Defending Her Honor

Title: Defending Her Honor

Informant Info: Mene Ukueberuwa is an Editor-in-Chief Emeritus of The Dartmouth Review. He is a ’16 (formerly ’14) from Princeton, NJ. He was interviewed on May 12, 2016 at the Collis Center in Hanover, NH.

Type of Lore: Verbal, Legend

Language: English

Country of Origin: United States

Social / Cultural Context: The use of the phrase “defending her honor” harkens back to chivalry, demonstrating how the Review tends to be a traditional organization. It also references the social scene at Dartmouth, which consists mostly of fraternities where some people may be a bit too aggressive.

Transcript:

So, if you hang around the Review office enough, you will be likely to hear the phrase, “He was defending her honor,” pop up in random conversations, and that all goes back to an incident that occurred my freshman year with a fellow former ‘14 who was involved in an altercation on Frat Row. He was with a friend of his, and she got into a little bit of a dispute with an aggressive fellow freshman, and then this staffer courageously stepped in to save her from this advance; ended up in a little bit of a scuffle, that had some bad repercussions for both of the people involved, but he came out of it very proud to have defended her honor, and that was always the only thing that he would tell people when they asked him, exactly why it was that he ended up in the sticky situation he was in. So we always like to repeat the phrase, kind of as a tribute to him.

Collector’s Comments: The actual details of the incident, which happened in 2010, are unclear. Regardless of what actually happened, this legend is one of the most popular within the Review. New staffers are usually exposed to it at an early time, and it has evolved to the point where the phrase “defending her honor” is almost ubiquitous within the organization.

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