While Dartmouth boasts the oldest collegiate winter carnival in the nation, celebrating its 98th festival this year, other colleges across the northeast have their own ways of welcoming in the winter season. These celebrations range from simple, unorganized traditions -- Cornell students enjoy sledding down the campus's Libe Slope on dining hall trays each year -- to grand-scale athletic conferences and festive weekends much like Dartmouth's own.
Bates College, in Lewiston, Maine, celebrates the country's oldest coeducational winter carnival, according to Zand Martin, a senior member of the Bates Outing Club.
Bates' carnival, which began in 1920 with the inception of the school's outing club, took place this year during the third week of January.
"We have a lot of traditions that've been around throughout," Martin said. "There are a few that we've been doing for at least the last forty years."
These long-standing events include the "torch run," in which 20 to 30 students drive to Augusta, Maine to have the state's governor light a torch which the group then collectively runs back to Lewiston -- a distance of just over 33 miles.
The "puddle jump" is another of Bates' most enduring carnival traditions. At this event, students cut a hole in the ice of Lake Andrews, more commonly known on campus as "the puddle." In an act reminiscent of Dartmouth's polar bear swim, participants then jump quickly in and out of the freezing water, as up to 500 other students look on, Martin said.
"The puddle jump is definitely one of the hearts of winter carnival," he said.
Bates also hosts winter sports tournaments during the weekend, which are attended by schools from locations throughout the northeast. Dartmouth's ski teams took first place during Bates' carnival races this year.
Hamilton College in Clinton, N.Y., celebrates winter with its annual FebFest, scheduled to begin on Feb. 9 this year. The festival began in 2000 when a group of students decided to resurrect Hamilton's winter carnival tradition, which had faded since the 1950s.
Febfest 2008 will present an eight-day series of winter-themed activities. Planned events included a snow-sculpting contest, igloo-building workshop and "snoccer" -- soccer in the snow, according to the school's website.
Syracuse University's winter carnival, scheduled to fall between Feb. 21 and 24 this year, dates back to 1933. Until the 1960s, the celebration included crowning a Carnival Queen, much like the Queen of the Snows pageants of historic Dartmouth Winter Carnivals.
This year, Syracuse's carnival will offer both indoor and outdoor activities, ranging from winter-themed arts and crafts to a human dog sled race, similar to Dartmouth's own Winter Carnival event, the university's website reports.
The nordic and alpine ski teams at Williams College host a weekend of ski competitions each February. The races have spurred the institution to offer other winter activities throughout the weekend.
"From snow-sculpture contests to an all-campus snow-ball fight, the weekend is basically what you might do on a snow-day in middle school," according to the website of Williams' registrar.
The site further advises students to leave their nice shoes behind in favor of boots during the weekend.
"They are bound to pick-up all kinds of goodies by the night's end," the site reads.
Dartmouth's ski teams will take part in this year's contest at Williams, which is set for Feb. 15 and 16.
