Title: The Cabot Cheese Taste Test

General Information about Item:

• Customary, Practical Joke
• Language: English
• Country of Origin: United States
• Informant: Brad Stone
• Date Collected: This data was collected on October 29^th, 2018 during a one-on-one interview in the library of Dartmouth College with Brad Stone.

Informant Data:

• Brad Stone ‘19 is a male student studying neuroscience at Dartmouth College. He is originally from Tampa, Florida. Brad has lead several trips before as a member of the Dartmouth Outing Club First Year Trips staff.

Contextual Data:

• Social Context
  • Brad encountered this joke first when he was leading a trip during August of 2018. Brad noted that this specific practical joke was not very common on other trips, but that the practice of unknown visitors arriving at random trips and playing practical jokes on the tripees is a widespread part of the First Year Trips experience.
  • 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:

While a land-based trip is in progress (typically hiking), a random member of the First Year Trips staff unknown to the tripees arrives dressed in a lab coat posing as an employee of the well-known cheese company, Cabot Cheese. The visitor asks tripees and trip leaders if they want to give feedback about some new types of cheese that Cabot is rolling out that are targeted at hikers and other outdoorsy individuals. When the tripees say yes, the visitor gives them several samples of cheese, which are actually all the same cheese and asks them several prodding questions about how the cheeses taste, which is their favorite, etc. Eventually, after the victim of the prank is unable to tell that each cheese is the same and that they are being pranked, the truth is revealed to their embarrassment.

 

Transcript:

• Jackson: Hey Brad, do you think you could tell me like a little bit about your background and where you’re from?
• Brad: Yeah. Sure. So my name is Brad Stone. I’m a ‘19 from Tampa, Florida, and I’m a neuroscience major here at Dartmouth College.
• Jackson: So, when you were coming here to Dartmouth, did you know anything about the school in advance or anything about trips or was that totally new for you?
• Brad: So, interestingly enough, my dad was an ’87. So I knew a bit about the College. He told me that trips were an awesome experience for him, but he never really went into detail. So I was I knew to expect something positive but was kind of flying blind other than that.
• Jackson: I know you’ve also led trips before too, so you must now have a lot of exposure. What are what are some funny jokes that you’ve heard before or pranks that you’ve heard being played on trips?
• Brad: Sure. So this past fall, I was leading a trip had a group of eight ‘21s, and I had a ‘20 as a co-leader. One of the more interesting pranks that was pulled on our trip was a raid done by Vox Crew. So, Vox Crew is sort of the logistical division of some trips. They get make sure you have enough food and water etc. while you’re out on the trails. Any sort of emergency medical that wouldn’t be straight to 9-1-1, they would take care of. So, we met a member of Vox Crew coming down a trail. We just hiked like eight miles, and we were hitting an intersection of the trail around a main road when we met an upperclassman dressed in a lab coat. She approached us and said she was from Cabot Cheese Factory, and they were really interested in polling hikers as that as that was a Target demographic of theirs. So, they led us to a van. Outside the van, they had set up this table with a bunch of different plates of cheese labeled “A,” “B,” and “C.” At a glance, knowing they were Dartmouth students, it was pretty obvious they’d stolen the plates from Foco and had put out the same slices of cheese on each plate, but I decided to play along. And so, we told each of the tripees that they were taking an objective survey quiz asking various questions. The questions kept getting sillier and sillier, until it became obvious to everyone that it was a prank. At that point, we broke out cookies and chatted and had a good time, but it was pretty amusing to see them think it was an actual Cabot employee.

Associated file (a video, audio, or image file):

Audio file

Informant’s Comments:

• “I had never heard of this prank being played except a couple times, so I was really excited when it happened to us while I was leading Trips. Definitely brought my tripees a lot closer together and was just a great time.”

 

Collectors’ Comments:

• This joke seems to function in-line with the goals of Trips as a whole, where the tripees have no idea what to expect. As the object of the humor, the tripees are pranked and embarrassed together, bringing them closer together and helping to build lasting friendships before their time at Dartmouth truly begins.

 

Collector’s Name: Jackson Baur

Tags/Keywords:

• Joke. Pranks. Practical Jokes. Trips. Dartmouth.