Touching the Fire

Title: Touching the Fire

Informant info: Caleb Kim is a member of the class of 2017. He is from South Korea. He is a CS modified with Econ major. He enjoys the Greek life that pervades Dartmouth.

Type of Lore: Customary, Ritual, Traditional

Language: English

Country of Origin: US

Social/cultural context: Caleb was interviewed in a public space at Dartmouth College. He participated in Homecoming as a freshman and still participates in it even as an upperclassman.

Item: Every Homecoming, freshman are often told by upperclassmen to touch the fire, despite the fact that they can be injured. It is supposed to be a tradition, and if a class does not have a member that does not touch the fire, then that class is then called the “worst class ever”. Even so, several people have touched the fire out of their own volition. Touching the fire is typically a very hard task as it involves evading a lot of security. Hanover Police, Safety and Security, and private security all guard the fire. Many students get caught attempting to touch the fire.

Associated file: None; the recording was not very well done because the public place was rather loud.

Transcript:

Interviewer: Do you know any Homecoming folklore, such as stories that are almost unbelievable?

Caleb: I don’t really know any homecoming lore. All right, so I think, people run around the bonfire because it’s a long standing tradition, from like 100 years ago. And I know people who have touched the fire and they went to the police station. I think they did it because they didn’t see too much tradition in running around the bonfire, and by them touching the bonfire, they were creating a perversion of the tradition. Strangely enough, and I don’t know why, touching the fire became a tradition, like an anti tradition. I heard of one guy, who touched the fire. He and a couple kids evaded the cops to touch the fire and they got caught eventually. They ran around the cops, making them really pissed. They also taunted them. When they got caught, the cops weren’t exactly nice to them, and I don’t blame them. But, apparently the freshmen didn’t get charges put to them, which I think is cool. So yeah, that’s one story I heard and I think it’s mostly true.

Informer’s comments: He focused mostly on the fascination of the fire by Dartmouth students as his knowledge of Homecoming lore.

Collector’s comments: Caleb did not seem to know specifics about the events that happen during Homecoming.

 

Tags/keywords: bonfire, Freshman, tradition, polices station, perversion

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