Snowpocalypse

Could one of the College’s grand traditions be coming to an end? For the first time since 1943, there was no giant snow sculpture on the Green for February’s Winter Carnival. Blame it on the weather. Blame it on student apathy. Blame it on growing interest in sculptures of ice rather than snow. Whatever the cause, many alumni could not comprehend why the Carnival monument never rose this year.>

Despite campus-wide email solicitations from the organizing committee before and after winter break, no one stepped up to chair the sculpting effort. Not that there was much snow to begin with: In the weeks leading up to Carnival, temperatures rose as high as 53 degrees, a far cry from the frigid days of 1955, when a towering sculpture dubbed “Nanook”—the Inuk man riding a whale—had to be dynamited two months after Carnival because it did not melt on its own.

Many years, including 2015, snow had to be trucked in from various locations. Without a chair or student volunteers—or the prospect of consistently cold weather—the Winter Carnival committee did not opt to do that this year.

As long ago as 1997 The Dartmouth reported on declining student interest. Recent sculpting leaders note without complaint that it’s a demanding job. “Most days we would be out there from 2 or 3 p.m. through dinnertime, plus maybe two hours a few nights a week to hose it down,” says three-time chair and chief architect Benjamin Meigs ’10. “Weekends we were out from late morning until dark. I think I took only two engineering classes those winters. We used to say the third class was the sculpture.”

Although several alumni have volunteered to take charge of snow sculpting in the future, Anna Hall, head of student activities, doesn’t think that’s a good idea. “Winter Carnival is a student-run event, and the College would not want that to change,” she says.

This year’s Carnival did feature an ice sculpture contest, which was introduced in 2014 in the spirit of frat and dorm small-snow-sculpture contests that flourished between the 1920s and 1970s. About 120 students competed on 18 teams for gift-card prizes donated by the class of 1977. Winners ranged from a Star Wars-themed “Hanlon Solo” to “Max from the Grinch.” As for next year’s snow sculpture, Meigs expresses what many alumni feel: “I can only hope that next year the tradition will be revived.”