Whether they were roasting stolen pigs, hunting down women, drinking alcohol or just working, alumni interviewed by The Dartmouth said they had strong memories of what Green Key Weekend was like during their careers at the College.
Alumni who attended the College before it became coeducational in 1972 said they had vivid memories of Green Key - perhaps because the weekend was a drastic change from day-to-day life on campus.
Jack Nevison '66 said he figured out early in his career at Dartmouth that the dating scene was not for him. But he said for most students, the focus of Green Key was on locating women.
Nevison said Dartmouth men started racking their brains three or four weeks before the weekend to think of any woman they had dated over the summer or met in some other context. Then, they called the various women on their lists, hoping that one would agree to come to Hanover for Green Key.
"They used to post the shoot-down letters on bulletin boards," he said.
Nevison said the men's efforts to find women to visit for the weekend were "pathetic lunges at a social life in an environment where it was problematic at best to maintain any kind of relationship with anyone."
He added, "The big weekends were magnificent in that they tried heroically to generate social events. But on the other side of that coin, they were also sort of sad testimony to the bleak day-to-day social life of an all-male institution."
Blair Wood '63 said the big weekends were much more than indications of the dull dailysocial scene at the College - especially Green Key, which was a "nice weekend just because there wasn't much structure to it."
Wood said Green Key weekends were "always everybody's favorite." He said outdoors activities including volleyball and picnics were popular.
Wood said his memories of Green Key during his senior year are particularly fond.
"I invited a young lady to go skiing up at Tuckerman's," he said. "That was my first date with my wife."
The two have been married now for 35 years.
Wood also remembered one year when his fraternity, Phi Psi, abducted another fraternity's pig that pledges had to take care of and fattened it up over the winter at one of the brother's Vermont farms.
Before Green Key, the brothers in Wood's fraternity went to the library and checked out a book about roasting pigs. After studying up, the brothers dug a pit, slaughtered the pig - plenty fat by then - and cooked it.
Wood said they ate the roasted pig at the annual Green Key picnic, boxed the head and delivered it to the fraternity to which the pig belonged.
John Damon '61 did not have specific stories about Green Key, but he remembers it as a relaxing spring weekend in which students "sort of meandered around campus looking for what was happening."
"Everybody likes a party in the spring, with the sun up and the hormones running," he said.
He remembered that professors were "fairly understanding on Monday," and 8 a.m. classes were not very well attended.
Damon was a rower when he was a student at the College, and he said he thinks he spent all of his Green Key weekends on the Connecticut River, where there was always a big turn-out to watch the home races that took place over the weekend.
None of the pre-coeducation alumni who spoke with The Dartmouth remembered a significant emphasis on drinking.
"Having a drink available when you wanted it was the drill, but most people were fairly responsible," Damon said.
However, Kathy Reilly Gross '85 said Green Key and other big weekends at Dartmouth "were an excuse for big parties with a lot of drinking." But she said the big weekends, especially Green Key, also brought the student body together.
"It's a real Dartmouth party," she said.
Some alumni remembered alcohol playing a secondary role to drugs.
Although Nevison remembered making "the world's worst alcoholic mixture" one year - a concoction of orange or grape soda and vodka - he said marijuana use was more popular than drinking when he was a student.
"The thing people did after they had their [marijuana] brownies was they turned up their music," he said. He remembered that some students set up sound systems in their dormitory windows, particularly during Green Key, and blasted music.
For Alton Thorpe '40, Green Key was less about dates and drinking and more about work.
He was paying for his college education, and he said "I didn't have a date. It was just something that went on that I didn't get involved in, except to get a job."
All alumni who spoke with The Dartmouth thought big weekends like Green Key were worthwhile in some way.
According to Gross, Green Key is more Dartmouth-oriented than Homecoming and Winter Carnival because fewer non-Dartmouth students are on campus.
"It celebrates a lot of the positive aspects of Dartmouth," she said.
