As times change, traditions change.
And the biggest change in the Dartmouth community in the last 50 years - co-education - has invariably changed perhaps the biggest tradition at the College -Winter Carnival.
But some things about the weekend remain unchanged.
It still is a weekend to let loose.
"There seems to be some sort of a need in the middle of winter for people to have some sort of a break, to be festive," Dean of Residential Life Mary Turco said.
The outdoor aspect of the weekend didn't change much after the College went coed in 1972.
"It's an organized way of bringing people to campus and celebrating the winter and the cold," Winter Carnival Council chair Tim Chow '96 said.
But one aspect of Carnival had no choice but to change.
Coeducation, and the arrival of mass quantities of women on campus for the entire year shifted Carnival's focus away from the one weekend in the winter time when men could actually find a date on campus.
"Coeducation changed Carnival because Carnival was the time when lots of women came to campus," Turco said. "People really looked forward to having a new population on campus."
No longer do buses and trains full of women displace men from their dormitories and Greek houses. The women are now living next door to the men, or in the Greek house next door to the fraternity.
The founder of the Dartmouth Outing Club Fred Harris '11 started Winter Carnival in 1911 as a weekend for students to take advantage of the great outdoors at Dartmouth.
And the weekend exploded into an "Event" with a capital E, where women from around the world would overrun Dartmouth.
"It was a happy weekend in what was usually a long cold winter," Dean of Residential Life Mary Turco said. "I think it has changed a great deal in the last 10 years. It seems to be evolving into something."
Since the "big change" in '72, Carnival has adapted, becoming a weekend for Dartmouth students to let loose, to go crazy after five weeks of being kept inside by the frigid Hanover temperatures.
"Carnival and the Outing Club started out as the same thing -Hanover doesn't really have so much to do in the winter," Outing Club President Mark Giordono '94 said. "The best way to take advantage of it is to get outside."
But has the change lessened student interest in the outdoor aspects of Winter Carnival? Is it now just an excuse for the Greek houses to throw their big term parties?
Some administrators say students are not as interested in the festivities as they were in the past.
"It seems to me that student interest in Winter Carnival today seems to be less than it was 10 or 15 years ago," Dean of the College Lee Pelton said.
But Coordinator of Student Programs Linda Kennedy who leads much of the work on the Carnival, said although the focus has definitely changed, students still are interested in Winter Carnival.
"The emphasis [in the past] was on having fun in the outdoors," she said. "Now I think the focus is on having fun. For some people that means doing a lot in the outdoors, for some it doesn't. Everybody has their own perception."
In the last few years, Kennedy's office has worked to make Carnival a weekend for students to enjoy themselves - indoor, or out, in the Greek houses or not in the Greek houses.
"We've tried to expand carnival so that if you don't like the cold you can still have a good time," she said. "As diversity has increased at the College, we've tried to make Carnival grow along with it."
Pelton said Kennedy's efforts could continue to reform Carnival in a positive way.
"I think there's room there to recreate Winter Carnival in a different light so it is not necessarily associated with alcohol," he said. "I know the people in student activities are working very hard to make sure Winter Carnival has an appeal to a broad base of students."
Several students said just that - Carnival can be whatever you want.
"Its a lot bigger than just another social weekend," Chow said. "The parties are part of something bigger, not just the whole thing."
Giordono said,"In the last 50 years there has been more of an emphasis on partying but there still is a really strong emphasis on getting outdoors and doing stuff."
Co-chair of the Winter Carnival Council Tamara Busch '95 said Carnival is one of the more positive traditions at Dartmouth.
"It originally began as a way to sort of break people out of the winter doldrums and get out there and enjoy the winter," she said.
And now a student can do what they want to do on Carnival, she said.
"If a person wants to see Winter Carnival as a party weekend, they certainly don't have a problem seeing that," she said.
But she added there has been a big emphasis on the other aspects of Carnival in the last few years.
