While Green Key may lack some of the history and traditions of Homecoming and Winter Carnival, students celebrate the weekends in similar ways with copious alcohol consumption and often raucous behavior. However, a change in Hanover Police's policies regarding intoxicated students led to a drastic decrease in student arrests but an increase in Good Samaritan calls to Safety and Security during Green Key last year Harry Kinne, the director of Safety and Security said.
Previously, intoxicated students who had to be transported to Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center by ambulance were arrested by Hanover Police upon their arrival at the hospital. Instead of arresting students, Hanover Police now automatically refers intoxicated individuals to the Diversions program, Kinne said.
No students were arrested during Green Key weekend in 2010, 11 students were arrested in both 2008 and 2009, The Dartmouth previously reported.
The potential for raucous student behavior is no greater on Green Key weekend than it is on other big weekends, according to Kinne and George Ostler '77, a Norwich, Vt.based attorney who has represented Dartmouth Greek organizations and students in past legal cases.
"Big weekends are always instances where students are intoxicated to a level which is of great concern," Kinne said.
Kinne encouraged students to conduct themselves responsibly, particularly because many alumni and their families will be on campus for the weekend.
Ostler said that students tend to have the misconception that there is little they can do when stopped by police. Yet the only requirement is that students must identify themselves if asked by an officer, according to Ostler.
"Students have a right not to answer police questions," he said. "It's also important for students to know that there's no requirement that they take a breath test."
Intoxication cases rarely occur through a direct confrontation between a police office and a student. Rather, police more frequently discover underage intoxication cases through another investigation or when a student is transported to the hospital, Ostler said.
Accounts of Green Key weekend from years past leave little doubt that its allure lies in the parties and less in the official daytime events.
"I see it as the Spring term's version of Carnival that is, partially an opportunity for Dartmouth students and their guests to attend cultural events and athletic competitions, but mostly an excuse for campus-wide partying," Jenny Gould '83 said in a 1981 article in The Dartmouth.
While the fraternities' control of many of the Green Key events warranted some cause for concern, Gould said that it also had some benefit.
"This gives the fraternities a chance to engage in some non-alcohol-centered albeit perhaps rowdy and offensive fun'," she said.
Concerns surrounding student alcohol consumption during Green Key weekend appeared to be as strong in 1983 as they are today. In the week leading up to the 1983 Green Key weekend, a local investigator for the New Hampshire Liquor Commission informed the Inter-Fraternity Council that Liquor Commission agents would be monitoring campus to ensure that fraternities adhere to New Hampshire's law mandating a drinking age of 20-years-old, according to a 1983 article in The Dartmouth.
In 1983, the administration was also worried about student behavior at Hums, the annual singing competition among fraternities. The Associate Dean of the College warned fraternities that they would be held accountable for their Hums songs and encouraged them to choose appropriate lyrics, according to the 1983 article.
"We've got to be good this year," Tom Callahan '84, the vice president of the Inter-Fraternity Council, told The Dartmouth at the time. "One bad incident and we'll lose our choice of whether we have [Hums] at the fraternities or at the Bema."
The weekend events dampened intellectually-stimulating discussion, but that didn't necessarily inhibit student satisfaction.
"Sure Hums can get a bit raunchy, the Chariot Races a bit rough and basement floors rather sticky, but despite the lack of intellectual interaction, everyone manages to have a good time," The Dartmouth editorial board wrote in its introduction to the 1983 Green Key weekend issue.
Students over the years have said that the spring sunshine something that is not characteristic of Homecoming or Winter Carnival may account for the students' upbeat mood.
"The sun began sinking in the sky and the hot sting from the burn on my face made me homesick for California and left me with a deep satisfaction knowing I'd punted away an entire weekend and never enjoyed it more," Susie Campbell '83 Campbell wrote in The Dartmouth in 1980 after her first Green Key. "It sure is fun to have outdoor parties."
