The traditions of Dartmouth College, an American Ivy League college in Hanover, New Hampshire, are deeply entrenched in the student life of the institution and are well known nationally. Dartmouth's website counts the college's "special traditions" among its "essential elements", and in his inauguration address, former College president James E. Wright said that the school is "a place that is marked by strong traditions". Some of these traditions remain supported by the administration, while others are officially discouraged.

Weekends Dartmouth functions on a quarter system, and one weekend each term is set aside as a traditional celebratory event, known on campus as "big weekends" or "party weekends". In the fall, winter, spring, and summer respectively, these weekends are Homecoming (officially Dartmouth Night Weekend), Winter Carnival, Green Key, and Tubestock, the last of which has been canceled indefinitely and was replaced in 2006 by an event called Fieldstock.

Homecoming and Dartmouth Night

Dartmouth Night starts the college's traditional "Homecoming" weekend with an evening of speeches, a parade, and a bonfire. Traditionally, the freshman class builds the bonfire and then runs around it a set number of times in concordance with their class year; the class of 2009 performed 109 circuits, the class of 1999 performed 99, etc.

The college officially discourages a number of student traditions of varying degrees of antiquity. During the circling of the bonfire, upperclassmen encourage the freshmen to "touch the fire", an action legally considered trespassing and prohibited by police officials present. At halftime of the Homecoming football game on the Saturday of the weekend, some upperclassmen encourage freshman to "rush the field", although no upperclassman has seen a significant rush since several injuries sustained during the 1986 rush prompted the school to ban the practice. Among the two or three students who sometimes run across the field, those who are arrested are charged with trespassing (the independent newspaper The Dartmouth Review claimed to set up a fund to automatically pay any fines associated with freshman who rush the field.) However, in 2012 this was proven false when two students rushed the field and were arrested for disorderly conduct. The Dartmouth Review ignored their emails until finally replying and denying that this fund had ever existed. These students then had to pay $300 fines out of pocket. For the 2011 Homecoming game, however, over 40 members of the Class of 2015 rushed the field at homecoming without any action taken by Safety and Security or the Hanover Police Department.

History President William Jewett Tucker introduced the ceremony of Dartmouth Night in 1895. The evening of speeches celebrated the accomplishments of the college's alumni. Originally the event took place in the Old Chapel in Dartmouth Hall, and it moved outdoors within about fifteen years.

The focus of Dartmouth Night is the bonfire. Students had built bonfires during the late nineteenth century to celebrate sports victories, including one in 1888 that recognized a baseball victory over Manchester. An editorial in The Dartmouth criticized that fire, saying, "It disturbed the slumbers of a peaceful town, destroyed some property, made the boys feel that they were being men, and in fact did no one any good."

By the mid-twentieth century, Dartmouth Night was set to coincide with one of the several annual bonfires, and that pairing helped preserve the one bonfire that now remains.

In 1904, the Earl of Dartmouth visited the campus on Dartmouth Night with New Hampshire politician and author Winston Churchill and marched around the Green with the students. Early on, the tradition of reading out telegrams (later e-mail messages) sent that night from alumni clubs around the country began.

Football first began to be associated with Dartmouth Night during the 1920s. Memorial Field was dedicated on Dartmouth Night in 1923. For decades the raucous pre-football rallies remained separate from the dignified official activities. In 1936, the college first began the tradition of football games during this weekend; ten years later the formal College events and the rally were combined in a single grand event, and for the first time Dartmouth Night was intentionally scheduled on what is called Dartmouth Night Weekend.

During the 1950s, students adopted a star-hexagon-square structure for the bonfire. Through at least the late 1980s, it was a tradition for the number of tiers to equal the year of the first-year class, i.e., in 1985 the first-year class was the Class of 1988, and the bonfire was 88 tiers high. An exception to this was 1975 when the Partycipatory Class of 1979 set the record for the tallest bonfire at 101 tiers. Thereafter it was decreed by Dean Ralph Manuel that the height of the bonfire be limited to the class number. On or about the bonfire of the Class of 1990 the college put an additional cap on the height of the bonfire, as the increasingly tall structure was increasingly dangerous, and following the bonfire accident at Texas A&M in 1999, the school hired professionals to do some of the building; nevertheless the night still remains a highlight of the school year.

Winter Carnival

Winter Carnival is a long-standing tradition at Dartmouth College that was particularly famous during the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s. The Dartmouth Outing Club, founded in 1909, organized a winter weekend "field day" in 1910. This was an athletic event centered on skiing, a sport which the Outing Club helped to pioneer and publicize on a national scale. In 1911, the event was named Winter Carnival, social events were added, and women were invited to attend. By 1919 the emphasis had shifted to dances organized by fraternities. Special trains made runs to transport women guests to Dartmouth, and National Geographic Magazine referred to it as "the Mardi Gras of the North". The event became famous, much as Spring Break in Fort Lauderdale was to be during the 1950s and 1960s.

Carnival was the subject of the frothy 1939 motion picture comedy Winter Carnival, starring Ann Sheridan, who plays a former Winter Carnival Queen of the Snows who has made a bad marriage to a European duke and revisits Dartmouth in an attempt to save her younger sister, the current Queen, from repeating her mistake with a European count.

