General Information about Item:
- Customary, Practical Joke
- Language: English
- Country of Origin: United States
- Informant: Jack Kinney
- Date Collected: This data was collected during a one-on-one interview in the library of Dartmouth College with Jack Kinney on October 28th, 2018.
Informant Data:
- Jack Kinney ‘19 is a male student studying Environmental Science and Geography at Dartmouth College. He is originally from Seattle Washington. Jack participated in a hiking trip before the start of his Freshman year at Dartmouth as part of the First Year Trips DOC program. Since then, he has led trips every year.
Contextual Data:
- Social Context
- Jack Kinney encountered this joke, during this own trip. Later he has made played joke himself on each of his trips.
- This joke is typically played by upperclassmen or students leading trips on their first-year tripees. As the objects of the prank, the new freshmen are supposed to be initiated and bonded together as a new class by going through the embarrassment of this prank together.
- Cultural Context
- This joke occurs on first-year trips, which close to 95% of every incoming class at Dartmouth College participates in. Trips are used as a way to welcome each new class to Dartmouth and to break down whatever misconceptions they might have. Accordingly, jokes on trips are used often as they offer a great way to subvert expectations and to make everyone have a good time. Typically, the practical joke is played once the members of the trip and the leaders have left Dartmouth’s campus and are together somewhere in the surrounding wilderness of New Hampshire/Vermont. In this way, practical jokes like this one are very common to the Trips setting as they serve to bring everyone closer together through group humiliation/embarrassment.
Item:
- During First Year Trips each year, Trip leaders will talk to their Trippees about Dartmouth traditions and way of life. Since Trips is the first introduction to Dartmouth for many of students, they are eager to learn from them. Trip leaders will share many parts of Dartmouth folklore and slang with their trips to integrate them into the Dartmouth community.
Transcript:
- Gordon: Hi Jack, could you talk a little bit about yourself and your time with the Dartmouth Trips?
- Jack: Yeah, so I’m Jack Kinney am a senior at Dartmouth and have been involved with Trips either a trippees or a leader my entire time here.
- Gordon: What kind of pranks were played on you, and did you do any on your trips?
- Jack: I thoroughly enjoyed Trips. They were one of the best experiences I had here at Dartmouth, I wanted to share this same experience with future students. One of my favourites jokes was this one about Dartmouth lingo.
- Gordon: Nice, what was it?
- Jack: Well, while we told them about all the different slangs we have we told also gave them some wrong ones. For example, we told them that First Floor Berry was called “Faceplace” by Dartmouth students.
- Gordon: Great, so what happened?
- Jack: When they got to campus, they were confused about what we meant. It was funny hearing them talk about Faceplace.
- Gordon: Thank you sounds, like a great joke.
Informant’s Comments:
- “I remember when this same joke happened on my trip. It was the I liked the most. Some of our trippees actually still talked about Faceplace as their one inside joke.”
Collectors’ Comments:
- This prank wasn’t played on my trip. However, I heard about it from friends from went on other trips. I think that it’s a great way to introduce students to Dartmouth folklore and slang.
Collector’s Name: Gordon Robinson
Tags/Keywords:
- Joke. Pranks. Practical Jokes. Trips. Dartmouth.