Title: Floor-Cest

Informant info:

Jack Auteri is from Doylestown, Pennsylvania and is in the class of 2019 at Dartmouth College. He is planning on being a Government major. He was interviewed on 11/5/16 in Hanover, NH.

General Information:

• Customary Lore: Belief/Superstition
• English
• U.S.

Item:

Floor-Cest is the belief that freshmen that live on the same floor should not engage in sexual relations or “hookup” during their first year at Dartmouth. It is believed that you should become good friends with your floor mates, rather than attempting to have a sexual relationship. It is a superstition in the sense that if you were to engage in floor-cest, the other floor mates would look down on you for damaging the floor’s overall chemistry.

Social / Cultural Context:

Jack lived on the first floor of Russell Sage last year. During the fall term of his freshman year, Jack engaged in floor-cest and he recounts what the effects were for himself, and his floor as a whole.

Transcript:

“It was orientation week and I had helped this girl move some of her things into her room. Later that week, we had our first floor meeting with our UGA. She laid down the ground rules for a successful fall term at Dartmouth. One of those rules was more of a warning, discouraging floor-cest. I thought to myself, ‘That’s a good rule to live by, but that girl at the end of the hallway might call for an exception.’ A few weeks had gone by and the frat ban was over. At this point, the girl and I had become pretty good friends. I had some connections in one of the fraternities and she asked me if we could play pong there. Obviously, I obliged and we played a few games together against her friends. The party started to heat up as we were playing and after the third game, it had become a dance party. We started dancing together and continued to dance for most of the night. As the party was winding down, she asked me if I could walk her home, which made sense because we lived on the same floor. When we got home, she invited me into her room to ‘hang out.’ We then both disregarded our UGA’s warning about floor-cest, and slept together anyway. After that night, our friendship was tainted and neither of us were interested in an actual relationship. Our other floor mates noticed the awkward tension, which just made the overall atmosphere on our floor more awkward.”

Informant’s comments:

“After my experience, I agree 100% that floor-cest should be avoided if you want to be good friends with your floor mates. Committing floor-cest will cause awkward tension not only for the two people involved, but for the floor as a whole.”

Collector’s comments:

After talking to Jack and experiencing a similar situation on my floor freshman year, I agree that floor-cest is a real superstition. The belief that it taints the friendships that are created with your floor mates is true and I advise incoming freshmen to be aware of its affects.

Collector’s name: Will Randell

Tags/Keywords:  Customary Lore, Belief, Superstion, Freshman Folklore, Floor-cest,