The movie is remembered mostly for its extracinematic associations; F. Scott Fitzgerald and Dartmouth alumnus Budd Schulberg were hired to write the screenplay. While gathering background in Hanover during Carnival, Fitzgerald became scandalously drunk at fraternities and was forced to leave the project. Although portions of his work were used, he was not given a writer's credit. The events and personalities bear a resemblance to those recounted in Schulberg's novel, The Disenchanted.

Winter Carnival takes place each year on a weekend in February and include such events as ski competitions at the Dartmouth Skiway and Oak Hill Ski Center; a polar bear swim; a cappella and jazz concerts; a human dogsled race; a drag ball; and a showing of the 1939 movie. Students build a large Carnival-themed snow sculpture on the college Green. The 1987 sculpture held the Guinness record for the "tallest snowman". The sculpture in 2004 reflected the famous character The Cat in the Hat, in honor of the 100th birthday of Dartmouth alumnus and creator of the character, Dr. Seuss. Dartmouth has a historical connection and affiliation with Lewiston-based liberal arts college, Bates College, that includes similar traditions such as the Dartmouth Challenge, dual engineering programs, campus parallels and an athletic rivalry. The tradition of Winter Carnival is the oldest in the United States, which is followed by Bates who founded their Winter Carnival two years after Dartmouth.

Numerous parties are thrown by the campus's fraternities and sororities. In 1999, students cancelled their parties to protest other administration policies. In 2000, Psi Upsilon fraternity was forced by the Administration to ban its annual "Keg Jump" event, marking the end of a 19-year tradition in which brothers attempted to jump over a line of kegs on ice skates.

Carnival Themes Over the Years

North Side Story 1962 Winter Wanderlust 1966 A Midwinter Night's Dream 1967 Klondike Kaleidoscope 1968 Land of Fire & Ice 1969 Sometimes in Winter ... 1970 Ooh ... Meanwhile, Back at the Dartmouth Winter Carnival 1970 Fun for the Whole Family 1971 The Winterland of Oz 1972 Through a Frosted Looking Glass 1973 The Winterful World of Disney 1974 Valhalla – Beyond the North Winds 1975 A Snow-Spangled Salute 1976 The Spirit of Wintergreen 1977 The Greatest Snow on Earth 1978 The Great Cold Rush 1979 Winter Takes All 1980 Hanover Hears a Who 1981 Adventures on the High Freeze 1982 The Rise and Fall of the Frozen Empire 1983 Camelot Frozen in Time 1984 A Diamond in the Rough 1985 Where the Wild Things Are 1986 Blizzard on Bourbon Street 1987 Winter Games of Old: Gods and Goddesses and Gold Break Out of Hibernation 1989 It's a Grimm Winter 1990 Atlantice: A Winter Under the Sea 1991 How the Grinch Stole Carnival 1992 Sun, Surf, and Snow 1993 When Hanover Freezes Over ... All Carnival Breaks Loose 1994 Call of the Wild 1995 'Round the Girdled Earth They Roamed: A Prehistoric Carnival 1996 'Twas a Cold and Snowy Knight: A Medieval Carnival 1997 The Roaring −20°s 1998 Gone to the Dogs 1999 Lest the Cold Traditions Fail 2000 2001: An Ice Odyssey 2001 There's Snow Place Like Home 2002 One Carnival to Rule Them All 2003 Oh, The Places It Snows: A Seussentennial 2004 A Dartmouth Neverland 2005 Mischief in the Snow 2006 Down the Rabbit Hole 2007 20,000 Leagues Under the Snow 2008 Summiting a Century: 100 Years of the DOC 2009 I Came, I Saw, I Carnivaled 2010 Carnival of the Century 2011 Carnival in Candy Land 2012 A Very Grimm Carnival 2013 A Carnival of Thrones 2014 Mission: Winter Carnival - License to Chill 2022 Jurassic Parka: The Carnival Before Time 2025 The Blizzard of Oz: Wicked Cold 2026

Green Key Weekend

Green Key Weekend was originally a junior promenade dance prepared by the Green Key Society, a junior service organization that plays various roles in Homecoming, Orientation, and Commencement. However, today, the Society "plays a minor role in the weekend of traditions and debauchery". Unlike Homecoming and Winter Carnival, weekends which "have fairly clear purposes", Green Key has been described as "[having] no point"; The Dartmouth Review describes Green Key as a weekend "devoted to little more than revelry, partying, and hanging out". The three-day weekend is marked by an annual block party at Phi Delta Alpha fraternity and a lawn party at Alpha Delta fraternity.

A number of traditions associated with Green Key Weekend have disappeared over the years. During the 1960s, a trend of "outdoor sleep" was adopted, in which students would sleep on the golf course with their dates, leading to 69 arrests one year. This tradition was ended by police and College officials in 1965. Other traditions ending in the 1960s include the "Wetdown", in which newly elected members of the student government were beaten with belts as they ran through a gauntlet spread across the Green. The increasing violence of this tradition caused it to be replaced with the "infamous" chariot race. According to The Dartmouth:

The tradition of the chariot race was ended in 1984.

Tubestock and Fieldstock