Tag Archives: Foco

Lobster and Steak Dinner

General Information:
Informant: Sophie Pinnie
Place: Hanover, NH
Date: November 4, 2021
Genre/Form of folklore: Customary/Ritual
Title: “Lobster and Steak Dinner”

Informant Data: Sophie is a 21-year-old Dartmouth student who is a part of the class of 2023. She is from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, but she lives on campus at Dartmouth in Hanover, New Hampshire. She is a student-athlete participating on the soccer team and is majoring in government.

Contextual Data: At the end of orientation week, the Dartmouth Dining Services provides a dinner for the students consisting of steak and lobster. The freshmen come to the ’53 Commons dining hall together to eat the meal. This meal is the nicest meal that they offer during the whole year since it is meant to celebrate the freshmen’s incorporation into Dartmouth College.

Social Data: The lobster and steak dinner is an exciting end to orientation week since it provides an expensive meal to the freshmen class. This dinner allows the freshmen to continue to meet and become acquainted with each other over a nice dinner.

Item: The lobster and steak dinner provided to freshmen at ’53 Commons.  

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

Informant: “The steak and lobster dinner was something that was memorable to me during my freshman fall since it felt like a celebration for me entering the Dartmouth community. It also set my expectations really high for the dining hall, which didn’t end up being as true as I’d hoped.”

Collector Comment: I recall the lobster and steak dinner as being a surprise my freshman fall since I did not expect the dining hall to provide such an expensive meal. I still look forward to the meal since all individuals on campus are able to join in the celebration of welcoming the freshmen class.

Collected by:

Carson Reich 21

Houston, TX

Hanover, NH

Dartmouth College

RUSS 013

Fall 2021

Foco Apple Game

 

1. Title: Foco Apple Game

2. Informant Information:

Parker Johnson was born on October 24, 1996, and he grew up in Houston, Texas. He is currently a freshman at Dartmouth College. He is on the track team and wants to study Economics, and he has participated in this game.

3. Type of Lore (Genre and Sub-Genre): Customary Lore, Game

4. Language: English

5. Country of Origin: Hanover, New Hampshire, United States

6. Social / Cultural Context:

Three important pieces of Dartmouth slang that are necessary for understanding this game are “Foco,” “Droco,” and big weekends. Foco is short for Class of 1953 Commons, which is the main dining hall at Dartmouth. Droco is a combination of the words ‘drunk’ and ‘Foco,’ referring to when people go to dinner at this dining hall after consuming alcohol. Big weekends constitute Homecoming in the fall, Winter Carnival in the Winter, and Green Key in the Spring.

7. Associated file: N/A

8. Transcript: “The game involves throwing an apple from person to person at the dining table, but the catch is that you can only catch the apple with a fork. So, the object is to stab the apple you’re your fork and get the apple to stay on the fork. And you try to keep passing it down the row and across the table, and see how many people can catch the apple with the forks in it. And you leave the fork in the apple once the person catches it. Then you just keep passing it. By the end, you have six or seven forks stuck in the apple until someone misses or the apple breaks.”

9. Informant’s comments:

“It can be a lot of fun, I’ve played it myself.”

10. Collector’s Comments:

“Usually, the game is played on Wednesday, Friday, or Saturday, and especially on big weekends when people tend to go to Foco a little inebriated. The apples at Foco are notoriously bad, so maybe it originated as a type of statement against the quality of apples. Ultimately, nobody really knows how the game was invented, but it caught on.”

11. Tags/Keywords: Game, Apple, Foco, Alcohol, Droco, Customary