Hooray, it's almost Green Key weekend! Now what? For many students, all Green Key means is dusting off that cute sundress and stocking up on red solo cups. Bonus points if you remember to apply sunscreen. Unlike Homecoming and Winter Carnival with their oodles of traditions, Green Key can seem rather uneventful. However, it wasn't always this way. Just ask your grandpa, or better, your great-great grandpa.
In 1899, the College hosted its first Junior Promenade, and students invited dates from various women's colleges. By the '20s, it had grown into a weekend complete with a bonfire, a ball, concerts by the Dartmouth band and a bicycle parade.
In 1921, the college entrusted the weekend's events to the newly formed Green Key Society, a group dedicated to hosting visiting sports teams and other guests of the College.
The guests of honor, or, as they were called, "the fair guests," were the hundreds of dates brought up to campus and housed in Mass Hall for the weekend. Preceding their arrival, the women's names were printed in both The Dartmouth and in national newspapers such as The New York Times.
A date's selection could have special meaning Jere Daniell '55 said.
"Most people were going into the military so bringing a date up senior year had more connotations," Daniell said. "People expected you to marry your date."
Though marital pressures are absent from the weekend today, Daniell doesn't believe things are all that different.
"The weekend is still the same," he said. "People still get drunk and have dates and try to make out."
No matter the year, students have always found plenty of shenanigans to get into. One tradition begun in the '60s, the Sleep, involved students and their dates spending the night in sleeping bags on the golf course. This activity was unsurprisingly disbanded by the administration, said Bill Phillips '71, who noted the stringent policies regarding women.
"In those days, you could be expelled from Dartmouth for having a woman in your room after 11 p.m.," he said.
Remembering other Green Key regulations, he cited the strict dress code.
"As I recall about my freshman year, we were supposed to wear green and white beanies, and if an upperclassman caught us without our beanie, we were supposed to return to our dorm and get it," Phillips said. "We sort of took that to heart back then. But by the spring of 1970, when the U.S. invaded Cambodia and protests sprang up all across the country, we were less inclined to wear our beanies and more inclined to wear bellbottoms, sandals and beads."
The biggest event, Phillips added, was the human chariot race around the Green, complete with egg-throwing spectators and plenty of mud.
"They made sure to have the Green very muddy for this, so it was sort of a pig pen," Phillips said."People seemed to really enjoy it."
Other lost traditions include the Wetdown Ceremony, a ritual where seniors lined up on the Green and flogged the three lower classes as they ran, and the Hums, an interfraternity singing competition. Throughout the years, students have tried to start new traditions, such as the 1989 weekend that boasted a petting zoo and a dunking booth.
Some traditions, such as "Old Timer's Day," a day for seniors to dress up, skip classes and cause trouble, were short-lived. However, while Dartmouth no longer crowns a Green Key Ball prom queen or holds bicycle parades, the students' delight in warmer weather has not changed. This joy, said Phillips, is at the heart of the weekend.
"Spring was a wonderful time to shed all our winter clothes and feel a lot more human."
So, my fellow Green Key-ers, go forth and be human. Just don't forget the sunscreen.
