Tag Archives: Homecoming Bonfire

Running Around the Bonfire (Homecoming Weekend)

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General Information:
Title: Running Around the Bonfire
Form of Folklore: Customary, bonfire festival
Language: English
Place of Origin: Hanover, NH, United States
Informant: H.A.
Date Collected: November 1st, 2021

Informant Data: 
H.A. is a 21-year-old member of the Dartmouth class of 2022. He studies neuroscience and wants to be on the cutting edge of mental health research, eventually pursuing a PhD. He was born in San Francisco, but moved to Washington DC in 2004. At Dartmouth, H.A. is the co-founder of the recently approved Dartmouth Undergraduate Psychedelic Society, and otherwise pursues neuroscience research with mice. In his free-time, H.A. enjoys reading scientific articles, listening to scientific podcasts, cooking, and spending time with friends. 

Contextual Data: 
– Social Context: Every term Dartmouth has a ‘big weekend’ of celebrations, and in the fall this is ‘Homecoming Weekend’. While many instantiations of traditions are aimed at the freshmen during this weekend, the whole weekend stands as a yearly tradition for all students and a lot of alumni who will come back and visit for the weekend. The weekend features Dartmouth’s football team playing the ‘homecoming game’, and the school organizes parades, speeches, and a large bonfire that all alumni and students gather around. The bonfire itself is used as part of a freshman-specific tradition every year, where the freshmen class walks a lap around the fire in front of the audience. It is the first ‘big weekend’ that freshmen get to experience, and because they typically hear a lot about it from upperclassmen they often look very forward to it.
– Cultural Context: The bonfire, specifically, features a freshman specific tradition where the whole class walks a lap around the bonfire. Typically, they are heckled by upperclassmen who are watching the bonfire lap, and these upperclassmen were again heckled by their seniors when they were freshmen. Notably, Henry is a member of the class of 2022, the first class to participate in this tradition after Dartmouth updated the safety restrictions surrounding the event. The class of 2022 was the first class who was prohibited from running their lap around the fire and were instructed to only walk one lap. Past classes were both allowed to run around the fire, and they ran the same number of laps as their class year. The bonfire lap is a once-in-a-Dartmouth-career experience, and because all students have participated once it stands as a well cemented and anticipated tradition every year. 

Item: 
The homecoming bonfire is organized by the College, and it is built in the middle of the Dartmouth Green. The wooden panels are decorated by various student organizations, who send their freshmen members to paint a panel. The top of the wooden structure is decorated by wooden numerals of the graduating year of the freshmen. Surrounding the bonfire is a large audience of current students and alumni. While the fire burns on the Friday of homecoming, the freshman walk a lap around the fire and are heckled by upperclassmen. Various traditional heckles are yelled, like “you are the worst class ever” and “touch the fire”. The latter emerged a few years ago, when the school took strict action to ensure that students didn’t run close to the fire. 

Associated File:

Image courtesy of Dartmouth, the Dartmouth Review

Transcript: 
Collector: “What is your attitude towards Homecoming Weekend and the Bonfire tradition?” 

Informant: “I really enjoyed the bonfire tradition and generally thought it was a lot of fun. But I had heard a lot about the bonfire tradition from upperclassmen and I learned that we [the class of 2022] were the first class who only were allowed to walk one lap around the bonfire, instead of the traditional running the number of laps of your class year which all the students before us had done. I learned the school implemented this measure for safety reasons, but it sucked having to be the first class to experience it. It felt like a rupture in the lineage of Dartmouth student experiences that is passed down from one class to the next. To be on the other edge of that tradition break was an odd position and I was left always wondering what it would be like to run 22 laps and what I missed out on. I felt that I was getting a different experience than all the students who preceded me and had gotten the Dartmouth experience.”

Collector Comment:
As a fellow class of 2022, I felt very similarly about being the first class ever to only walk one lap around the bonfire. I remember a lot of upperclassmen commenting on how we were ‘missing out’ and ‘not getting the real experience’, and it made me feel slightly isolated from the Dartmouth experience, especially as this was my first term at Dartmouth.

