Don't Touch The Bonfire

By Andrew Grossman | Monday, October 22, 2001

They were all gone. I awoke the Saturday morning after my freshman year Homecoming bonfire, and all the hairs on my left arm and leg were gone. My skin was smooth and dryer than usual.

And then their disappearance made sense: I had been running counterclockwise around the bonfire the night before and perhaps a little closer to the blaze than I had intended. No matter, they did grow back, eventually.

The bonfire I dimly recall so fondly was only three years ago. But, as with many good things at Dartmouth, the administration has stepped in and mucked things up. This year freshmen were lucky to shield themselves from the crisp autumn evening after their bonfire's initial plume subsided. Between them and the fire were Dartmouth Safety & Security officers and police from the Hanover Department, there at the College's request, perhaps twenty in all. 'Back up,' they shouted to those who ventured near the inner perimeter, sometimes augmenting that mantra with a shove or check. Other students were grabbed outright, for disorderly conduct (isn't that the point?) or drunkenness (or is that the point?), and tossed in the paddy wagon.

The police detained twenty-four revelous merrymakers from the evening's events. Twenty-four, while the smart vandals were no doubt looting the homes of Hanover's hoi polloi then shivering out on the Green.

Yes, something's seriously wrong here. They built it, they lit it, it burned, but the bonfire is gone, gone the way of Kiewit and friendly deans bearing kegs and mutton chop sideburns. The bonfire as a tradition or as a meaningful part of every student's freshman year is gone.

Suspicions about the death of yet another tradition for no good reason first popped up after last year's Homecoming, when the College announced that it would review the event. At Dartmouth, the verb 'review' can be read as 'maul,' if not 'kill.' There is usually a committee involved, and in this case there were several, including two 'organizing committees' and a class council. Several deans were involved, never a good sign. After these bad omens, a campfire and weenie-roast even seemed unlikely.

Red flags went up this past Thursday, when students received a thuggish letter in their mailboxes from Dean of the College James Larimore. Larimore warned students against 'inappropriate behavior' that would cause 'bonfire activities [to be] suspended or discontinued.' Attached was 'a set of procedures by which the construction of the bonfire is to be guided,' twenty-two procedures in all, ranging from the precise dimensions of the structure (to which 'no additional structures or attachments may be added') to threats of 'cancellation of the bonfire this year or in future years' in response to hypothetical 'harmful behavior.' Finally, Larimore wrote that freshmen would be made to meet with their undergraduate advisors to go over these and other rules.

Sure, the wood had been delivered to the Green, but who could meet all these conditions? The College was setting up the class of 2005 for a fall, bonfire-wise. A single slip-up in construction and the crux of Homecoming would be 'suspended or discontinued.' Forever kaput.

So on Friday, I set out to watch construction, to see whether this thing was going forward or not. Were administrative supervisors present, as mandated? Was the 'fill level' carefully maintained to 'within three feet of the top,' per dictate? What about the Code of Conduct? Was it in full effect or would Bonfire Construction Safety Policy or Procedure #18 be violated and the whole structure dissembled and hauled away?

These questions, it turned out, were mostly moot. Two faculty from the Athletic Department hefted beams from the ground into a crane's harness. The crane's operator, in turn, delivered the beams to the top of the structure, where two Facilities, Operations, and Management personnel unloaded and attached the beams to the structure. I think I saw two students carrying a piece of plywood, but it was hard to tell: they were wearing hard-hats.

Yes, I thought, that's one way out of the trap.

A hard-hatted worker told me I was standing to close to the construction, which was 100 feet away. I left.

Following a long afternoon of crow hunting, I returned to campus and the Green still not convinced that so much as a match would be lit. But there were people on the Green, mobs of them, and soon the freshman class swarmed into the ring around the unlit pyre and began their laps. And, with everybody else in the chilling breeze I waited. And waited. The freshmen slowed and clumped and then broke apart and resumed pace three or four times. Would they run for another hour around the unlit timber before giving up and going home?

Well, no, the fire did finally get lit, many of the freshmen did run their 105 laps, and nearly everyone present did get screamed at by police or S&S officers to 'Back up, can't you understand that?' until we were so backed up from the warmth as to be shivering again. And, despite everything—the heavy and heavy-handed police presence, the enforced perimeter zones, the ever-present fear of ejection, arrest, or worse, nearly everyone did have a good time, a credit to the simple power of the event.

But, that's the thing: it's meant to be a simple event. Need administrators and their troops thrust themselves into every aspect of it, adding to what should be a carefree atmosphere unwelcome elements of distrust and hostility? A college's Homecoming celebration shouldn't be organized along the lines of a preschool's supervised playtime.

Of course there are risks in the bonfire, but, being a simple event, the risks are easy to evaluate. Nearly every restriction imposed on recent bonfires has been for the cause of safety. But that's hogwash. Adults running around a 100 foot inferno (which has been engineered to collapse into itself) have a good and basic idea of their own safety, and this is especially true of adults who look out for one another, as Dartmouth students tend to do.

Next year the College may ask freshmen to walk around the fire at a fair distance in a neat, orderly, calm, and quiet fashion. Maybe they'll be asked to submit chant and cheer proposals beforehand for administrative review or to wear only specially approved fire-retardant bodysuits. It won't matter. For now, the spirit of the Homecoming bonfire has been compromised, and what was a rabidly wild event is now yet another complicated bureaucratic dance.

Ask any freshmen about their bonfire, and they'll say they had a good time, a great time, a wonderful time. But that's only because they can't know what they've been made to miss.

Don't Touch The Bonfire

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