Title: Initiation rituals of music groups at Dartmouth College – Glee Club3

General Information about Item:

• Genre: Initiation Ritual
• Language: English
• Country of Origin: USA
• Informant: Katherine Yang, female, 19 years old
• Place Collected: Dartmouth College Library, Baker-Berry Lobby
• Date Collected: 11-27-2018

Informant Data:

• Katherine Yang was born in Parsippany, New Jersey and currently lives there. She attends Dartmouth College where she is a sophomore. On campus, she is a member of Glee Club and the Fusion Dance Ensemble. She has played several instruments in her lifetime, including the piano and the trumpet.

Contextual Data:

• Cultural Context: Glee Club is a choir group that performs classical, choir songs. Initiation rituals of the Glee Club are specific to Dartmouth College – there is usually no initiation process for this club on other campuses. Initiation is deemed as important because of its purpose to welcome the new members and build team spirit rather than scare or test new members.
• Social Context: The folk group that the Glee Club consists of is those who are interested in and sing classical music. The setting in which one part of the ritual takes place is public – Dartmouth Hall and Lou’s Diner. The second part of the ritual takes place in private – the back room. All members have to participate in initiation.

Item:

• Katherine auditioned for the Glee club at the beginning of her freshman fall. She was scared because she was ill and she had never done cite singing before. She did end up being accepted to Glee Club. She was notified by email that she was accepted. After that came the initiation process. She was woken up at around 4 in the morning. She almost didn’t answer the door because she had just come back from trips and was ill. The older members were dressed in “flair,” put up a poster on her door which said “Glee Club loves Katherine” and took her to Dartmouth Hall were they sang traditional Dartmouth songs. When they finished singing, they went to Lou’s Diner where they all got breakfast and got to know each other. She said that the whole process was “a lot of fun.”

Analysis: Initiation rituals consist of three stages: separation, transition and incorporation. In the case of Glee Club’s initiation, the separation stage includes being woken up by the group and taken to Dartmouth Hall – they are separated from the familiar place, which is their dorm. Transition includes being tasked to sing the lesser-known Dartmouth songs – it is the stage of uncertainty. Incorporation consists of the meal they get with the upperclassmen and the post-concert song which shows they are fully integrated into the group.

Meaning and interpretation: From the interviews with the Glee club informants as well as personal interpretation, one comes to the conclusion that the ritual signifies becoming completely incorporated into the group. While various other groups (even some within the entire collection group) use initiation as a test to see if the person has the skills necessary to be fully immersed in the group, Glee club uses initiation to make the new members feel welcome and create a cohesive group.

Comparison:

• Comparison within the subgroup: As a more professional group (guided by a director) new members of the Glee club are notified of their acceptance prior to the initiation ritual, which is not the case with the acapella groups. All the groups within the subgroup are surprised by the wakeups and all the groups get a meal as part of initiation. This is the case because the meal has the purpose of bringing the group together as the new members and old members get to know each other better. The goal of initiation for all the music groups is not to scare or test the new members, but to welcome them into their circle.
• Comparison with the rest of the subgroups: The subgroups differ dramatically across the board. Some of the subgroups focus on various ethnic groups while others focus on groups within Dartmouth. The initiation rituals of the groups within Dartmouth usually have the purpose of welcoming new members into their community and are symbolic. Ethnic-based group rituals have the purpose of testing the new members. Additionally, ethnic groups’ initiation rituals tend to be related to religious practices. Initiation rituals of Dartmouth groups are not religious in character. What all groups have in common though is the fact that the process of initiation creates closeness with the rest of the group and makes one feel completely immersed into the group.

Transcript: “I thought initiation was pretty cult-y but in a good way!”

Collector: Katarina Nesic, Dartmouth College, Russian 13, Professor Valentina Apresyan, Professor Mikhail Gronas, Fall 2018

Tags/Keywords:

• Initiation
• Ritual
• Glee Club
• Dartmouth