The Bonfire

Homecoming Weekend is the big "party" weekend of the fall quarter at Dartmouth and is probably my favorite big weekend of all four (the other three being Winter Carnival, Green Key Weekend (during the spring), and Fieldstock (during the summer)). My favorite part of the festivities is the bonfire, which, traditionally, is the focus of the weekend. Freshman spend the week preceding the event building a huge bonfire with their class number at the top and then on the night of the bonfire (the Friday of Homecoming) all of the freshman are rounded up in a parade around campus to the freshman dorms that ends at the bonfire. Freshman are then challenged to run around the bonfire, now ablaze, 100 times plus their year (this year the freshman, members of the class of 2013, are supposed to run around the bonfire 113 times). The rest of the student body, Dartmouth staff, and Hanover residents come and support and cheer for the freshman as they attempt to complete this task. It is one of the few times that the entire Dartmouth community is together during the year.

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Picture courtesy of Vox at Dartmouth: http://www.dartmouth.edu/~vox/0405/1025/homecoming.html