Title: Freshman of the Week

Informant Info: Mene Ukueberuwa is an Editor-in-Chief Emeritus of The Dartmouth Review. He is a ’16 (formerly ’14) from Princeton, NJ. He was interviewed on May 12, 2016 at the Collis Center in Hanover, NH.

Type of Lore: Customary, Tradition

Language: English

Country of Origin: United States

Social / Cultural Context:  The freshmen tend to be the new members of the organization. This small tradition serves the purpose of recognizing their efforts and contributions as well as bringing the entire organization closer together on a weekly basis.

Transcript:

So, one of the smaller and probably newer traditions we have is called the Freshman of the Week, and of course that is one of the more frequent ones that plays out on a weekly basis. Basically, when any freshman has either distinguished himself in a good way, by contributing something very positive to the paper, like helping out with layout or has distinguished himself in a negative way, which could take a variety of forms that I won’t go into, we single them out either for corresponding praise or maybe make them do a task or something small to embarrass himself in front of the staff. So basically, it is just a way of highlighting our freshman and you know, kind of putting them under the spotlight a little bit … Nothing shareworthy strikes me at the moment, to be honest. But it’s always good fun. It’s nothing too bad.

Honoring the freshman of the week

Collector’s Comments: Details about the particulars of the tradition were not forthcoming in the interview. As with the other main Review traditions of Changeover and the Gala, outsiders are not privy to the exact details of these regular occurrences. Nevertheless, we were able to confirm the existence of the tradition and its general purpose within the organization.