Homecoming Burning Freshman

  1. Burning Freshman
  2. Informant Data: Ayana Whitmal is a 20-year-old, female, sophomore (’18) who attends Dartmouth College. She was born in Amherst, Massachusetts and now resides in Hanover, New Hampshire during the school year.
  3. Type of lore: Verbal; Genre: myth
  4. Language: English
  5. Country of Origin: US
  6. Contextual Data: Ayana Whitmal attends Dartmouth College, and has participated in homecoming for each of her two years as a student. She heard this myth from an upperclassmen her freshman year.
  7. Item: Every year, the upperclassman put one freshmen in the middle of the bonfire and burn them.
  8. Informant’s comments: The myth is a form of hazing
  9. Collector’s comments: This myth scares the freshmen into thinking homecoming is an awful event. It is the way for the upperclassmen to spook the freshmen almost as if an adult does when it tells a child a scary story at a campsite before bed. It creates this love-hate relationship with the upperclassmen. On the one hand, they are probably terrified of the upperclassmen, then after the bonfire they are joined with the entire Dartmouth community.
  10. Myth, burning freshman

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