Hues and Cries

1832

Green is declared Yale's school color.

1866

(SPRING TERM) The Harvard crew sports crimson and the Elis wear blue at a regatta on Lake Quinsigamond, Massachusetts. Dartmouth rowers select a school color for the race: cherry. The crowd mistakes them for Harvardians.

1866

(FALL TERM) Green becomes the official College hue. "It was the only decent color that had not been already taken," explains Frederick Mather '87.

1891

The newly penned alma mater, "Come, Fellows, Let Us Raise a Song," celebrates green and white as the College colors.

1897

Trustee C.F. Mathewson excoriates students for giving white a co-billing next to green. He states that light blue would be preferable to two colors.

1900

The College becomes a monochromatic green.

1926

The Reverend Roy B. Chamberlin devotes much of a Chapel sermon to the color: "God must like green for he has given us so much of it! Is it not the best-loved color in the spectrum? No wonder, therefore, that Dartmouth men love the Dartmouth green."

1935

A Yale man writes the lyrics to the song, "Wearers of the Green."

1950

Highlight of a Boston shoe show: the "Dartmouth Special," a forestgreen shoe.

1978

Students are polled on their mascot preferences. The least popular suggestions include Big Green Bucks, Green Giants, Greenbacks, Green Mountain Men, and the Jolly Green Giant.

1983

The official Dartmouth green in the Pantone matching system used by printers is PMS 349.

1991

In a campaign statement, Trustee candidate and Postmaster General Tony Frank '53 tells alumni, "Re-examination of the College being represented by a large primary color (Big Green) for the next few centuries may be in order."

But for fate, our athletes could have been Wearers of the Blue.