1921

Does any Dartmouth student nowadays have any idea of the hazing that once went on, projected onto the freshmen by the sophomores who had just finished their rite of passage, and all supported by tradition considered most vital to the honor of the College? First, of course, were the beanies which all freshmen had to wear the whole of freshman year. (It may be noted in passing that the beanie did have social value in making it possible for one freshman to identify another as his classmate, but this was not acknowledged by them.) Other tests were set up in which the whole class of freshmen was expected to compete with the whole class of sophomores, and the latter usually won.

The Football Scramble was certainly die most rigorous test. Ort Hicks thinks that the Football Scramble of the fall of 1917 took place on the first Saturday afternoon after the College had opened, after dinner, in the fall afternoon light. The freshmen lined up in front of Dartmouth Hall. The sophomores stood before the senior fences. A trumpet sounded and the football captain, standing in the center of the Green, kicked a football as high as he could into the air.

Freshmen and sophomores were then free to go for the ball with the aim of keeping it and presenting it to the president of Palaeopitus, waiting in front of Webster. With a small amount of imagination one can visualize the sea of healthy young men swarming after one football with no rules of order. The sophomores were usually favored to win.

As the story goes, in 1917 a freshman grabbed the ball and it deflated. How? Did he fall on it, and did the horde fall on him at the same time so that the combined weight squashed the ball? Or did he carry a secret knife and jab the ball as he fell on it? Anyway, he got the collapsed ball under his shirt, got out of the fray, no one suspecting him, made his way to Webster Hall and the president of Palaeopitus, and 1921 bad mm!

Kendal Apt. 248, 80 Lyme Road, Hanover, NH 03755