Category Archives: Houses

House Families

Title: House Families

General Information about Item:

  • Customary Folklore
  • Informant: R.C. ’22
  • Date Collected: 05/19/2020

Informant Data:

  • R.C. is a male student at Dartmouth College. He is affiliated.

Contextual Data:

  • Cultural Context: Families are small units of close individuals. The adoption of this technique into fraternity culture serves a similar purpose.
  • Social Context: House families are smaller groups in the house new members are sorted in to. These act as smaller and closer social groups for the new members in the house.

Item:

  • This specific fraternity gives its new members “families” within its members. These families consist of one to two new members and a handful of older members to serve as a resource during and after the rush process.

Collector’s Comments:

  • I found these families to be an interesting and useful way to help new members during the rush process. They stay families for life, long after active membership in the fraternity ends. In this specific example, the family the informant was in was easily dated back to Dartmouth alumni from 2014.

Collector’s Name: Charlie Wade

Tags/Keywords:

  • Customary Lore
  • Family
  • Social

Fraternity House Song

 

General Information about Item:

  • Verbal folklore
  • Informant R.C.
  • Date Collected: 05/18/2020

Informant Data:

  • The informant is a current Dartmouth student. He is a member of the class of 2022 and is affiliated.

Contextual Data:

  • Cultural Context: When rushing a fraternity, there is a sense of pride and community associated with the house and its members. Members are seen as “brothers” and the house is the “home” of its members. The singing of a song honors these two traditions.
  • Social Context: The collective act of singing together has always been associated with the idea of community. The singing of a house song is a social activity new and old members participate in to foster this principle.

Item:

  • There is a song made up by the fraternity members, that is sung to honor the house and its members. This is meant to help new members feel welcomed during the rush process (or directly after).

 

Collector’s Comments:

  • The use of a song to help new members feel part of a new community is not uncommon. I thought it was interesting to see the same type of welcoming folklore displayed in this process.

Collector’s Name: Charlie Wade

Tags/Keywords:

  • Verbal Folklore
  • Fraternity Rush
  • New Members

“Shotgun House”

Shotgun House

Infromant: Brian Flint, age 23, Metairie, LA, collected on May 22, 2016 and recorded on an iphone.

Verbal Lore: folk speach, slang- associated: urban legend, Material

English

United States of America

Context: a long narrow house with no hallway and interconnecting rooms found in many neighborhood in New Orleans.

Transcript:

“ The next is a ‘shotgun house.’ That means it is a very long, narrow, house in which there is no  hallway and all the rooms are connected by a doorway. It’s thought of that you could shot a- shoot a shotgun all the way through from one end to the other. There is a lot of myths surrounding the etymology of that one but, that story definitely is what most people will jump to.”

 

Infromant: Erin Fell, age 21, New Orleans, LA, collected on May 22, 2016 and recorded on an iphone.

Transcript: “Next is “Shotgun”, as in not the arm, not the fire weapon but a shotgun house. A shotgun house is a long, narrow house where there are generally no hallways, just a big line of rooms in the house. Shotgun houses are super common in certain neighborhoods in New Orleans.”

Collectors Commentary: This item is associated with material lore of the houses in certain N.O. neighborhoods being built a certain way. There is probably an interesting reason why these houses were designed this way that would be good to explore next.

Keywords: New Orleans, Shotgun House, long, narrow, house, no hallways