Title: The “Safety” Show

General Information about Item:

• Customary Folklore: Practical Joke, and Song and Dance

• Language: English

• Country: United States

Informant #1 Data:

• The informant is a Dartmouth ’21 female. She went on a first-year trip in September 2017; the trip was hiking (level 3).

Informant #2 Data:

• Leigh Steinberg was born and raised in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and was born on April 19, 1996. She is a student at Dartmouth in the class of 2018 and is a history major and plans on going into consulting after graduation. She was a trip leader before her sophomore year of college and was on Hanover Croo, known as HCroo, this past fall.

Informant #3 Data:

• The informant is a Dartmouth ’18 female. She is active in the Native American Community on campus, SPCSA, and Sigma Delta. She is a Government and Native American Studies modified with Anthropology double major from Martha’s Vineyard. She went on cabin camping in September 2014, but never led a trip or was on a croo.

Contextual Data:

• Social Context
  • All are in Sarner Underground on the Dartmouth campus on the first night of trips. They are all sitting on the ground looking up at a stage. They have been told they are there to listen to a safety talk, so that they understand the rules before they head out into the wilderness for four days. The trippees do not know that the safety talk will actually turn into a crazy show with singing and dancing.

• Cultural Context
  • The trippees are uncomfortable because it is their first day as students at Dartmouth, so to ease the trippees discomfort, H-Croo surprises the trippees by putting on a crazy show for them with song and dance.
  • H-Croo wants to ease the nerves of the trippees and make them feel more comfortable, but also make sure that the trippees enjoy their time

Item:

• Members of Hanover Croo (H-Croo) surprise the trippees with a show with many songs and dances. The trippees go into the room under the impression that H-Croo will be putting on a safety talk, but partway through the talk, H-Croo begins to sing and dance.

Transcript of Informant #1 Interview:

“The Safety Talk. So we were sitting in the back and we saw that there was a camera, so we were a little suspicious that something else besides a safety talk was going on. Going into the talk, our trip leaders were very convincing and they were apologizing that we had to sit through this mandatory safety talk, so we (the trippees) were convinced that it was going to be a pretty boring thing. But then the two people giving the talk were sitting on stage and they started bickering, and we were like ‘Okay, that doesn’t really happen.’ And I also knew that they just prank trippees a lot, so I kind of knew that something was going to happen. It was kind of fun to watch the room unfold into realizing that something was going to happen, and this wasn’t actually a safety talk. I loved watching the show. I remember sitting there and being like this strange and fun atmosphere is a big reason of why I came to Dartmouth.”

Informant #1’s Comments:

• It was really fun to watch H-Croo put on a show.

Collector #1’s Comments:

• Informant was able to give a detailed account of the experience that she had on trips.

Collector’s Name: Madison DeRose

Transcript of Informant #2 Interview:

Well, so the safety show is something that we do every night. After dinner we bring them in and we tell them that they have to listen to a safety talk for about an hour which is super important. Um and then instead we surprise them by putting on a really big show. I always thought, I was a trip leader and also on HCroo, that this is important in making them more comfortable on their first night so kind of by breaking down the boundaries of the first day awkwardness that they put up. And so just us being really goofy and silly in front of them definitely helps them feel more comfortable in their group. It gives them something to talk about and it connects us to them and it also does convey some important information like, “no sex on trips” just in a really funny way. So we get to talk about fun things in a way that’s super accessible.

Informant #2’s Comments: 

• She particularly likes the safety show because she thinks it really helps eliminate a lot of the awkwardness of the introduction to college.

Collector #2’s Comments:

• Informant seemed to be extremely enthusiastic about the safety show, as she mentioned it was consistently the thing she looked forward to most.

Collector’s Name: Henry Senkfor

Transcript of Informant #3 Interview:

Informant: Fast forward, you do the safety talk. And the trip leaders are like, ‘oh my God take notes you’ll be quizzed after this and you won’t be able to go unless you do well on this quiz.’ So everyone’s pulling out pieces of paper and stuff and freaking out…

Collector: freaking out because they were definitely studious in high school?

Informant: Yeah, Dartmouth nerds. I remember our trip leaders were kind of chill and they were like, ‘you’ll be fine.’ And so they saved us the social embarrassment basically of being these crazy nerds. Obviously they break into dancing after this. The safety talk slowly starts to make no sense and you’re like wait what? And it’s like a dance party. Classic; our first Dartmouth dance party.

Informant #3’s Comments: 

• Informant viewed the Safety Show simultaneously as another example of the prevalence of spontaneous dance throughout the trips experience and as an example of pranking on trips.

Collector #3’s Comments:

• This view/instance of the “safety show” is an example of how DOC trips folklore can cross genres in the way that someone experiences it. Our informant sees it both as another instance of spontaneous dance and as a prank as parts of trips. It also speaks to the simultaneous universal nature of the safety show in that everyone on trips experiences it, and to the personalized nature of how they might be introduced to it or perceive it.

Collector’s Name: Clara Silvanic

Tags/Keywords:

• Customary Folklore, Practical Joke, Performance, Song and Dance