Dartmouth Keg Jump

Informant info: Class of 1985 at Dartmouth. 55 years old. Lives in New York City and works in finance.

Type of lore, Genre, Subgenera: Customary Lore

Language: English

Country of Origin: United States

Social/Cultural Context: The informant attended Dartmouth in 1985. Greek organizations at this time were the core of Dartmouth and inspired “Animal House.” The customary lore described occurs over Winter Carnival, an annual weekend where students celebrate.

 Transcript:

“Every year at winter carnival, we would hose down the street in front of the cafeteria. After it froze over night, we would roll out empty kegs into the street and line them up. All of the brothers would dress in hockey pads and skates. We would skate as fast as we could and try to dive over as many kegs as possible. I jumped over 11 kegs.”

Informant’s Comments: The informant looked back on this tradition very fondly. He described it as an event that brought the house together every year.

Collector’s Comments: This lore is particularly interesting because it was described by a member of the class of 1985 as customary lore, while a member of the same fraternity in 2016 described it as an example of verbal lore – a legend about the past members of the frat. The transition from customary lore to a legend is relatively recent as the practice was done as late as 2000.

• Video of Dartmouth keg jump attached below from the year 2000.

 Tags/Keywords:

Dartmouth, Winter Carnival, Kegs