Category Archives: Dartmouth Greek Life: Rush Folklore

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 Rush “Dry” Event

Information about Item:

  • Form of verbal and customary folklore
  • Informant: Male ’20, affiliated.
  • Date Collected: 5/10/2020

Informant Data:

  • The informant is a member of the Class of 2020 at Dartmouth. He is affiliated with Greek Life.

Contextual Data:

  • Cultural and Social Context:

Most important events in rush, where the potential members get to meet and socialize with the current members of a fraternity, are “dry”. An example of a dry event is “Shakeout”.

Item:

  • “Dry” events like Shakeout are events where the fraternity does not serve alcohol.

Collector’s Name: Shadi Ali Ahmad

Collector’s Comments:

  • Item collected through Zoom.

Tags/Keywords:

  • Verbal folklore
  • Customary folklore
  • Fraternity rush

Fraternity Shake Out Clothing

Title: Fraternity Shake Out Clothing

Information about Item:

  • Material folklore
  • Customary folklore
  • Informant: R.B.
  • Collected 5/13/2020

Informant Data:

R.B. is a member of the Class of 2020 at Dartmouth and is affiliated with Greek Life. He is from California and studying Engineering.

Contextual Data:

  • Cultural: Shake Out is a step of the Interfraternity Council rush process.
  • Social: This item was collected through a video chat interview. Not all fraternities request that potential new members wear formal attire. It may be “out of respect” to dress formally, and this is only done by potential new members.

Item: Potential new members of fraternity organizations wear formal attire for the Shake Out event.

Collector’s Comments:

This item is similar to a different item collected- Sorority Pref Night clothing. Formal attire may be required for both processes, potentially indicating the significance and formality of certain events.

Collector’s Name: Meredith Srour

Tags/Keywords:

  • Material folklore
  • Customary folklore
  • Clothing
  • Fraternity rush