Book of Mystery

An intrepid investigator reveals the truth behind the phony names listed in the annual freshman Green Book.

MY FRIEND LAY ACROSS MY BED, reading intently. In his hands was the most important document we had received freshman year: the class of 2000 Green Book, otherwise known as the guide to every girl in our class.

It was November 1996,andwhile we were less than two months into our first year at Dartmouth, my friend's Green Book pages were already dog-eared and covered with checkmarks, crossed-out checkmarks, question marks and other notations. A football playbook would have been easier to decipher.

While my friend's record keeping leaned toward maniacal, it was not altogether unusual. Within weeks of arriving on campus, the 1,100 or so freshmen had all meticulously analyzed each other's Green Book information—name, home address, high school, dorm room and Hinman box number.

The real interest, of course, was in the photo of each student. The practice of sitting around with friends and picking out potential mates was known as "shmenuing," a crude combination of "freshman" and "menu" used by male and female students alike.

My friend sat up suddenly, looking puzzled. "Do you know who this is?" he asked, pointing to a photo of a girl in the middle of the Green Book. "I've never seen her before."

That was the first time I ever laid eyes upon Kristi Lyn Parkhurst '00. Kristi Lyn's listed address was in White River Junction, minutes away on the Vermont side of the Connecticut River. The book said she had graduated from high school in nearby Hartford, Vermont, and her freshman room was listed as 122 Hubbard. Her photo was pleasant enough but blended in easily among the sea of faces.

In reality, there was never a stu- dent named Kristi Lyn Parkhurst at Dartmouth. In fact, there is no record of any such a student graduating from Hartford High School. There is also no building named Hubbard on campus—not now, not in 1996 and not ever, according to the Office of Residential Life. Most disconcerting: Kristi Lyn's last name conveniently matches the name of Dartmouth's main administration building.

Yes, Kristi Lyn was a fake, a plant, and by midway through freshman year it seemed most of our class had caught on. Blame for this bit of trickery was tossed around freely.

"I remember hearing from someone that itwas a ruse by the administration to try and catch freshmen who were partying and mass-blitzing women," said Takeshi Toyohara 'oo, one of my senior year housemates, when I asked him about Kristi Lyn recently. "We all felt emboldened with this knowledge, and felt that just by knowing, we were sticking it to 'The Man'—we were smarter than Dean of the College Lee Pelton!" he added with a laugh.

I doubted that the former dean of the College had much to do with it, though. But who did? And were the motives that sinister? When Kristi Lyn's name floated up in conversation at my fifth-year reunion in 2005 (not surprisingly, she didn't attend), I couldn't take it any longer—I had to find out the real story behind our mystery classmate and the College's deception.

My quest began with trying to establish the length of said conspiracy; other students were aware of the fakes as well, no doubt. I sent out queries to various class listservs and posted inquiries on In Circle, the online alumni networking system, and waited for responses to trickle in.

I also borrowed Green Books from otheryears. Rather than flip through every page, I guessed that fake students such as Kristi Lyn would probably reside in an imaginary dorm—and, thus, be the only student listed next to the dorm name in the Green Books residence hall index.

The class of 2001 listed a Heidi Alice Parkhurst,with the same White River Junction home address. Aha! That would suggest they're sisters—nothing peculiar about that—but Heidi's freshman dorm room was also listed as 122 Hubbard. How many siblings have shared the same freshman dorm room in consecutive years—let alone in a dorm that doesn't exist?

"The 2001 faker is named Heidi Parkhurst," agreed Jane Parkin '01, one of a few dozen alumni to get back to me. "I figured out who she was pretty early in the game, since I'm right next to her in the face book." Aside from "the insanely obvious last name," Parkin added that she thought Heidi's photo had "a vaguely '70s vibe." Cause for suspicion, indeed.

In the 2002 book, Nicholas J.Wood, allegedly the only resident of Pike, appeared. (While there is a Pike House, it was housing only public affairs and DAM in the fall of 1998.) Lo and behold, Nicholas J. Wood also had a White Riyer Junction home address, and supposedly graduated from Hartford High School. He must have been close pals with those Parkhurst girls! The plot was thickening. What about classes before mine?

It took Adam Weinstein '98 only a few minutes of skimming his Green Book to find the assumed imposter from his class: "The name is Peter Daniel Hill II. He's from Enfield, New Hampshire, and went to Phillips Academy. Supposedly lived in 250 Hubbard and had HB No. 6052," e-mailed Weinstein. (Hinman box numbers beyond 6000 are supposedly reserved for faculty and administration use.)

