News
Since its creation 72 years ago as a hosting group designed to welcome visiting athletic teams, the Green Key Society has undergone dramatic changes, and is still struggling to fully define its new role.
The junior class honor society now dedicates itself to providing services to the College, but to do so effectively it must be able to make its true purpose clear.
The History of the Society
Green Key originated in response to an experience Dartmouth football players had when they went to Seattle in 1920.
When the football team went to play the University of Washington that year, students of the University's service organization, the Knights of the Hook, greeted them at the train station.
The group provided transportation to the football players' lodgings, served as guides and, according to later reports by the players, introduced them to several Washington-area women.
"Six of the seats in each car were filled with the prettiest co-eds a bunch of clunks from a men's college could honestly say they'd ever seen," football player William Cunninghman '21 wrote when recalling the game in an article for The Boston Herald in 1951.
The next year Dartmouth announced the creation of the Green Key Society, composed of about 50 sophomores.
The society had three responsibilities: to entertain guests of other institutions, to act as a permanent "vigilance committee" to keep freshmen in line, and to select men to act as cheerleaders and ushers.
The day after its birth, the editors of The Dartmouth called Green Key a "rather striking innovation, the worth of which must wait upon time to tell."
The society chose Green Key as their name because "it symbolizes Dartmouth in the word Green, and hospitality in the word Key," The Dartmouth reported.
Two years later, the society's membership became all juniors, and the society was responsible solely for meeting visiting athletic teams.
In the next 20 years, Green Key, while retaining its primary function as a welcoming group, became more service oriented.
