Comeback Story
Alumni first returned to campus for official reunions in 1855, the year the alumni association was founded. Little is known about prior on-campus classmate get-togethers. This year about 4,000 alumni will return for the June reunion season. Here’s a brief look at the season of happy returns both past and present.
MONEY TALKS
The 1855 on-campus alumni dinner had “a list of speakers of appalling length,” according to one history book. Twentyfour newly minted graduates spoke on themes such as “Self-made Men” and “The Dominion of Plato.” President Nathan Lord had created the alumni association that year for the “more effectual raising of money,” he said.
WE WANT MORE!
Initially reunions for all classes were held only every three years. In 1883 they became annual.
1869
OPPORTUNITY KNOCKS
For the College's centennial year in 1869, administrators promised to “prevent, as far as possible, extortionate charges” by locals renting rooms. Later, The Dartmouth reported townsfolk gouged visitors so badly “they lost the only opportunity this generation will ever see” to “gain a reputation for hospitality.”
“WILD AND LUDICROUS”
The worst hailstorm “in living memory,” reported The Dartmouth, forced an end to alumni speechmaking in 1869 despite being held under a huge tent that measured 360 by 40 feet and seated 3,000. “Dignified Judges and Doctors of Divinity were hiding under the benches, tables, and the platform....
It was wild and ludicrous beyond conception,” according to The D.
BEFORE SELFIES
Be “prepared to make an exchange of photographs” with classmates, College organizers wrote alums in 1869. Each class was also asked to leave a photo album of its members at the library.
NO “TRAP”
In 1883 alumni president John Wentworth, class of 1836, told alums as far back as the class of 1809 that “there is no financial scheme connected with this gathering.
Neither the trustees nor the faculty are soliciting contributions.” The Dartmouth chimed in, saying, “This is no trap...but a most commendable plan to bring back the sons of Old Dartmouth to the scenes of their early pleasures and trials.”
FOWL FOOD
The 1883 event was a “grand love feast,” according to a newspaper account, with 237 men from 57 classes returning. One traveled 1,500 miles. But they all dined on “leather chicken and cotton-batting biscuitfs].” The food was better than in previous years, the reporter noted.
CULTURE CLASH
A century ago classes vied to outdo each other by dressing in zany getups. In 1910 the class of 1900 made “a splendid showing in their Dutch uniforms...1907 with the policemen’s uniforms [came in] a close second, however, while 1905 in linen dusters and sombreros [were] also a source of amusement,” reported The D.
MAKING TRACKS
Chicago alum George Liscomb, class of 1907, invited men in 1911 to return to Hanover via train from the Windy City in a “special car party” with the “best connections, lowest rates...and personal supervision for Dartmouth men.”
HOAXERS
A “long unheard from” grad conspired with another alum at an early 1900s reunion and passed himself off as John Barrett, the former U.S. minister to Siam and Argentina, according to the Monitor & Patriot newspaper of Concord, New Hampshire. “Not until the tale of the distinguished traveler reached the ears of the college authorities and they sought him out to do him due honor did the jokers desist,” the report said. The real Barrett attended Tulane.
1938
1947
AT WAR
WWII put the kibosh on reunions from 1943 to 1945. Their absence left “something like an aching void in the history of the College....Not being able to have a chance to slap a Chief Justice on the back or address a Governor as ‘Hi, there, Fat,’ will be to lose something out of life,” reported one newspaper.
In 1993, 500 members of the V-12 Navy College Training program returned for a reunion ceremony that honored their service.
AT EASE
When festivities resumed in 1946, they took place during six weekends to accommodate 7,000 participants.
1949
GONNA FLY NOW
To inspire classmates to return in 2015 for its 25th, the class of 1990 posted a YouTube video in which Michael Keller ’90 trains like Rocky Balboa for the challenge of meeting old classmates.
DIGGING UP MEMORIES
In 2017, College workers used a metal detector to hunt for a time capsule the class of 1992 thought it buried its senior year. This goose chase ended when alums learned the capsule had been stored in Rauner. It held cassette tapes, photos, T-shirts, and a Frisbee.
SWAG!
Last year the College held 390 receptions, lectures, tours, talks, and meals; employed 128 students; pitched 29 tents; served 10,242 dinners; bought 879 bags of ice; and handed out 4,000 glow sticks, 500 beach balls, 3,500 pairs of green-and-white sunglasses, and 2,500 ice cream novelties.
BLAST OF GREEN
Don’t call them fireworks, says Matt Shea, a VP at Atlas PyroVision. They’re pyrotechnics. For the past 10 years his computer wizardry has created the two-minute aerial shows viewed from the Green.
