Temperatures have flirted with the 40s, and slush puddles have replaced snow banks on the Green, but winter spirit is still in the air, as Dartmouth prepares for its annual Carnival weekend.
Dartmouth Winter Carnival was born from the winter-loving aspirations of Dartmouth Outing Club founder Fred Harris '11. Harris wrote a letter to The Dartmouth bemoaning the College's lack of activities for students who preferred staying warm through athletic exertions instead of huddling by their dormitory heaters.
The Carnival's first incarnation was as 1910's Winter Meet, which was solely a sports field day. Two years later, it included an intercollegiate skiing competition in addition to its other various athletic and social events.
In 1912, the Carnival was expanded to four days, and Collis CommonGround (then called Freshman Commons in College Hall) was the site of the annual dance. Hearkening back to a more innocent era devoid of fraternity keggers and sweaty dance parties, the Carnival Ball featured dance numbers such as the "Toboggan Slide" and the "Moccasin Hop."
In 1927, the fraternity front lawn ice sculpture contest was formalized, with Sigma Nu winning the year's contest with a sculpture of a girl on a pedestal. Four years later, the campus saw its first snow sculpture in the center of the Green in the form of a medieval castle, optimistically called the Temple of Love. Students since then have witnessed snow sculptures ranging from a 47-foot snowman to a dragon spewing actual fire, to a snow statue of Dr. Seuss' Cat in the Hat.
This weekend marks the 95th year of Dartmouth's "Mardi Gras of the North," as it was hailed in a February 1920 issue of National Geographic. Perhaps reflecting one of Dartmouth's greatest selling points, the article was attributed for a threefold increase in applications the following year. Indeed, in its heyday, the Carnival attracted thousands of visitors, once causing an eight-mile traffic jam into Hanover in 1952.
Not only was the Dartmouth Carnival irresistible to visitors and prospective students, but it also attracted the attention of hard-partying American author F. Scott Fitzgerald. Fitzgerald visited the Dartmouth campus during Winter Carnival to research for his script of the 1939 movie, "Winter Carnival." Unfortunately, the recovering alcoholic spent most of his time drinking in the basements of Alpha Delta and Psi Upsilon fraternities.
Fitzgerland's fun-filled visit concluded with a fall into a snow bank, a disgraceful showing at a faculty party, and an embarrassing scene in front of the Hanover Inn in which director Budd Schulberg '36 fired him. Fitzgerald, exhausted by the Winter Carnival socializing and drunkenness, checked into a New York sanitarium to recover from the riotous weekend.
In more recent years, the weekend has also afforded Dartmouth students the opportunity to prove their athletic prowess and school spirit in conjunction with their party mettle. Although the human dog sled race and polar bear swim are memorable events, nothing compares to the now-defunct annual keg jump.
An event that brought campus-wide fame to Psi Upsilon's outdoor ice rink, the keg jump originated in the early eighties when Psi U brothers were inspired by Evil Kneivel's televised daredevil antics. They lined up empty kegs, donned hockey skates and jumped as many as they could, increasing the line each time. The record stands at 14 kegs, held by a '98.
The keg jump, which benefited local charities through its entrance fees, ended in 2000 when the College withdrew its insurance coverage of the event.
Over the years, Winter Carnival has also hosted now-antiquated events such as Carnival Queen, which pitted many of the female collegiate imports against each other in a beauty pageant.
Prior to becoming co-educational, the College transported women from surrounding colleges on Snow Trains that were often greeted by eager Dartmouth men at White River Junction. In 1960, an estimated 2000 women invaded the Hanover area and took over vacated dormitory, fraternity and bed and breakfast rooms to celebrate the Carnival weekend.
Looking back at the decades of Winter Carnival celebrations, it seems fitting to remark that the more things change, the more they stay the same. The boisterous, good-natured Dartmouth spirit that first birthed Winter Carnival nearly a century ago still propels its events and activities today and will nurse its hangovers tomorrow.
