Green Key at Dartmouth: A Weekend of Tradition and Excess

On this Green Key weekend, as the campus gears up to set aside its academic angst for a few blissful days, it’s worthwhile to reflect on why Green Key never fails to bring back so many alumni. Alumni, who, even as their careers and families demand their attention, always seem to make time to return to their alma mater for a weekend of music, nostalgia, and libertinism.
It is not an exaggeration to say that Dartmouth is stacked to the brim with traditions; Winter Carnival and Homecoming are just a few, but there is perhaps no weekend that is more universally encompassing of the entire Dartmouth community than Green Key. If you have to travel during the Homecoming weekend, that’s too bad, but it happens. Green Key Weekend, though? That cannot be missed. In fact, it cannot be missed to such an extent that students from around the world, on their study abroad, fly back in droves for it.
Given the palpable outrage emanating from Fizz every time the Programming Board announces the year’s performers, I doubt that it is the caliber of the musical artists that makes Green Key such a delightful engagement. Moreover, surely any Dartmouth grad in a sizable city can find a place to dance, celebrate, and drink (perhaps even something better tasting than Keystone). So what, then, is the driver of the alumni who return to campus? I could take this moment to enter a heartfelt piece about how the Dartmouth community is what brings everyone back, but I won’t. Not because it isn’t true, but because the Dartmouth community shows its kinship not through the traditional alma mater singing rituals, as is the case at reunions. No, it is the one and only weekend on Dartmouth’s campus during which our community comes together purely for the sake of letting go of all obligation and, to an extent, decency.
At the risk of repeating the words of my predecessors, I must concur with former editors of The Review in admitting that the cornerstone of Green Key weekend is indulgence. Indulgence that is so pervasive that even the College has surrendered to it. Even the strictest of professors are known to cancel classes in light of Friday’s darties, which, due to this chilling May’s weather, may not bring Dartmouth the light that we’ve been craving. Regardless, that’s not going to stop hundreds of Dartmouth undergrads from being there to make sure that Green Key lives up to the hype. That, more than anything, echoes what the Dartmouth community is all about. I’ve already written about the extensive community that our campus and size allow us to have. And Green Key’s universal spirit of indulgence is the precise mechanism by which that happens. Any other time of the year, you’ll find Dartmouth students, 24 hours a day, working diligently in Blobby. On Green Key? Not so much. The universal embracing of festive indulgence is the way by which this tradition lives on and will never fail.
So, as you celebrate this Green Key weekend, whether you have one month or three years left here as a student, remember to never take it for granted. Don’t forget the community that you’re part of, and what you must give up when you’re done. Remember that the community you have found here is something you’re not inclined to find easily elsewhere. Anywhere else you go in your life, you might belong. However, only at Dartmouth is it the case that everywhere you go, you will belong. During Green Key weekend, this is true more than ever. So crack open a cold can of Keystone, put on a sweater, and let’s run back the music of the 2000s.