On Dartmouth’s Debauchery

The irony of beginning this editorial with something like “When I think back to my freshman Green Key…” is that most people simply don’t remember anything from Green Key weekend. Green Key is indeed a party for the sake of being a party, but something about it seems increasingly extreme. In former Editor-in-Chief Joe Rago’s history of Green Key featured in this issue, he says, “Though the weekend is devoted to little more than revelry, partying, and hanging out, it has been reinvigorated over the past few years. The idea of Green Key has evolved into a celebration of spring for the campus; a great excuse for students and alums alike to enjoy both the fair weather and smooth beers.” Does that sound like Green Key today? I do not think so. 

As Green Key programming has excelled, the weekend has drawn more and more visitors. The College has taken a number of approaches to address this, including the requirement that concert attendees have wristbands, and entitling current students to a limited number of such wristbands. Efforts were taken to prevent the unauthorized replication of those wristbands, presumably in response to the event’s infiltration by underage and uninvited Hanover High School students. The size of Green Key is not as much of an issue in my view as the kind of growth that the event has undergone. Guests unaffiliated with the College—students from other colleges whom Dartmouth students invite—might seem to be a reflection of the weekend’s history as a prom weekend in which women came to campus from New England’s women’s colleges. But, the sheer number of such mutually unrelated guests—at least hundreds, but likely thousands—has fundamentally changed the character of Green Key. Compared with Rago’s characterization, the weekend is no longer as much an “excuse for students and alums alike to enjoy both the fair weather and smooth beers” as it is a spring-time summit of debauchery for friends of students who are no longer in classes at their respective institutions. Unlike the Dartmouth students who celebrate Green Key as a warm awakening and literally a thawing after a long, harsh New Hampshire winter, these base strangers seek the pleasure of partying alone—βόσκονται χορταζόμενοι καὶ ὀχεύοντες.  

Students have met the programming development and concomitant attendance growth with an expansion of their own—there seems to be no desire to place any limitation on the party. In an email to campus, Zeta Psi declared “Green Key Monday.” But two weeks before finals period, the now seven-day festivity is off to a frosty start. The icy mixture of rain and sleet on Monday night casts an ominous shadow over the celebration of spring, seeming to declare the expansion of the once weekend-long party to a week-long bacchanalia as decidedly premature. The wintery temperatures, however, have not stopped Zete from heralding the beginning of nature’s fertility season in a truly pagan fashion: inviting students to a dance party with an “anything but clothes” theme. While there will no doubt be plenty of creative arrangements worn by attendees, the clever theme still seems a tad unsettling to a sober observer at first glance. Permissible? Yes. Dignified? Absolutely not. The only outfit I would feel comfortable wearing to such a party would be a trash bag—at least then I would be up front about what I am. 

In a conversation with a Dartmouth professor who lives in a small town a bit north of Hanover, he told me that residents of his town have grown concerned about this annual weekend in May because ambulance and other emergency resources in the Upper Valley are strained, accommodating the drunken and injured revelers and less able to provide services to other areas. From a student’s perspective, it is comforting to know that the College, town, and county go to such lengths to keep students safe while drinking, dancing, and fornicating. But the magnitude of resources devoted to dealing with alcohol poisoning, injuries, and sexual assaults over the course of the weekend should be alarming to students, and should raise questions about how effective the measures taken by the College and community could actually be, and at what cost they come to Upper Valley residents. Emergency responses are exactly that—they respond to an issue that has already happened. Prevention is a far more challenging safety measure, primarily because much of that responsibility relies on students taking initiative. 

The College and some students have taken some initiative to try to prevent especially dangerous situations. But no amount of vigilance on the part of Movement Against Violence or Sexual Assault Peer Advisors could sufficiently accommodate the tragically cumbersome event. As risks around the Homecoming bonfire increased because of student tomfoolery, the town and the College took action to mitigate those risks swiftly and effectively. If Dartmouth students are not careful, and continue to expand the week of unrestrained debauchery, I don’t doubt that similar actions will be taken in response to Green Key. Perhaps it should.