7 Ways You Can Tell It Was Homecoming

By Annette Denekas, The Dartmouth Staff | 10/16/15 10:55am

Homecoming is undoubtedly one of the best weekends Dartmouth has to offer. With its parades, parties, pong and ponderous pile of wood, it’s enjoyable for everyone from the Class of 2019 to the returning Class of 1942 (although visitors may think we're in a cult). In case you’ve been living beneath the Connecticut River for the past week — or perhaps you can’t seem to remember last weekend — we dug up some clues to prove that this past weekend was indeed Homecoming.
1. Snapchat stories
I felt very accomplished after I finished scrolling through the multitude of Friday night Homecoming Snapchat stories. They were all the same more or less, consisting of darkness, a lot of blurred movements, incomprehensible shouting and of course the bonfire (I may have been guilty of Snapchatting this theme as well). Caption ideas were also similar, such as, “15FLAMES,” “worst class ever” or “TOUCH THE FIRE.” The number of Homecoming stories from last weekend may even rival the amount of fall foliage Instagram posts I’ve seen this past week.

2. Length of the Campus Blotter
Check out this week’s Blotter to see for yourself. Unsurprisingly, most of the events ended with something like, “The individual was given medical assistance for intoxication, transported to Dick’s House and remained there for the rest of the night.” The amount of S&S activity can only mean it was a big weekend.

3. Number of students in the library on Sunday
Throughout the day, nearly every library space was occupied, either by a stressed student or by a seat-saving backpack. After neglecting homework on Thursday, Friday and Saturday, people entered panic mode, perhaps after realizing that midterms were sooner than expected. Despite it’s fluorescent lighting, the 1902 room was an especially dark place.

4. Zombie-likestudents
Adorned in sweatpants and sweatshirts (myself included), students ambled far slower than normal from place to place. Too much pong plus lack of sleep resulted in campus-wide glazed expressions and headaches.

5. Trodden Green
The tell-tale sign of a successful Homecoming is the circular formation of worn, dead grass on the Green. After most of the freshman class ran 19 laps around the bonfire (and even some brave/crazy people ran 119), it’s amazing the Green is not just a pile of dirt.

6. Candy everywhere
Along with other city dwellers living in the Lodge, I pass through the urban metropolis of Hanover every morning. As I shuffled along to the Hop for coffee on Saturday morning, I realized I was crunching along on endless candy wrappers from the Friday night parade. There are still several crushed candy pieces on the streets, but most of them are those swirly mints you get from restaurants (because no one really wants those in the first place anyway).

7. Trash piles outside the frats
Even if you didn’t see the massive piles of green Clynk bags that lined the fraternity lawns, you probably smelled them from afar. So many empty Keystone cans. So many.


Annette Denekas, The Dartmouth Staff