Dartmouth College Top Questions

Greek Life

The social scene is what you make of it. If you want to go to the arts center to watch movies for 5 dollars every other night, you can. If you want to spend a lot of time singing with an a cappella group, you can. If you want to go to frats and drink and play pong every single night, you can (and many people do, at least 2-3 times a week). There are plenty of organized events going on all the time - various speakers come to campus, musical artists come and give concerts (this includes sitar player Ravi Shankar and rappers such as Wale and three six mafia)... you have no excuse to be bored here. Also, since we're in New Hampshire, election season is pretty exciting. Nh gets the first primary, so candidates make their way to campus during campaigns.

The Fraternity scene is huge. The social scene is dominated by it. Student Activities are almost completely overshadowed by the Fraternities, though there is some modest gain in (somewhat related branches) sports, school newspapers, and music groups.

The Dartmouth Outdoor Club is the largest club on campus and organizes trips for incoming freshmen and also has trips throughout the year. We have our own skiway and golf course. We have some of best faciliites in terms of atheletics. As for clubs and organizations there are over 200 of them so everyone can find what they need or make their own. Social life is good as it is a small campus and you get to meet a lot of people. Floormates often turn out to be some of your best friends as most floors have a really open atmosphere.

Dartmouth social life can be summed up in one word: pong. For those of you who think pong is throwing balls into cups filled 1/6 of the way with beer, you are mistaken. For anyone who went to Dartmouth, you know that pong involves ping-pong paddles with the handles cut off which you and your partner use to alternately volley the ball back and forth across the table, attempting to hit or sink the ball into your opponents' cups, forcing them to drink warmish keystone light. Pong really is almost a culture at Dartmouth, as most Greek houses have multiple pong tables in their basements, and any Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, or Saturday night you can almost guarantee that all of them will have lines 3 or 4 deep. Asking a guy or girl to be your pong partner in next weekend's tournament is akin to asking them out on a date, with a possible hookup at the end of the night. As you probably have guessed by now, fraternities and sororities have a large presence on campus. Since the town is so small with few places to go out and the surrounding area doesn't offer much either, much of social life takes place on campus, which often means Greek houses. People who aren't in Greek houses however won't have a problem hanging out at them and being friends with their members. There were plenty of people who weren't in a frat or sorority, but hung out either at a particular house all the time or at various houses. I also believe that fraternities and sororities, especially the local sororities, are much different than frats/sororities elsewhere or your traditional Greek houses. At another school (especially a southern one), I probably wouldn't have pledged a house, but there's none of the "we're so pretty and perfect" that I think of when I think of traditional sorority. All the girls at theta where I pledged were so friendly, welcoming, and accepting. We had everything from lesbian rugby players to bookworms to blonde track stars to stoners. We may not have been the prettiest or "coolest" house, but whatever, we had fun and I think were generally known as friendly and accomodating. My sorority was definitely where I made most of my closest friendships and had the biggest (almost all positive) impact on my college career. There are definitely things to do on weekends if you don't like greek life or drinking, but I'm not the one to ask about that. The college sponsored a lot of non-alcoholic late night events, but any that I attended were mainly drunk frat kids looking to score some free pizza. There are some great restaurants, cute shops, and quaint movie theater in Hanover, but for real social life the majority of my experience is Greek houses, with a some dorm/house parties thrown in. Sports teams form another type of major social group, but since they don't have a house or central place, they tend to either mostly all pledge the same house(s), or hang out as a group separately. The best social events at the college are the big weekends each term: homecoming in the fall, winter carnival in the winter, green key in the spring, and tubestock (now fieldstock) in the summer. These are all 4-day long weekends usually starting Wednesday night, where you drink way more than you ever should, try to make it to some of the non-drinking events (speakers, ski races, dinners), but usually wake up monday morning realizing you've spent most of the weekend drinking in a frat basement, except for when you were drinking at the bonfire on green or at the block party at Phi Delt. But these weekends do instill a good sense of Dartmouth pride and make you resolve to do all those non-drinking events when you come back as alumni.

Even though Hanover is small, there is SO much to do, so long as you like fraternities. If not, then you shoudn't even bother applying to Dartmouth. The frats are the main social scene, with several parties every weekend and even a few during the week. It's a fun place to hang out with friends and meet new people, especially upper classmen. There is also the Hop, where movies are shown as well as plays and other performances. The shows are really different and great to go to. Students should be cultured and experience these things. The dating scene is very strange at Dartmouth. Hook-ups are more common than dating, and with our "d-plan," it's hard to keep a relationship going. And everyone is so involved with so many things that having a boy/girlfriend just becomes an obligation or chore. People date, but not as often as people just looking for some physical pleasure over the weekend.

I feel safer on campus than I do in my hometown of Munster, Indiana, which is a ridiculously sheltered suburb, so that says a lot. I leave my room unlocked at all times, and students come and go as they please whether I'm there or not. I also leave my laptop in the library for hours at a time while I'm going to get dinner or meet up with friends. I walk around campus alone at four in the morning on the way back from Frat Row and feel completely at ease.

Frats (which shouldn't be lumped together because many of them are different and stray away from the common stereotype of a fraternity.) There are so many clubs and groups on campus that it's hard to keep track of them (there are even clubs for "medieval enthusiasts" and "The Dartmouth Union of Bogglers") The school has a lot of wacky and fun traditions that you'll have to hear more about when you get to Dartmouth (the traditions themselves, like the Bonfire for freshmen, Pre-orientation Outing Club trips, Homecoming, etc. aren't secrets, but some of the traditions WITHIN those traditions are!) If you're into sports (especially winter sports) we've got 'em (and our Hockey team is the most popular on campus.) There's always high profile guest speakers on campus, clubs, plays, movie screenings, etc. There's so much going on that you'll need a good calendar to take it all in.

People will play up the frat/sorority thing, but I'm on the ultimate frisbee team and I can't tell you the number of times I haven't had to set foot anywhere near a frat to have THE MOST FUN OF MY LIFE. Frats or no frats, this place is just INCREDIBLE. So many happy, energetic people running around the issue isn't finding stuff to do, ITS DECIDING WHAT TO DO!

Personally, Dartmouth was quite an adjustment. College IS inevitably going to be an adjustment, and I came from a group of naive friends who didn't drink, go out, or party in the least. So transitioning to college, where people party every weekend, took a little bit of time and effort. It took a while for me to realize that drinking and partying are a part of life at virtually every school, not just Dartmouth. But it's something to be considered for incoming students, that the frat scene here is significant. Basically, that means that instead of drinking in their rooms or at houses, kids go out to the frats for dance parties and socializing virtually every weekend. And they are an integral part of the social scene. Along with clubs, outdoors groups, and sports teams, they ARE the social scene, to be honest. But frats are open to everyone, and it's basically a bunch of kids standing around in a room, drinking, dancing, talking, and playing pong (real pong - with paddles). After a while, you learn to enjoy it most of the time, even if you dont drink much, like me.