Collected By:
Una Westvold
Oslo, Norway
Hanover, NH
Dartmouth College
RUSS 013
Fall 2021

Bonfire (Homecoming Weekend)

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General Information:
Title: Homecoming Bonfire
Form of Folklore: Customary, bonfire festival
Language: English
Place of Origin: Hanover, NH, United States
Informant: M.S.
Date Collected: October 30th, 2021

Informant Data: 
M.S. is a 19-year-old member of the Dartmouth class of 2025, the most recent class at Dartmouth. She is currently undecided on her major but wants to potentially study economics. She is from New York City and very excited to have moved to the more slow environment of New Hampshire. She enjoys to ski and is part of the apprenti class that is trying out for the Dartmouth Ski Patrol.

Contextual Data: 
– Social Context: Every term Dartmouth has a ‘big weekend’ of celebrations, and in the fall this is ‘Homecoming Weekend’. While many instantiations of traditions are aimed at the freshmen during this weekend, the whole weekend stands as a yearly tradition for all students and a lot of alumni who will come back and visit for the weekend. The weekend features Dartmouth’s football team playing the ‘homecoming game’, and the school organizes parades, speeches, and a large bonfire that all alumni and students gather around. The bonfire is used as part of a freshman-specific tradition every year. It is the first ‘big weekend’ that freshmen get to experience, and because they typically hear a lot about it from upperclassmen they often look very forward to it.
– Cultural Context: The bonfire, specifically, features a freshman specific tradition where the whole class walks a lap around the bonfire. Typically, they are heckled by upperclassmen who are watching the bonfire lap, and these upperclassmen were again heckled by their seniors when they were freshmen. The bonfire lap is a once-in-a-Dartmouth-career experience, and because all students have participated once it stands as a well cemented and anticipated tradition every year. 

Item: 
The homecoming bonfire is organized by the College, and it is built in the middle of the Dartmouth Green. The wooden panels are decorated by various student organizations, who send their freshmen members to paint a panel. The top of the wooden structure is decorated by wooden numerals of the graduating year of the freshmen. Surrounding the bonfire is a large audience of current students and alumni. While the fire burns on the Friday of homecoming, the freshman walk a lap around the fire and are heckled by upperclassmen. Various traditional heckles are yelled, like “you are the worst class ever” and “touch the fire”. The latter emerged a few years ago, when the school took strict action to ensure that students didn’t run close to the fire. 

Associated File:

Image courtesy of Dartmouth, the Dartmouth Review

Transcript: 
Collector: “Why did you take part in traditions such as the Homecoming Bonfire?” 

Informant: “I think it just makes me feel more part of the community. Also it’s very fun. Like the bonfire, a lot of my friends were joking that it’s like an initiation into the Dartmouth cult. And it kind of felt like that, it was fun. It’s like, I did it now. I’m part of that community that walks around the bonfire. Also, growing up in the city I didn’t have a football team or any homecoming big experience like a lot of my friends here did. I was just super excited to go to a football game for a school, my school, and it was just a cool way to show school pride. And the bonfire added to that, making the whole homecoming weekend into a big and special event.”

Collector Comment:
Reflecting on my own homecoming bonfire experience, I felt very similar to M.S. I felt that I had participated in an event that all students before me had as well, welcoming me into the community. Like M.S., I had never attended a school with a football team or any homecoming traditions, and the bonfire made the whole weekend feel even more special and community-oriented, beyond just school spirit for the football team. 

Collected By:
Una Westvold
Oslo, Norway
Hanover, NH
Dartmouth College
RUSS 013
Fall 2021

Homecoming Bonfire

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General Information:
Informant: SH
Place: Hanover, NH
Date: October 9, 2021
Genre/Form of folklore: Customary/Ritual
Title: “Bonfire”

Informant Data: SH is an 18-year-old Dartmouth student who is a part of the class of 2025. He is from Washington State, but he lives on campus at Dartmouth in Hanover, NH for most of the year. He is a student-athlete participating on the football team and has an interest in studying economics.

