Summer Masters Tournament
Informant Name: Anonymous
Date Collected: May 17th, 2016
Place Collected: Berry Library Fourth Floor, Hanover, NH
Genre: Custom
Informant Data: The informant is a junior at Dartmouth College. He is pursuing a double major in Economics and Government.
Contextual Data: The informant is a member of AD. He was on campus last summer when the AD junior class chose two 2-member teams to represent the house in the annual summer Pong Masters tournament.
Ritual: “Over the summer we hold a pong tournament for all of the brothers in the house. The winning teams of two players represent the house in the Masters tournament. This last summer we had a pretty good team that made it all the way to the finals. It was cool to watch them play and cheer them on as they did so well.”
Interpretation: The summer is a big time for the sophomores, as they are for the most part the only class on campus. The Masters tournament allowed the AD members of the sophomore class to bond tightly as the brothers got behind their representative team while they faced off against the teams of other fraternities. This ritual allowed the group to come out of the summer as a tighter knit unit than they were coming in.
Collected by:
LM
Dartmouth College
HB 1674
Hanover, NH 03755
Professors Victoria Somoff & Mikhail Gronas
Beer Pong Masters
Informant Name: Anonymous
Date Collected: May 16th, 2016
Place Collected: Novack
Genre of Folklore: Game
Informant Data: The informant is an anonymous Junior. His major is economics.
Contextual Data: The informant had AD around when he was at this school and he also went a few times.
Item: “One of the main reputations of AD was the great play they would have at Masters, which is a large tournament of beer pong, which is held over sophomore summer. All the fraternities would have teams that competed in the tournament and whichever frat team won would have the reputation of forever winning Masters. AD had the reputation of always doing extremely well in these tournaments, if not usually winning them. Their reputation as a pong powerhouse was not unsupported as many of the times the team that AD sent was one of the best ones. They also played a ton of pong in the basement of the frat.”
Interpretation: Beer pong is a huge game at Dartmouth that is played with pong paddles on a large wooden table. I have heard from many people that AD played a lot of pong and that they always did really well at Masters. I have no reason to doubt this credibility in both playing the game at their fraternity and treating Masters as a big deal. They probably did not win every year, but they undoubtedly did a good job at this uniquely Dartmouth game. Masters is also one of the bigger well-known traditions around Dartmouth, and this is a good example of an AD and Dartmouth ritual that promotes socialization and bonding.
Collected by:
Seb Lim
Dartmouth College
HB 2773
Hanover, NH 03755
Professors Victoria Somoff & Mikhail Gronas
Russian 13: Vampires, Witches, and Firebirds; 16S