School Spirit

Love for the “College on the Hill” extends far beyond the Dartmouth jock-wear most students are perpetually sporting. From Freshman Trips forward, Dartmouth students are imbued with a fierce love of their unique and historic institution. The College’s small size fosters a single Dartmouth community, and students often make the trek to Hanover during their off terms. Dartmouth alumni are fiercely loyal and noted for being generous with pocketbooks and connections. However, there is a sense among even recent graduates that the school is being slowly transformed into a cookie-cutter research institution. For now at least, Hanover is filled with students who love their school and are sublimely happy.

Traditions

homecoming

Each term has one “big” (read: party) weekend, and in fall, the chief celebration is Homecoming. Freshmen are the focus of the weekend, as they are officially welcomed into the Dartmouth family. On Friday night, upperclassmen collect all the pea-greens during a Freshmen Sweep. Everyone marches, en masse, to the center of the Green, where a giant bonfire ensues. Freshmen run around it one hundred times plus the last two digits of their class year while older students and alumni egg them on.

Winter Carnival

Back before Dartmouth was coeducational, the long winter was warmed on this weekend as hundreds of women were bused in from all over the country. Now a variety of sporting contests are held, and brave souls leap into Occom Pond to partake in the Polar Bear Jump. Dormitories and Greek houses erect small snow sculptures on their property, while a giant sculpture is carved at the center of the Green.

Green Key

With temperatures finally mild, Dartmouth students take to the great outdoors to celebrate. Green Key is arguably the biggest party weekend of the year, as students bask in the sun for three or four straight days. Barbeques and concerts abound, with some fraternities throwing annual parties.

Tubestock

Another 3–4 day round of carousing culminates when the thousand or so students on campus don their bathing suits and head to the Connecticut River, where they float themselves and large quantities of beer on homemade rafts and inner tubes.

Sophomore Summer

Summer school sounds less than glamorous, but it means three months of fantastic weather and class bonding each sophomore class. Students often take only two courses while lounging the summer away at “Camp Dartmouth.”

Lone Pine

When establishing the school on a hill, Dartmouth founder Eleazar Wheelock noticed one crooked pine tree among a cluster of straight ones. This he took to be a symbol of the College, which would struggle to survive through its own literal and metaphorical winters. While the Lone Pine has since been struck by lightning, Bartlett Tower stands in tribute to its memory, and its glazed stump is preserved.

Daniel Webster

When a disgruntled trustee colluded with the New Hampshire governor to make Dartmouth a public university, the College was represented by its most famous alumnus. The great statesman argued for Dartmouth before the United States Supreme Court, which subsequently allowed the institution to remain private. Webster concluded his plea with remarks that are still echoed by students to this day: “This is, as I have said sir, a small college... and yet there are those who love it.”

ledyard Challenge

Before graduation, students are supposed to swim naked across the Connecticut River to Vermont (where nudity is legal), and then scamper in the buff back across the Ledyard Bridge.

Indian

Dartmouth was originally founded for the education of Native Americans, and Indians became embedded in College lore. The College failed to follow through on their original charter, with fewer then 20 Native Americans graduating before the 1960s, but in the last few decades, Dartmouth has built one of the strongest Native American Studies programs in the country. While the school has never had an “official mascot,” the Indian-head logo graced the Dartmouth masthead, as well as athletes, for decades. Since the Indian was banned in 1974, the Clay Pipe Ceremony has been canceled, while only a few seniors carry Indian-head canes at graduation. Recent efforts to replace the nebulous “Big Green” moniker with a moose have failed.