General Information about Item:

• Initiation Ritual
• Dartmouth College
• Informant: Wilson Hafner
• Date Collected: Fall 2018

Informant Data:

• Wilson Hafner was born on June 15, 2000. She grew up in Westport, CT with her mother, father, and four sisters. Wilson went to high school at The Taft School and started college at Dartmouth College in Hanover, NH in the fall of 2018. Wilson is currently a freshman at Dartmouth and wants to study government and psychology. In the fall of 2018, Wilson participated in the homecoming tradition of the homecoming bonfire.

Contextual Data:

• Cultural Context: Dartmouth College was founded in Hanover, NH on December 13, 1769, as an all-male private college. In the fall of 1972, 1000 women were enrolled into Dartmouth’s freshman class, making it the last Ivy League college to begin admitting women. As the ninth-oldest institution for higher education in the United States, Dartmouth College has many student traditions that have developed throughout the years. Many of these traditions revolve around integrating the freshman class into the Dartmouth community, such as the homecoming bonfire.
• Social Context: Homecoming weekend is an event that happens every fall on campus when alumni of all ages are invited back to Dartmouth in order to commemorate the college and their class. The bonfire is a major event that all alumni and current Dartmouth students are encouraged to attend for the homecoming celebration.

Item:

• Traditionally, the homecoming bonfire is built to be approximately 2-stories tall with the numbers of the freshmen class’s graduation year at the top. On the Friday night of homecoming, the freshman class gathers as a huge group and marches around campus. When the bonfire is lit, the freshman class goes to the green where the bonfire is set up and begins to run around it. Upperclassmen and alumni stand on the outskirts of the bonfire and cheer for the freshmen as they run their laps. Freshmen wear t-shirts with their graduation year on it to show support and pride for their class. It is also a tradition to run around the bonfire as many times as the year one is graduating. However, in 2018, the tradition changed because the college administration got increasingly worried about freshmen students attempting to touch the bonfire. In the past, some students thought it was “funny” or “exciting” to break from the pack of freshman running laps and try to touch the fire. To prevent this hazard, the administration changed the bonfire tradition so that the bonfire was slightly smaller, there was tall fencing around the bonfire, the freshmen were forced to walk instead of run around the fire, and they could only do one lap. Wilson and her class obeyed these new rules and walked one lap around the bonfire in the fall of 2018.

Analysis: 

• Initiation rituals consist of three stages: separation, transition, and incorporation. In accordance with the old tradition, the separation stage of this initiation ritual still occurs when the freshman class isolates itself from the rest of the student body and comes together as a group to march around campus. The transition stage occurs when the freshmen walk one lap around the bonfire—signifying their integration into the Dartmouth community. Finally, the freshmen are incorporated back into the student body after they finish their one lap, and the freshman class disperses.

Meaning and interpretation: 

• Running around the bonfire has been an initiation ritual at Dartmouth for over a century. Although some of the recent changes in the ritual—such as being forced to walk—might make the ritual less exciting, it is still an important rite of passage that every Dartmouth student experiences. It is a chance for the freshman class to get attention and support from upperclassmen and alumni and to truly feel as though they are a part of the Dartmouth community. It is also a chance for the class to come together as a group and to feel cohesive.

Comparison:

• Comparison within the subgroup: In this subgroup, we focused on Dartmouth College social initiation rituals. One similarity between most of these rituals is that they are experienced by freshmen. A student’s freshman year is a time learn about his or her new community and the traditions that form its unique culture. Freshman year is also the time that most students join the clubs or sports teams that they will be most involved in throughout their Dartmouth careers. Therefore, it makes sense that so many of the Dartmouth social initiation rituals take place during the freshman year, such as the homecoming bonfire ritual. One difference within our subgroup is who initiates and runs each initiation ritual. Sometimes these rituals are set up and funded by the Dartmouth administration, and sometimes they are student-run. Another difference is the duration of each ritual. Some social spaces take a while to initiate into or involve a few different rituals that initiate new members, whereas others only require one short ritual.
• Comparison with the rest of the subgroups: The subgroups differ dramatically across the board. Some of the subgroups focus on various ethnic groups while others focus on groups within Dartmouth. The initiation rituals of the groups within Dartmouth usually have the purpose of welcoming new members into their community and are symbolic. Ethnic-based group rituals have the purpose of testing the new members. Additionally, ethnic groups’ initiation rituals tend to be related to religious practices. Initiation rituals of Dartmouth groups are not religious in character. What all groups have in common though is the fact that the process of initiation creates closeness with the rest of the group and makes one feel completely immersed into the group.

Transcript: Wilson Hafner on the changes in the ritual: “We were hearing so many different things about the controversy surrounding (the bonfire). I think once it becomes more normal after a few years go by, it won’t be as weird. I do still think it is a very important event”

Collector: Caroline Elliott, Dartmouth College, Russian 13, Professor Valentina Apresyan, Professor Mikhail Gronas, Fall 2018

Tags/Keywords:

• Initiation
• Ritual
• Homecoming Bonfire
• Freshman class
• Dartmouth