This article is featured in the 2025 Commencement & Reunions special issue.
Fraternities are a hub for campus music. On a given Saturday night, there might be five or six different performances from a myriad of student bands. For groups that are composed entirely of women, this can present a challenge — making it feel like female musicians are “always on someone else’s territory,” Clara Pakman ’24 said.
In January 2023, Pakman helped found the all-female punk group Minx, with Sylvie Benson ’25. She said that the group was born out of a desire to connect women musicians at Dartmouth.
“There was a lot of momentum and response from the community about people being really excited that this was happening,” she said. “[We were] noticing that there was actually such a lack in the music culture of literally like spaces for women to perform together and feel validated as musicians … and just practice musically together.”
Pakman explained that unlike most bands, Minx did a “really concerted publicity effort” to bring together female musicians, including sending out a Google Form application.
“It ended up being a really beautiful experience for everyone involved,” she reflected.
Minx is not the first punk-rock, edgy girl group to come together at Dartmouth. Their clear predecessor was The L Word, a band formed in the fall of 2022 founded out of the realization that “Hanover needs a girl band,” according to band member McKenna Kellner ’23.
Kellner explained that The L Word was specifically motivated to “play music that we wanted to hear on campus that we never got to hear” — ultimately “a lot of old emo music” and “rock music,” including “some 70s rock.”
She explained how as a freshman, she had felt alienated by what she had perceived as the dominant mainstream sound among campus bands.
“I remember definitely feeling like, ‘Where the hell can a girl dance on this campus?,’” she said. “There was no one playing music that I liked.”
Pakman and Kellner both said that their groups sought out non-Greek Life venues to perform, from off-campus houses to Friday Night Rock or Sawtooth Bar & Stage.
“A huge problem I identified while being [with Minx] … was just the lack of neutral spaces for people to perform at, like student-run neutral spaces,” Pakman said.
She added that she thought they had some of their “best shows” there.
“I think the places where I saw it bring joy to an audience in the way that you would ideally want as a performer, were in the places where there were less power dynamics already existing,” she said, noting how fraternity basements are typically “very patriarchal, hierarchical spaces.”
Kellner fondly recalled The L Word’s “garage” shows held at their off-campus house. She explained that unlike traditional campus bands, they put on all their own events there, adding that the members’ lack of any Greek life affiliation had encouraged this.
Kellner described one benefit of performing in their own space as having “control over our space,” including “control over who was invited and who could come and what the vibe was.”
Pakman echoed this sentiment.
“[In these spaces] there are no existing rules of interaction or operation or sexuality that you have to operate within in order to enjoy yourself,” she said.
Today, to the knowledge of founder Emma Lynch ’25, the “pop-rock” band Nautilus is the only all-female student band on campus.
Nautilus’ bass-player Alice Cook ‘25 recalled that “the band really formed kind of organically.” She said “it all began” when she revealed that she played the bass while “hanging out with a couple of my now-bandmates.”
She said that “we’ve had a really positive experience” over their two years of performing.
“It's nice to be surrounded by a group of women who are supportive of each other in any setting, and this is certainly one of them,” she said.
Not all female band members on campus see the physical location of a fraternity basement as limiting their ability to enjoy performing in them. Rather, many highlighted how the presence of “friends” makes for memorable nights.
Claire O’shaughnessy ’25, the guitarist for Carpool, a “pop” student band composed of three women and two men, said that her friends are always excited to go to a party to see her perform.
“I think the best part of being in a band is that I just have such amazing friends who are A, so supportive, and B, actually just enjoy going,” she said. “Any show that everybody’s around that weekend for and is excited to go out to is going to be the most fun.”
As for choosing songs for set lists, O’shaughnessy said that from her perspective campus bands each “[have] their own niche,” and so they have to “balance” their own “priorities” with audience preferences.
Lynch said that compared to other campus bands, Nautilus’s sets tend to include “more girly songs,” including a “lot of songs by women.”
However, Lynch said that Nautilus also tries to “pick songs based [on] what we think the audience will enjoy.”
“We also are trying to cater to a frat basement and that is limiting,” she added.
O’shaughnessy said that for Carpool, balancing these priorities is less of a struggle.
“We all like mainstream music, so it's not a battle to pick songs that people will enjoy,” she explained.
Besides putting together set lists, Lynch described one early “challenge” for Nautilus as finding events to play before they were really a “known” band on campus.
She also shared her view that because their band members belonged to the same sorority with similar social circles, they initially had fewer connections from which to draw to book fraternity events.
“At the end of the day, the frats are the ones that are scheduling, not the sororities,” Lynch said.