Contextual Data: Every term at Dartmouth has one big weekend of celebration, and in the fall this is “Homecoming” weekend for the incoming freshman and alumni. There are parades, speeches, and a large bonfire that the freshman class walks around. While the freshmen walk around the fire, the upperclassmen yell at them and tell them to “touch the fire”. This is one of the most well-known traditions at Dartmouth that all students and alumni look forward to.

Social Data: The bonfire is a massive fire set on the green and designed to be run (or walked) around by the freshman class. Since it is during homecoming weekend, most of the campus plus many alumni surround the fire while the freshmen go around. The fire has the numbers of the graduating year of the freshmen class (24 and 25 this year because of COVID).

Item: The massive fire annually set on Dartmouth’s campus on The Green. 

Transcript: 
Collector: “What is your attitude towards Homecoming Weekend and the Bonfire tradition?”

Informant: “Homecoming was pretty cool. The fire was massive and I enjoyed feeling the heat from across the green. I did not expect it to be as large as it was. I appreciated that our class was able to make a lot of fun memories together.”

Collector Comment:
Homecoming weekend in general is a great tradition at Dartmouth. It is super cool to see all of the alumni come back and celebrate at the football game, bonfire, around campus, in their former frats/sororities, etc. Dartmouth alumni seem especially drawn to the campus after they graduate, and it is clear that homecoming weekend is a wonderful example of this.


Collected by:

Ross Parrish 20

Cincinnati, OH

Hanover, NH

Dartmouth College

RUSS 013

Fall 2021

Initiation into Dartmouth Social Spaces – Homecoming Bonfire (Original)

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General Information about Item:

  • Initiation Ritual
  • Dartmouth College
  • Informant: Matthew Hayes
  • Date Collected: Fall 2015

Informant Data:                 

  • Matthew Hayes was born in Ealing, England in 1997. He lived there with his mother, father, sister, and brother until the year 2007 when they moved to Darien, CT in the United States. Matthew went to Darien public school until he started college at Dartmouth College in Hanover, NH in the fall of 2015. Matthew is currently a senior at Dartmouth College majoring in mathematics and economics. As a freshman in 2015, Matthew Hayes participated in many of these first-year traditions, one of which was running around the bonfire during homecoming weekend.

Contextual Data:

  • Cultural Context: Dartmouth College was founded in Hanover, NH on December 13, 1769, as an all-male private college. In the fall of 1972, 1000 women were enrolled into Dartmouth’s freshman class, making it the last Ivy League college to begin admitting women. As the ninth-oldest institution for higher education in the United States, Dartmouth College has many student traditions that have developed throughout the years. Many of these traditions revolve around integrating the freshman class into the Dartmouth community.
  • Social Context: Homecoming weekend is an event that happens every fall on campus when alumni of all ages are invited back to Dartmouth in order to commemorate the college and their class. The bonfire is a major event that all alumni and current Dartmouth students are encouraged to attend for the homecoming celebration.

 

Item:

  • Freshmen running laps around the homecoming bonfire is a very old tradition at Dartmouth. The homecoming bonfire is built to be approximately 2-stories tall with the numbers of the freshmen class’s graduation year at the top. On the Friday night of homecoming, the freshman class gathers as a huge group and marches around campus. When the bonfire is lit, the freshman class goes to the green where the bonfire is set up and begins to run around it. Upperclassmen and alumni stand on the outskirts of the bonfire and cheer for the freshmen as they complete their laps. Typically, the freshmen wear t-shirts with their graduation year on it to show support and pride for their class. The ritual serves as an initiation into the Dartmouth community for the freshmen running the laps. It is tradition to run around the bonfire as many times as the year one is graduating for good luck. However, as a new member of the Cords A Capella group, Matthew was encouraged to run around the bonfire 119 times—his class year plus one hundred. He completed his 119 laps with his classmates—most of which did not do 119—and symbolically became an integrated member of the Dartmouth community.

