knack baddy whack send the bitches home."
In the spring of 1975, at the Hums singing competition during Green Key Weekend, then-Dean of the College Carroll Brewster declared "Our Cohogs" the winning song the most creative and original that he heard all weekend, according to records found in Rauner Special Collections Library.
This song, "Our Cohogs" cohog being short for coed hog is one example of Dartmouth's history of the backlash that greeted the College's decision to become a coeducational institution. The subsequent controversy and protest that decision caused changed the face of the College for years to come.
According to a news article in the Rauner Library archives, the performance of "Our Cohogs" marked the beginning of a short-lived tradition by a group of men at the College to make their new female peers feel unwelcome, and of an uprising by the female population over the patriarchal songs.
"Our Cohogs" was just one of countless songs that degraded and criticized the female presence on campus. Before the alma mater recognized the "daughters of Dartmouth" in 1988, it was entitled simply, "Men of Dartmouth," and the opening lines were "Men of Dartmouth give a rouse/ For the College on the hill/ For the Lone Pine above her/ And the loyal sons who love her."
According to a January 1988 article in The Boston Globe, even after the lyrical change, the alma mater committee of the Alumni Council explicitly told the College to "not discourage people from singing the original song." Some fraternities and sports teams continue to sing "Men of Dartmouth" today, in lieu of its more politically correct successor.
Some older and lesser-known Dartmouth songs like "The Touchdown Song" and "Hail Dartmouth" which include more subtle references to the "Men of Dartmouth" were initially left unchanged following coeducation. Some songs, however, were deemed so offensive to women that the Alumni Council deemed it necessary to change them, according to records in the Rauner Library.
One such song, "Dartmouth's in Town Again," contained the lines "Dartmouth's in town again/ Run, girls, run! ... Dartmouth's in town again fun, girls, fun!" but had to be changed to "Dartmouth's in town again, Team! Team! Team! ... Echo the old refrain, Team! Team! Team!" because the original version caused too much controversy.
Although Dartmouth has shed many of these old musical traditions, several groups across campus maintain old conventions for the sake of tradition.
The all-male a cappella group, The Dartmouth Aires, for example, still sings a song called "Son of a Gun," which has the lines, "And if I had a daughter, sir/ I'd dress her up in green/ I'd put her on the campus/ just to coach the freshman team/ And if I had a son, sir/ I'll tell you what he'd do/ He'd yell To Hell with Harvard!'/like his Daddy used to do."
David Peterson '10, musical director of the Aires, said that even though the song is still in the Aires' repertoire, the group has long struggled with deciding whether or not to sing it at shows.
"I think a lot of [the reason we sing it] is that it's a tradition that's been around in the group for a long time," he said. "We get asked to sing these songs all the time, but there's two sides of the coin: Do we want to do what the [alumni] want or do we want to try to go along with the obvious changes that are going on at the school?"