And what about the photo of Peter Daniel Hill 11, which showed a kid who couldn't pass for 15, clearly taken with an older camera? "The rumor was that [former Dean of First-year Students] Peter Goldsmith used his childhood picture for the face of the fake '98," said Morning Washburn '98. (Goldsmith, who moved on to Oberlin in 1999, died from cancer in 2004.)

Nathaniel Rink '99 had a strikingly similar entry in his Green Book. "There was a question about Blanche Theodora Hill '99 from Enfield, New Hampshire, who lived in Hubbard and isn't in the DND [Dartmouth Name Directory]," said Rink. Not surprisingly, the Parkhursts, Hills and Woods all lack alumni e-mail accounts.

Many Dartmouth graduates no longer have their class Green Books, but they remembered talk of this conspiracy quite well. "When I arrived in the fall of 1991 there was a fake student in the freshman book, a.k.a. the 'shmenu," e-mailed Scott Meacham '95 (confirming '00 wasn't the first class to coin that term). " I think his name was that of a dog owned by a dean."

"This was common in the early 1980s, when I was a student," chimed in David Kotz '86.

Yet in some years, no culprit could be found. For the classes of 2003 and 2004, nothing odd jumped off the Green Book pages. The class of 1997 Green Book had only one suspect entry, for a Dorothy Bright, which stuck out because Ms. Bright was the only freshman resident of North.

But Dorothy Bright is very much a real person, with a real explanation. "North at that time was just for upperclassmen," Bright told me via e-mail. "Coming in as a 32-year-old first-year student, the folks in the residential life office decided to put me there."

Despite all the anecdotes and rumors, not a single alumnus seemed to know anything concrete. It soon became clear that one man, and one man only, could dispel the myth and legend of Green Books past: Rick Adams, Dartmouth's director of publications in the office of public affairs.

I expected Adams to dodge my e-mails and voicemails, and imagined driving up to Hanover to confront him in person. I'd slam my fist on the closest table and demand the truth behind the vast College conspiracy, channeling Tom Cruise's lawyer Few Good Men.

Instead, Adams returned my call the next day, happy to chat.

"To tell you the truth, I don't know much about how it began or whose idea it was," said Adams, the Green Book editor since 1997. "When this office took over the Green Book, it's something we did for a couple years and then just stopped.

"It was simply a control mechanism to get a handle on if anyone was using the book for mailing lists. That was our purpose," continued Adams. "I never saw any mail that came to me through those addresses."

Thus, his office ceased the practice. To the best of his memory, Adams believes that Nicholas Wood in the class of 2002 was the last of the fake students (which would explain my difficulty in finding one in the class of 2003 Green Book).

As for when it started, Adams has no idea. His predecessor, long-time College editor Josh Hill '56, died years ago, and Adams said he has no idea when Hill originally started the practice. That also means we'll probably never know if that really was a young Peter Goldsmith in the class of 1998 Green Book.

The anticlimactic feeling set in further when Adams said that undergraduate Blitz Mail accounts had never been set up for the fake students: "The picture and the name were just for the Green Book itself." Truth, 1; Big Brother, o.

The addresses, meanwhile, were homes of current or former College employees or their relatives; Adams even used his own address one year. The photos and names followed similar patterns. "Nick Wood is my nephew," said Adams with a chuckle. "He's a real person, and he's a class of 2002—just not at Dartmouth."

As we wrapped up the call, I couldn't resist mentioning how obvious it had been to use a fake name like "Parkhurst" for two of the years.

Adams laughed. "That's really her name," he replied. "Kristi Lyn is a real person. There really is a Kristi Lyn Parkhurst, but she was not a student here."

In fact, the Parkhurst sisters (Heidi is real, too—and her photo isn't from the 1970s, after all) are nieces of a former College employee. "They are not related to the Parkhursts of Parkhurst Hall," said Adams. "They just happened to be named Parkhurst. It's strictly a coincidence convenient, but a coincidence."

In that case, here's hoping Kristi Lyn makes it to our loth-year reunion.

It soon became clear that one man, and one man only, could dispel the myth and legend of Green Books past.

JULIAN KESNER is a staff writer at the Daily News in New York City.