Title: New Year’s Eve Event 

General Information about Item:

• Customary lore, ritual
• Language: English
• Country of Origin: United States
• Informant: Anonymous 
• Date Collected: 11-05-19

Informant Data:

• The informant would like to remain anonymous, but has shared that she is 21 years old and is from California. She attends Dartmouth College in Hanover, NH.  She is currently a senior who applied for Ski Patrol her Freshmen year. She remembers the application process vividly, although she did not end up making the team. Skiing is a big part of her life and while not on ski patrol, she is a ski instructor at the Dartmouth Skiway. She is a pre-health student. Her love for skiing inspired her to apply for Ski Patrol at Dartmouth College.

Contextual Data:

• Every year, applicants are required to come up to school during the tail end of winterim for a few days before winter term begins.  During these few days, they must help the upperclassmen in Ski Patrol pass their certifications, and then the entire patrol partakes in a New Year’s Eve party.  

Item:

• Once applicants make it past the fall term ski patrol cuts, they must come up to campus before the start of winter term to help older members of the ski patrol practice for their winter certification exams.  They act as practice dummies and run drills for a full day on the mountain.  Then applicants and members of the patrol have a combined New Year’s Eve celebration.

Transcript:

• Item: “Once you made it past the first round of cuts which took place at the end of the fall, you continued with the process until the winter.  The second round of cuts came at the end of the winter, which is when I got cut. My year you had to show up prior to New Year’s and help the upperclassmen receive their certifications.  I am forgetting what it is called. It is similar to an EMT certification but for on the mountain. We helped them by running practice scenarios, so we were like the patients and they had to check on us and make sure we were ok.  You spent a day on the mountain. They had to like lift evac you, stuff like that. It was actually pretty fun. What ended up happening is there was a big New Year’s Eve party.”

Informant’s Comments:

• The informant made no additional comments on this item of folklore.

Collector’s Comments:

• New Year’s itself is a rite de passage based in the cosmos. The concept of New Year’s started in ancient Mesopotamia in 2000 BC, where they celebrated the new year around the time of the vernal equinox in mid-March.  Having patrollers partake in a crucial portion of the application process during New Year’s is symbolic. Just as New Year’s represents changing from one state to another, the patroller New Year’s events represent a changing from one state to another as well. 
• The applicants have made it from the first stage of the application process (after the fall term cuts) to the second, so they are one step closer to becoming a patroller. This transformation can be tied to the 3 stages of rituals. When the applicants come back to campus early, before the other Dartmouth students, this represents separation.  They are physically separating from their lives at home, their identities as an individual to spend a few days on campus dedicated solely to Ski Patrol tasks. During the certification practice on the mountain, the applicants must act as a practice patient for a full day. This represents transition. The applicants are acting as test patients for the upperclassmen.  They are learning how to support the other members of the patrol as if they were full-time members of the team, yet they are not quite members of the patrol yet. They are in transition, proving their loyalty and team-building skills before they can be fully incorporated. The New Year’s party represents incorporation. The applicants and full-time patrollers alike bond, celebrating not just the New Year’s but the addition of new members to the patrol.  This celebration is meant to provide the applicants with everything they would need to join the patrol by giving them an early sense of friendship, fun, community, and bonding that will make the transition into the patrol easier.

Collector’s Name: Rachel Mashal

Tags/Keywords:

• Customary lore
• Ritual
• Skiing 
• Ski Patrol
• Application process