Tag Archives: sign

Spring Break Signs

Title: Spring Break Signs

Informant Info: Tessa DeJong is a 19 year-old freshman at Dartmouth College. She has been climbing for 2 years and was born and raised in Las Vegas, NV. Her brother taught her how to rock climb. Tessa’s climbing phobia is the rope breaking as she climbs. She loves the rush of adrenaline that she gets when climbing.

Date Collected: 5/13/16

Place Collected: Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH

Type of Lore: Material

Language: English

Country of Origin: United States

Social/Cultural Context: The DMC hosts trips for its members over every spring break. Like many other DOC clubs, it is tradition to steal a sign at the end of the trip and have all members sign it. Usually, DMCers will take a trip to Joshua Tree or Red Rocks National Parks. The trip lasts for about a week. In the past, DMCers would drive to their destination. Today, DMCers usually fly as a group.

Associated File:

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Lore: Each year during the annual spring break trip taken by members of the Dartmouth Mountaineering Club, students steal signs from roads and national parks. These signs are then brought back to Dartmouth and signed by members of the trip.

Informant’s Comments: Stealing and signing signs is a way to commemorate your trip with you friends. The members sign with their nicknames which are usually earned during the trip. Every trip brings back their sign and hangs it in a special room in the climbing gym. The signs are a cool way to cement your trip’s legacy.

Collector’s Comments: The stealing of spring break signs is another example of a ritual marking the end of something, this time the end of a trip. It is also a way for the trip members to commemorate their time together. In addition, by means of this tradition, trip members create their own legacy — future DMCers will see signs from previous years and remember or imagine the people whose names are written on the signs. The act of stealing and personalizing each sign is a way for trips to celebrate their time together engage in a final, team-building exercise.

Tags/Keywords: spring break, material, sign, names, legacy