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Dorm Parties

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General Information:
Informant: KS
Place: Hanover, NH
Date: November 1, 2021
Genre/Form of folklore: Customary/Ritual
Title: “Dorm Parties”

Informant Data: KS is a 19-year-old member of Dartmouth’s class of 2025. He is a student-athlete on the football team, who is interested in studying engineering. He is from Germany, making him a unique person on the football team as almost everyone who plays American football in college is from America. He lives primarily in Hanover, NH on his college campus now. 

Contextual Data: American college experiences oftentimes involve partying as a form of socializing. It is a great way for people to meet those who live around them as everyone is away from their home, often for the first time in their lives. The feeling of independence is usually new, and so students want to go and meet the others around them so that they have friends for their upcoming college years.

Social Data: Freshmen are banned from going to the fraternities on campus for the first 6-7 weeks of the fall. During this time, freshmen are forced to bond together in the dorms and spend social time there.

Item: Freshmen students are unable to go to the frats because there is a frat ban. In response, the social scene becomes dorm parties because there is not much else going on in the area. Many students rotate hosting and then they have a group of friends in their room for a weekend night.

Transcript: 
Collector: “Are there any other traditions we haven’t discussed that you think are important to freshman fall at Dartmouth?”

Informant: “Dorm parties are fun because it allows me to meet new people outside of the football team. Because we cannot go to frats, it provides us with a fun way to blow off some social steam. I enjoy getting a break from schoolwork and being around my peers. I think the frat ban was good because it forced us to bond as a freshmen class.”

Collector Comment:

I remember dorm parties from my freshman year being rare and often they were broken up because of COVID. It was nice to hear this class of freshmen was able to be social this fall and make more friends.

Collected by:

Ross Parrish 20

Cincinnati, OH

Hanover, NH

Dartmouth College

RUSS 013

Fall 2021

Link

Title: How to ward off S & S.

Genre: Customary Folklore

S&S Folkore

Informant info: Krissy Saraceno. From Boston Massachusetts. Female Dartmouth ‘19 student. Lives on campus at Dartmouth in Russell Sage Hall. 19 years old.

Type of Lore: Customary lore, Ritualistic

Language: English

Country of Origin: USA

Social / Cultural Context: Students drinking in a dorm room can be faced with a lot of trouble if caught by S&S during one of their walkthroughs. The ritual described below is one that nearly every student performs, but very few notice, because we are all part of the folk. A lot of students at Dartmouth have their friends visit their rooms in order to hang out and possibly drink, therefore in order to escape notice from S&S, students perform this ritual.

Video: https://youtu.be/JQunnbKolsE This is a video interview with informant explaining the ritual. Krissy is walking the collectors through the process of how she would prepare herself and her room on the chance there would drinking taking place. 

Transcript: This is customary folklore, but verbally explained by informant. The informant describes how she locks the door, shuts the blind, and makes sure not to play loud music.

Informant’s comments: The informant described this ritual as a very common practice, and did not have very negative things to say about S&S, merely that many students obviously seek to escape possibly punishment.

Collector’s comments: This item is something I have observed myself in my time at Dartmouth, many students seem to practice this ritual.

 

Collected by Carter Copeland and Luke Hudspeth

May 23, 2016