COLLEGE RELAXES AT GREEN KEY
The even, sure succession of Spring nights in the weeks before Green Key led up to the evenings of quiet relaxation when the lawn in front of Dartmouth Hall filled with students for half an hour to hear the Fraternity Hum Contest and absorb evening sunlight. The days flowed into Green Key week end, a Green Key week end that The Dartmouth appraised as"one of the best explosions in years." Green Key Friday came with alternately gray and sunny skies, with short showers during the day, and partying that started in mid-afternoon to continue for the rest of the week-end. Spring Hum that night, when 39 sophomores were inducted into the new Green Key, was half an hour late. Peter Keir, Palaeopitus president in charge of (he hum, made the unnecessary apology that "Partying and deadlines don't mix."
The seniors sat along their fence to sing "Where, Oh Where" and got lost in. the choruses while the underclassmen laughed. Tradition wasn't taken seriously; Spring Hum was a mass meeting taken as halfserious, half-fun. New Key members walking up to shake hands with Keir and 1942 Green Key President Chet Jones were applauded and cheered with "How to go, how to look in there, how to function old man." The sky was gray when everyone moved from around the senior fence over to the steps of Dartmouth to hear the finals in the Fraternity Hum. After the last house had finished singing and the College Glee Club began, the crowd moved off in small groups.
There were more belly-laughs and more free relaxation this Green Key week end than at any houseparty within the memory of such old-timers as Whitey Fuller. The classic lines and jokes of exalted insanity were so many that they could fill a volume. Students at fraternity houses sang together with their dates, or watched imitations and skits by their friends. "Make like a subway, Chick, make like a subway," someone yelled across a crowded room Friday night, and Chick, smiling broadly, raised his arm as though hanging on a strap, made subway noises, and lurched as the conjured-up train went from Columbus Circle to Penn Station. "So he told me he was just human," a girl in a powder room told a friend, who snapped back "I hope you told him off, the bum." "I sure did; he couldn't get away with that."
Parties rolled on through Friday night. Couples dwindled back to fraternity dances, limp from having laughed for two and a half hours at the Players' Show, TheMale Animal. Bob Brown '43 carried off the lead in the Thurber-Nugent uproar with devastatingly effective comedy. The play's unfettered happiness fitted the quality of the week end. Both Friday and Saturday nights the house was sold out for laughs; yet the serious undertone of TheMale Animal—the quiet, unexpressed binder-up of insane comedy, the unconscious control—seemed to find its way into the spirit of 1941 Green Key. Never was the control thought of or mentioned, but when the week end is thought back on, it's known that the abandonment of stuffiness and exaltation of good spirits never went to whole way to chaotic hysteria.
There was quiet control—unconscious individual control—in the way students did their drinking. If houseparties at Dartmouth in the past have had the reputation of heavy drinking, it can only be said that at this Green Key there was probably more drinking and less drunkenness than ever before. The contradiction can only be resolved in the realization that conduct was made a matter of personal regulation. The joy of the week end was spread over the whole College; the responsibility for the week end spread itself naturally and without regulation to every individual student. The idyllic condition of gentlemanly yet relaxed and joyous expansiveness was most closely approximated at Green Key. Kr0 one thought about it, no one said anything about it. Everyone had a glorious time and that's all there is to tell.
Green Key week end stood for a lot of what Dartmouth this Spring has wanted to express. It was the statement of good spirits and friendliness and hilarity that ihe campus has been trying for all year The Cornell week end was one statement of the campus' faith in its own self, the war debate was another expression, and Green Key week end stated it in its ultimate terms of explosive abandon, this past week end we've seen a lot of people having a good time, together, unafraid of being 'wet' or out of step. And we're sure that that's as right as rain and green grass, and as fresh," The Dartmouth said, which is one way of summing it up.
No grand summary of Green Key week end and the Spring of 1941 in Hanover will be written for years to come. The College has lived this Spring on the edge of a fog bank of uncertainty, trying to find its own reasons for being together. In Green Key week end, most of all, it found its own reason for being together. How much the fog bank conditioned the abandon of the week end is hopeless speculation; it's only certain that the students functioned as a whole, without making any conscious excuses in terms of "the banc! playing on the sinking ship." The glorious fun of the week end was its own excuse for being—if it crossed the mind of more than one student that there might not be another joyous Green Key week end next year, the thought wasn't needed to provide an excuse for the happiness of the 1941 Green Key. The afterglow has lived on to remind Dartmouth College that for one brief time at least it felt as a whole the joy of being free together.
