This year’s Winter Carnival featured quintessential Carnival events, including the human dogsled races and an ice sculpture contest. However, breaking with tradition, the weekend saw only 33 incident reports — a decrease from 43 incidents last year, 52 incidents in 2016, according to an email statement from interim director of Safety and Security Keysi Montás.
Montás wrote that only two people were transported to Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center, while six were transported to Dick’s House. Last year, five people were transported to DHMC and six were transported to Dick’s House. The number of liquor law violations also decreased from 11 last year to eight this year, Montás wrote.
Montás did not expand on why he believes that the number of violations went down this year.
Hanover Police lieutenant Scott Rathburn said that his department made three arrests related to Winter Carnival over the weekend, down from four arrests last year.
Rathburn said that two of the arrests were for intoxication, while one arrest was for a misrepresentation of age.
Rathburn said that these numbers were not out of the ordinary for a normal weekend in Hanover.
“Winter Carnival seemed to go fine,” he said. “It’s always nice to see that [the number of incidents] didn’t necessarily spike.”
Office of Student Life intern and Winter Carnival committee member Matthew Rube ’19 said that the Carnival’s opening ceremony, polar bear swim, Oak Hill skiing course races and dogsled races stood out as the weekend’s highlights.
He said that the opening ceremony was especially successful because members of the 501st Legion, a fan-based “Star Wars” costuming organization, attended and because the committee’s space-themed construction project at Collis Common Ground turned out well.
Rube explained that the Oak Hill races were a significant draw for students because of higher snowfall totals and the Big Green’s carnival win. This year, Dartmouth’s skiing teams secured their first Dartmouth Carnival victory since 2010.
Rube said more than 500 students participated in this year’s polar bear swim, consistent with the number of participants last year and significantly up from 100 participants in 2016, when the swim took place outside of the Collis Center due to unseasonably warm temperatures.
“It was a ton of fun having so many people come down and [partake in] that tradition,” he said.
