Title: Quarters
General Information about Item:
- Type of Lore: Drinking Game
- Language: English
- Country of Origin: America
- Informant: Cynthia Monroe
- Date Collected: May 9, 2019
Informant Data:
- Professor Cynthia Monroe was born on April 29th, 1966. In the early years of her youth she lived with her parents in Los Angeles, California. From there she move to Anchorage Alaska, where she lived for a majority of her life. Her father was in the military but Professor Monroe cannot recall if he was in the service during the time that she was alive. She would describe her family origins coming from a melting pot of European nations. Although she does not currently practice it, she identifies as a Quaker. She is currently divorced with two male children. She received her Undergraduate from Dartmouth and a MFA from British Columbia.
Contextual Data:
- Professor Monroe was a undergrad at Dartmouth and occasionally went to frat parties, Specifically, she frequented Sigep, an all-male fraternity. She felt comfortable there because when she attended their parties (between the years of 1984 and 1986), they didn’t care if you were someone who didn’t like to drink.
Item:
- One would try to bounce a quarter off the table into a plastic drinking cup. If you got the coin into the cup you wouldn’t have to drink it but if you missed it, you had to drink it – and then it would be refilled for another round
- At Sigep, students were in sometimes in athletic training so people made a personal limit on how much alcohol they could drink, once they hit that limit the alcohol was switched with water. Professor Monroe always started the game with water in her cups.
Informant’s Comments:
- Professor Monroe’s interpretation was that for a campus that was largely fraternity focused, Sig Ep both incorporated drinking while also providing a safe space where one could have fun and drink without being afraid.
- Because of the option to substitute water for beer in Quarters, she said, “Its like the undrinking game.”
- When asked why she thinks the game was played, Professor Monroe indicated that the game was “a way for way for people who wanted to get intoxicated quickly, to get intoxicated quickly with a point”. She further explained that Sig Ep expanded the bounds of that by including people who did not want to get drunk at all. There was a greater element of choice for what you drank.
Collector’s Comments:
Collector’s Name: Kyle Carlos
Tags/Keywords:
- Ritual. Drinking Game.