Analysis: 

  • Initiation rituals consist of three stages: separation, transition, and incorporation. During this initiation ritual, separation occurs when the freshman class isolates itself from the rest of the student body and comes together as a group to march around campus. The transition period occurs as the freshmen are running around the bonfire. Finally, the freshmen are incorporated back into the student body when the bonfire ends and the class disperses.

Meaning and interpretation: 

  • Running around the bonfire has been an initiation ritual at Dartmouth for over a century, and is, therefore, an important rite of passage that every Dartmouth student experiences. It is a chance for the freshman class to get attention and support from upperclassmen and alumni and to truly feel as though they are a part of the Dartmouth community. It is also a chance for the freshmen to come together as a group and to feel like a cohesive class.

Comparison:

  • Comparison within the subgroup:  In this subgroup, we focused on Dartmouth College social initiation rituals. One similarity between most of these rituals is that they are experienced by freshmen. A student’s freshman year is a time learn about his or her new community and the traditions that form its unique culture. Freshman year is also the time that most students join the clubs or sports teams that they will be most involved in throughout their Dartmouth careers. Therefore, it makes sense that so many of the Dartmouth social initiation rituals take place during the freshman year, such as the homecoming bonfire ritual. One difference within our subgroup is who initiates and runs each initiation ritual. Sometimes these rituals are set up and funded by the Dartmouth administration, and sometimes they are student-run. Another difference is the duration of each ritual. Some social spaces take a while to initiate into or involve a few different rituals that initiate new members, whereas others only require one short ritual.
  • Comparison with the rest of the subgroups: The subgroups differ dramatically across the board. Some of the subgroups focus on various ethnic groups while others focus on groups within Dartmouth. The initiation rituals of the groups within Dartmouth usually have the purpose of welcoming new members into their community and are symbolic. Ethnic-based group rituals have the purpose of testing the new members. Additionally, ethnic groups’ initiation rituals tend to be related to religious practices. Initiation rituals of Dartmouth groups are not religious in character. What all groups have in common though is the fact that the process of initiation creates closeness with the rest of the group and makes one feel completely immersed into the group.

Transcript: “Looking back on it (the bonfire), you are really able to see the significance it has. And even if you don’t realize it at the time, as you get older and look at the freshmen who are running it, you can definitely see that it is an important and cool part of homecoming”

Collector: Caroline Elliott, Dartmouth College, Russian 13, Professor Valentina Apresyan, Professor Mikhail Gronas, Fall 2018

Tags/Keywords:

  • Initiation
  • Ritual
  • Homecoming Bonfire
  • Freshman class
  • Dartmouth

Initiation into Dartmouth Social Spaces – Homecoming Bonfire (Post 2017)

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General Information about Item:

  • Initiation Ritual
  • Dartmouth College
  • Informant: Wilson Hafner
  • Date Collected: Fall 2018

Informant Data:

  • Wilson Hafner was born on June 15, 2000. She grew up in Westport, CT with her mother, father, and four sisters. Wilson went to high school at The Taft School and started college at Dartmouth College in Hanover, NH in the fall of 2018. Wilson is currently a freshman at Dartmouth and wants to study government and psychology. In the fall of 2018, Wilson participated in the homecoming tradition of the homecoming bonfire.

Contextual Data:

  • Cultural Context: Dartmouth College was founded in Hanover, NH on December 13, 1769, as an all-male private college. In the fall of 1972, 1000 women were enrolled into Dartmouth’s freshman class, making it the last Ivy League college to begin admitting women. As the ninth-oldest institution for higher education in the United States, Dartmouth College has many student traditions that have developed throughout the years. Many of these traditions revolve around integrating the freshman class into the Dartmouth community, such as the homecoming bonfire.
  • Social Context: Homecoming weekend is an event that happens every fall on campus when alumni of all ages are invited back to Dartmouth in order to commemorate the college and their class. The bonfire is a major event that all alumni and current Dartmouth students are encouraged to attend for the homecoming celebration.

