Initiation Ritual

Matt Riley
Dartmouth College
October 20th, 2018

Informant Data:

Matt Riley is a member of the class of 2019 here at Dartmouth and is a member of the Men’s Water polo Team. He is from Princeton, NJ. He started water polo with his brothers as a child and became more competitive as he aged. He recently concluded his career at Dartmouth with their season ending this fall.

Contextual Data:

Social Context: This initiation ritual is performed by new members of the Dartmouth Men’s Water polo team at a dinner with the upperclassmen players. The dinner occurs right before the start of the official season in the fall when they are still in the “pre-season” stage of training and getting ready to start competing.

Cultural Context: In water polo, like most sports, the athletes have pre-season training. This is essentially just practices and conditioning to prepare for the start of the season when they will be competing. This is often the first time new members meet the rest of the team and their first taste of being on a college sports team. Getting to know the upperclassmen can be intimidating and having a structured outlet to do so is helpful.

Item:

During pre-season, the entire team goes to dinner together and the upperclassmen prepare stories about the team, some of them true and some false. They then tell them at dinner and the freshmen try to guess which ones are true and which are false. After they go through all the stories, the freshmen get together and come up with real and fake stories about each other and the upperclassmen then try to guess which are real and which are not.

Part 1

Part 2:

Analysis:

This initiation ritual brings together the new members through learning about other members of the team in a funny and relaxed way. The members are initially separated from the upperclassmen not know which stories are true and which are false; however, as they move through they transition and learn the stories and are incorporated in knowing more about their teammates and the team itself. They are also given the opportunity to present information about themselves so the upperclassmen can get to know them.

Comparison:

This is similar to the Men’s Swim team ritual of doing trivia when the freshmen get lockers. Both serve as a way of incorporating the new members through learning about the team and teammates using humor and having fun.

James Patrick; 22 years old
4400 Montreux Rd
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Dartmouth College
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