General Information about the item:

Title: First Year Trips

Form of Folklore: Customary/Ritual (Freshman Tradition)

Language: English

Place of Origin: Hanover, NH, United States

Informant: DG’25

Date Collected: November 1st, 2021

Informant Data: DG is 19 years old and a freshman at Dartmouth College. DG is originally from Chicago, Illinois, but currently resides in Hanover, NH. Growing up DG played baseball for his high school and on a travel team. Since coming to Dartmouth, DG has joined the heavyweight rowing team and is planning on studying economics. 

Contextual Data: 

– Social Context:  A majority of students come to Dartmouth with zero prior relationships and are forced to interact with new people and make new friends. This can always be a challenge and the First Year trips attempt to make the transition easier and give new students a group of people that can get to know and be bonded with through their experiences during the trips. Many students who participate in trips are still in contact with either their trip leader or the other students that participated in the trip with them. 

– Cultural Context:  Dartmouth is located in a unique location in Hanover, NH. Hanover is a small town in rural New Hampshire that is surrounded by woods and mountains. For many students, Dartmouth is a drastic change of scenery. This provides an opportunity for students to gain experiences that would not have been possible had they not chosen to come to Dartmouth. For these reasons along with the fact that Dartmouth places an emphasis on class cohesion and bonding, the College decided to implement first year trips. 

Item: First Year Trips is a program implemented by Dartmouth and run by the DOC. In these trips, groups of around 10 students spend a few days outdoors doing activities that align with the theme of the trip that the students sign up for. Some examples of these themes include cabin camping and fly fishing. The groups are led by trip leaders who are older members of the College. 

Associated File (courtesy of Dartmouth College DOC, represents the events that DG Gramza describes):

Transcript:

Collector: “How did DOC trips make you feel as a freshman coming into a new environment?”

Informant: “I felt that the trips really helped me to immerse myself with the people that were in my class and be able to connect better to Dartmouth as a whole. During the trip, a couple things that my group did was hike and eat dinner at the ravine lodge on Mount Moosilauke. It was great to be able to have shared experiences over a ton of different activities with people that I may not have met otherwise. The trips gave me a great foundation of friends that I could branch out from and make my own experience of Dartmouth”

Collector Comment: It was great to hear DG’s perspective on trips and some of the things that he and his group did. Due to COVID, I was unable to participate in trips, but DG was able to help me understand the importance of the tradition.

Collected by:

Nick Hepburn 20

Hampton, NH

Hanover, NH

Dartmouth College

RUSS 013