Green Key: the only thing at Dartmouth shrouded in more mystery than the fried mac and cheese at Late Night Collis (how do they get the macaroni into those neat triangular shapes anyway?). When I first heard about Green Key, all these questions started to surface in my mind. What is a green key? Whose key is it? What does it open? And most importantly, how special does this "green key" have to be for an entire weekend to be named after it?
The bottom line is, unlike some of our other traditions at Dartmouth, Green Key is one of the more undefinable ones. While my Homecoming T-shirt has a drawing of a bonfire on the back and my Winter Carnival T-shirt has a picture of the snow sculpture (or what it was supposed to look like, at least), the closest "theme" I have been able to find in a prior Green Key shirt is the Keystone Light logo redesigned to read "Green Key." What's more, on the admissions website for the Class of 2014, the description of Green Key is as follows: "If you figure out what it's about, please let us know."
Needless to say, I don't think I'm alone in my confusion about Green Key.
But how did Green Key begin anyway? According to a 2002 article from The Dartmouth, Green Key officially started in 1899 when the Class of 1900 simply organized a lot of parties, formals and sporting events over one spring weekend following a long winter an opportunity to celebrate and bring women to campus at the same time.
After a brief cancellation of Green Key in 1923 due to "wild behavior," the holiday was reinstated five years later. Green Key once included several unique traditions such as the Hums singing competition, the infamous piano-smashing contest and the Wetdown in which the new Student Assembly administration would run down the Green as students pelted them with food, drinks and trash. Today, however, Green Key seems to have morphed into a weekend simply for relaxation and fun.
Still, as a '13, it is hard to imagine what exactly that constitutes. What am I supposed to expect from Green Key?
To find out, I first turned to the student organization after which this famous weekend is named: the Green Key Society.
The weekend is all about the alumni, according to Sarah Frostenson '11, vice president of the Green Key Society. Frostenson is a member of The Dartmouth Staff.
"Green Key means more to me as a celebration of the alumni at this school and what they give back to the community," she said. "Green Key, in theory, embodies that spirit."
Key words: "in theory." I know this because when I talked to some other members of the student body about Green Key, I got very different answers.
"Green Key usually entails block parties, trying to procure some Phi Delt batch, [and] adamantly going swimming for the first time even though the water is nowhere near a swimmable temperature," Jean Mason '11 said.
Other students I encountered highlighted the spring weather and outdoor activities as the most important aspects of Green Key.
"I think of sunshine and block parties, and a lot of alums coming back but mostly just sunshine and block parties," Danielle Baez '12 said.
One senior asserted with confidence what he believed to be Green Key's primary purpose drinking.
"Green Key is about drinking outside in nice weather," I was told by David Peterson '10. "There is no other reason that it exists."
Clearly, it would be the biggest understatement of the year to say that there is a disconnect between what Green Key is supposed to be about and what it actually means to students.
"It's one of those celebrations that changes based on where you are in your Dartmouth career," Frostenson said.
After all of this investigation, I decided it was time to consult Dartmouth's foremost authority: College President Jim Yong Kim. When asked, Kim claimed that everything he knows about Green Key, he learned from the book "The Real Animal House: The Awesomely Depraved Saga of the Fraternity that Inspired the Movie."
In other words, he's totally confused like the rest of us.
But despite all of the uncertainty surrounding this allegedly epic weekend, President Kim's sentiments on Green Key are ones that probably resonate with every student here at Dartmouth, no matter what year you are.
"I'd heard about Winter Carnival but didn't know about it until I experienced it," Kim said. "I knew about the bonfire, but I didn't really know until I ran around it. [Green Key] is one of those things about Dartmouth [it] is something that you can't understand until you really experience it."
How our president somehow managed to turn an interview about a drinking weekend into an eloquent plug for Dartmouth is beyond me, but I think I speak for the majority of the Class of 2013 when I say: Sunshine? Swimming? Parties? Sign me up for Green Key 2010!