 

Item:

  • Traditionally, the homecoming bonfire is built to be approximately 2-stories tall with the numbers of the freshmen class’s graduation year at the top. On the Friday night of homecoming, the freshman class gathers as a huge group and marches around campus. When the bonfire is lit, the freshman class goes to the green where the bonfire is set up and begins to run around it. Upperclassmen and alumni stand on the outskirts of the bonfire and cheer for the freshmen as they run their laps. Freshmen wear t-shirts with their graduation year on it to show support and pride for their class. It is also a tradition to run around the bonfire as many times as the year one is graduating. However, in 2018, the tradition changed because the college administration got increasingly worried about freshmen students attempting to touch the bonfire. In the past, some students thought it was “funny” or “exciting” to break from the pack of freshman running laps and try to touch the fire. To prevent this hazard, the administration changed the bonfire tradition so that the bonfire was slightly smaller, there was tall fencing around the bonfire, the freshmen were forced to walk instead of run around the fire, and they could only do one lap. Wilson and her class obeyed these new rules and walked one lap around the bonfire in the fall of 2018.

 

Analysis: 

  • Initiation rituals consist of three stages: separation, transition, and incorporation. In accordance with the old tradition, the separation stage of this initiation ritual still occurs when the freshman class isolates itself from the rest of the student body and comes together as a group to march around campus. The transition stage occurs when the freshmen walk one lap around the bonfire—signifying their integration into the Dartmouth community. Finally, the freshmen are incorporated back into the student body after they finish their one lap, and the freshman class disperses.

Meaning and interpretation: 

  • Running around the bonfire has been an initiation ritual at Dartmouth for over a century. Although some of the recent changes in the ritual—such as being forced to walk—might make the ritual less exciting, it is still an important rite of passage that every Dartmouth student experiences. It is a chance for the freshman class to get attention and support from upperclassmen and alumni and to truly feel as though they are a part of the Dartmouth community. It is also a chance for the class to come together as a group and to feel cohesive.

Comparison:

  • Comparison within the subgroup: In this subgroup, we focused on Dartmouth College social initiation rituals. One similarity between most of these rituals is that they are experienced by freshmen. A student’s freshman year is a time learn about his or her new community and the traditions that form its unique culture. Freshman year is also the time that most students join the clubs or sports teams that they will be most involved in throughout their Dartmouth careers. Therefore, it makes sense that so many of the Dartmouth social initiation rituals take place during the freshman year, such as the homecoming bonfire ritual. One difference within our subgroup is who initiates and runs each initiation ritual. Sometimes these rituals are set up and funded by the Dartmouth administration, and sometimes they are student-run. Another difference is the duration of each ritual. Some social spaces take a while to initiate into or involve a few different rituals that initiate new members, whereas others only require one short ritual.
  • Comparison with the rest of the subgroups: The subgroups differ dramatically across the board. Some of the subgroups focus on various ethnic groups while others focus on groups within Dartmouth. The initiation rituals of the groups within Dartmouth usually have the purpose of welcoming new members into their community and are symbolic. Ethnic-based group rituals have the purpose of testing the new members. Additionally, ethnic groups’ initiation rituals tend to be related to religious practices. Initiation rituals of Dartmouth groups are not religious in character. What all groups have in common though is the fact that the process of initiation creates closeness with the rest of the group and makes one feel completely immersed into the group.

Transcript: Wilson Hafner on the changes in the ritual: “We were hearing so many different things about the controversy surrounding (the bonfire). I think once it becomes more normal after a few years go by, it won’t be as weird. I do still think it is a very important event”

Collector: Caroline Elliott, Dartmouth College, Russian 13, Professor Valentina Apresyan, Professor Mikhail Gronas, Fall 2018

Tags/Keywords:

  • Initiation
  • Ritual
  • Homecoming Bonfire
  • Freshman class
  • Dartmouth