Alumni returning to Hanover this weekend will slip easily into the familiar Green Key traditions of their own Dartmouth years outdoor parties, music and pong all of which can be enjoyed in the newly warm weather. The weekend, which many described as a celebration of the end of winter and a break from schoolwork, fosters a sense of community across the entire campus, several alumni told The Dartmouth.
"[Green Key] was, to some extent, just one long rambling party," Chip Wilson '87 said. "I remember hanging out outdoors with a group of friends and roaming from place to place, enjoying the music and the relatively warm Hanover spring weather."
Students annually put aside their schoolwork to enjoy the weekend's festivities, William Nimmo '76 Tu'79 said, hinting that students of his day were rowdier than those of today.
"People put their books down and spent three days partying pretty hard," he said. "It was pretty amazing the amount of alcohol that was consumed but that was back in the '70s."
Nimmo recalled Green Key as the moment when students started "coming out of hibernation" after a long Hanover winter.
"[Green Key] was a celebration of the spring and the changing of the seasons," he said. "We had a number of years where spring came very late. By Green Key, it was finally time to be outdoors again."
Ashley Kleiderer '92, who was at Dartmouth more than a decade after Nimmo, also drew connections between the festivities and the changing of seasons.
"[Green Key] felt like the first celebration of spring and things to come," she said.
Unlike other big weekends, Green Key weekend typically did not attract many students from other schools, which made for a more intimate experience for the Dartmouth community, several alumni told The Dartmouth.
"It wasn't a popular weekend among neighboring schools and for people to have friends come up," Kleiderer said. "It was special and unique in that it was reserved for Dartmouth students."
Wilson added that he believed Green Key fostered a sense of community on campus.
"Winter Carnival was always a zoo and there were so many people from God knows where it was distracting," he said. "Green Key was always more special for me because there weren't people from other schools."
In the past, Green Key weekend was also an opportunity for fraternities to compete in chariot races on the Green, one of Nimmo's favorite traditions of the weekend, he said.
"All the fraternities would build chariots and the brothers would pull their fellow brothers around the Green several times," he said. "It became sophomoric and people who weren't in the race would throw eggs and water balloons at their rival chariots."
Kleiderer remembered hanging out on "frat row" as a highlight of Green Key weekend.
"Everybody was outside, sitting on roofs, playing pong on the lawns, grilling and blaring music out of the windows," she said.
Alpha Delta fraternity's lawn party was also a popular event for many students, Nimmo said.
"I remember AD always had a lawn party," he said. "They would have speakers playing music from their windows from the beginning of the weekend to the end."
Several recent alumni said they are looking forward to returning to campus for Green Key this weekend.
"I'm excited to see friends with whom I haven't hung out since graduating last year friends who hopefully haven't forgotten how to party, but who might need a little reminder that I'll be happy to provide," Ian Murphy '09 said.
Murphy said he did not believe returning alumni would celebrate differently than they did in their college years.
"I think we'll see more collared shirts, but when people are back on campus for Green Key, they're just college kids again and the seriousness' of the real world crumbles back into the freedom of the underclassman," he said.
Lauren Caracciola '09 who said her favorite memories of past Green Key weekends included relaxing by the Connecticut River also described returning to campus for Green Key as a break from her life after Dartmouth.
"It's really fun to go out and escape the real world for a weekend at school," she said.
