Alumni Legends – Stabbing in Boston

Title: Legend of Stabbing and PR

General Information about Item:

  • Genre: Verbal
    • Subgenre:   Folk Narrative, Legend
  • Language: English
  • Country of origin: USA

Informant Data: Jeffrey Gao ’18 is a 21-year-old Asian-American male light-weight rower from San Diego, CA. He has rowed before coming to Dartmouth, and walked onto Dartmouth’s D150 Lightweight Rowing team.

Contextual Data: 

Social Context: Another legend is that of a previous rower for the D150 team. This legend is typically told by upperclassmen to the freshmen when they join, especially when the training becomes more rigorous. Because the D150 Light-Weight Crew team revolves around competition, mainly in the form of races against other college teams, it is a highly demanding sport that requires near daily practices and continual weight-cutting and exercise.

Cultural Context: This legend is passed down verbally from one generation to the next and is an effective way to create a sense of common knowledge and unity within the team. Every team member hears this legend and because the hero is someone that also was on D150, he is easy to relate to.

Item: This item is an oral piece of folklore that focuses on the passing down of a Folk Narrative, specifically a legend, that is suppose to help motivate rowers to live up to mental toughness and discipline of past rowers, and continue their legacy by devoting themselves to the sport. It is shared by every member of the D150 team.

Given that this is a legend, there are also multiple variations of this story, which makes sense given the unfixed form of verbal lore.

Var 1: Against the wishes of his coach, a previous  member of the team spent a day in Boston for fun, keeping this a secret. While there, he was stabbed, but still had to return to school for training. Keeping his injury a secret, he then did a test piece on the ERG and pulled off a personal record that day as his blood soaked his jersey.

Var 2: When a previous member of the team was going home one night, he was confronted by muggers and was feeling really rattled as he ran away. When he went home, his roommate noticed that he was bleeding because he got stabbed, but he didn’t realize because his adrenaline was pumping. Rather than telling his coach about his injury, he continued normally during practice, but his wound opened up and his uni became bloody.

Collector’s Name: David Oh

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