Co-ed sleep-overs on the Hanover golf course may be a thing of the past, but Green Key weekend still manages to bring some revelry to every Dartmouth student's Spring term.
Traditions have come and gone over the 106-year holiday celebration, yet the basic Green Key culture is rooted in the bustling house parties of 1899 that started the weekend tradition. At that time, a "junior promenade" took hold of campus social culture and remained a staple until the 1960s. When the Green Key Society took control of the event after the creation of the organization in the 1920s, the name for the weekend stuck.
The prom went on hiatus after 1924 when an unnamed female date rode naked on a bicycle early in the morning and administration officials cracked down on the debauchery. The dance returned, however, in 1933 after the Green Key Society pleaded with the student body to behave.
A visiting woman was often named "Miss Green Key" at the prom, although the titled changed throughout the years. In 1961, a photograph in The Dartmouth shows a female guest being crowned and handed the traditional "silver drinking mug," a notable sign of the celebratory weekend.
The College radio station also searched for a Green Key woman to highlight. WDCR hosted the "Green Key Sweetheart search," which, according to an article in The Dartmouth, scoured campus for "Bermuda-wearing collegiate misses."
The Green Key dance faded as a tradition in 1967 when political turmoil distracted students from the event.
During a similar Green Key era, fraternity "hums" competitions often made front-page news. Students from these organizations would duel in heated singing encounters for the top prize awarded during Green Key weekend.
In the earlier years, the focus of Green Key was on the female guests who came to the College for the companionship of Dartmouth men. Sometimes, women would accompany their dates to Saturday classes.
In 1965, one professor commented, "I have no objection to their coming as long as they're pretty." These Green-Key-specific sentiments perhaps reflect some of the broader feelings of the time, as the College pushed towards coeducation in 1972.
Many of Dartmouth's institutions underwent changes through the co-education process and Green Key was no exception. Straying from the traditions of bringing in women for the weekend, the holiday transformed into a campus-specific celebration, rivaled by few other occasions.
A tradition of class rivalries, annual "wetdowns" started in 1879 but were eventually integrated into the Green Key weekend. Students paraded around campus before the outgoing senior class ceded their fence to the junior class. The tradition also began inaugurating the new members of undergraduate organizations such as Palaeopitus and the early 1900s version of Student Assembly. The wetdown became more and more violent as the new officers were often flogged or pegged with flour, eggs and other items. The administration put a stop to these actions in the 1950s to hamper the number of wetdown-related injuries.
The wetdowns transitioned into the chariot races that were a visible and popular tradition during most of the 1980s. At the races, fraternities and other undergraduate organizations battled it out on the Green in an activity reminiscent of the current Winter Carnival's dog-sled races.
Dominating the 1960s Green Key culture, "outdoor sleeps" filled the Hanover Golf Course with students, their dates and an occasional mattress. The popularity of the golf-course sleep overs was overwhelming. In 1965, The Dartmouth noted that Saturday night was defined by a "lemming-like trek to the Golf Course. Sleeping bags and sleeping students provided as much a hazard to latecomers as sandtraps did to golfers on Sunday morning."
Unfortunately for the revelers, the tradition came to an abrupt end that year when a "youngster" wandered into the sleepover. The College put an end to this tradition due to solicitation by one of the child's parents.
The opinion pages of The Dartmouth were filled with fiery references to this "youngster" the next year when Green Key rolled around yet again.
Recent traditions include many Greek organizations hosting elaborate parties that have attracted significant crowds in the past, including a flooded Webster Avenue during Friday's block party.
Green Key also hurdled through rocky years during the Student Life Initiative's focus on the Greek System in the late-1990s and early-2000s. However, Green Key continued even in 1999, a year when the Coed, Fraternity and Sorority Council cancelled all Greek-related parties during Winter Carnival to protest the actions of the Board of Trustees and the SLI. When spring arrived, students compensated by making a strong showing at Green Key.
