Gamma Delta Chi
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Gamma Delta Chi is a local fraternity at Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire. GDX is one of fifteen currently recognized all-male Dartmouth fraternities [1].
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[edit] Nicknames
Gamma Delta Chi is known informally on campus as Gamma Delt or “GDX”, less frequently as “Gamma Delta" but never as "GDC." Among brothers, the physical house was traditionally known as “the Fair Delta,” although that name is never used in reference to the fraternity or the brotherhood as an organization.
During the mid-eighties and early-nineties, the brotherhood were pejoratively known as “the Deli," reportedly because brothers’ faces and personalities resembled lunch meat. Other nicknames that have been used on campus include “30 North Main” or “the Mothership Connection.”
Like many other Dartmouth undergraduate organizations, brothers colloquially refer to the fraternity as “the House.” In this context, “the House” refers to both the physical building (where most brothers live for at least one term or longer during their undergraduate experience) as well as the brotherhood itself. Referring to GDX as “the House” also serves to link the organization to the broader network of other Greek letter organizations, undergraduate houses, affinity houses, and (not-officially-recognized) off campus houses that form the basis of Dartmouth’s social scene.[2]
[edit] History
The first fraternities at Dartmouth College evolved from student literary societies in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Among these early Greek letter societies was Gamma Delta Epsilon, founded in 1907. GDE disbanded due to lack of interest in 1912 but was resurrected in 1921 [3]. By 1928 the local society had become affiliated affiliation with a national organization and reconstituted yet again as the Kappa Chapter of Phi Kappa Sigma.
Meanwhile, the Dartmouth Phi Nu Chapter of Alpha Chi Rho, originally founded as a local in 1915 under the name Epsilon Kappa Alpha, had become a national fraternity in 1918. Faced with an inadequate house on College Street, Alpha Chi Rho received an attractive offer for the purchase of entire property from the Church of Christ, whose own building had recently been destroyed by fire. The fraternity agreed to sell its property to the Church if another suitable lot could be found upon which it could build a new fraternity house. After a one year search, the fraternity sold its property to the church, rented a temporary house, banked its money, and continued the search for a building lot.
As the Alpha Chi Rho men were canvassing the lot situation, it became known to them that the Dartmouth Chapter of Phi Kappa Sigma was faced with a somewhat similar problem. The latter owned a valuable lot with an old and inadequate house on North Main Street, the location of the present house. The Alpha Chi Rho group broached the subject of a sale of the rear portion of the Phi Kappa Sigma lot. What started as a negotiation for the sale of property quickly turned into a plan to pool resources and membership through a formal merger. The plan was carried through in the spring of 1935. Accordingly, the Kappa Chapter of Phi Kappa Sigma and the Phi Nu Chapter of Alpha Chi Rho merged to become Gamma Delta Chi, the society which remains today.
The house’s evolution, however, was not yet complete. During this same period, the alumni members of the Dartmouth Chapter of Lambda Chi Alpha, a fraternity whose undergraduates had disbanded some years before, became interested in the new fraternity. Thus the Lambda Chi Alpha group in August 1936 formally affiliated with Gamma Delta Chi. Their contribution provided the benefit not only of a strong group of interested alumni, but also substantial funds that could be used to construct the new house.
The last addition to the house occurred in December 1936 when a fire destroyed the Alpha Sigma Phi house further up North Main Street, leaving that society homeless. Lacking sufficient funds to rebuild their house, the Alpha Sigma Phi brothers also relinquished their national charter and joined the new fraternity.
Shortly after the formation of the fraternity in 1935, the brotherhood initiated a study of all existing fraternity houses on campus and of fraternity houses in other college towns. Questionnaires were sent to all members of the new fraternity. Ground was finally broken and the building commenced in September 1937.
[edit] Physical Plant
One distinguishing feature of the Gamma Delta Chi fraternity is the pride the membership typically felt for the phyiscal building itself. For example, an integral aspect of pledging the fraternity involves house improvement projects, whereby each term new and existing brothers work together to refurbish a room of the house. Brothers’ initiation into the house traditionally required memorization of the name and history of each room, and, in many instances, the history of unique features in each room. Indeed, the current GDX entry in Dartmouth College’s rush handbook states, “The privately owned building is hands down the best physical plant on campus.” [4]
The physical house is a white-washed brick structure that features a blend of classic New England Federalism and early Art Deco details. The building was designed by the New Hampshire architectural firm of Wells, Hudson & Granger [5]and is located at 30 North Main Street in Hanover, New Hampshire, a few hundred feet north of Webster Avenue (Dartmouth’s fraternity row) and across the street from the currently under-construction Kemeny Hall / Halderman Center. The house’s white-washed façade, hunter green trim and grey-slate roof stands in contrast to the nearly ubiquitous red-bricked façade of other campus Greek houses [6] and aesthetically ties the house to Dartmouth Row [7]. The house sits adjacent to the Choate’s dormitory cluster[8] and the Webster Cottage, a small museum located inside the former residence of Daniel Webster during his last year as a Dartmouth College student that includes colonial and Shaker furniture as well as Daniel Webster memorabilia [9].
From a grey slate patio with two-story square-wood columns in front, visitors enter the house to find a grey marble vestibule. A white-washed living room, originally decorated in a classic 1930’s Art Deco style and containing a small library annex in the rear, sits to the left of the front hallway. Immediately to the right of the front entrance is the Phi Nu room. Opposite sits the Guest Room, the only room in the house with a private bathroom.
The central axis of the house is a four-story spiral marble stairway that reaches from the basement to the third (top) floor. Starting at the top of the second floor landing, to the left of the stairwell and separated from the rest of the floor by a private door, are the Jungle and the Presidential Suite. Turning right from the stairwell landing, visitors find the second floor bathroom and showers overlooking the southside porch. The rooms along the hall to the right are the Library, the Doghouse, the Barn (so-named because it was once lined with the clap-board siding of a 19th century New Hampshire farmhouse), the Den and the Island. From the third floor landing, visitors find the Bridge, the Shaft (so named because of its diminutive size), the Wall, the Bakery, the Icebox, the Closet, and the Lips (featuring a massive reproduction of the Andy Warhol-designed Rolling Stones’ logo on the wall). From the fire escape off of the Bakery, brothers can scale to an almost-horizontal roof-top deck called the Crow’s Nest for mid-afternoon sun and relaxation.
Down below, the house basement’s geography consists of the laundry room, Mosgibfo (the boiler room, historically an integral component of the fraternity’s Hell Night initiation ceremonies), kitchen, and the Tap Room. The narrow interior floor of the four story marble spiral staircase has sometimes been known as the “spit pit”; particularly insolent pledges have reportedly been made to stand in the spit pit while brothers from the stairs above drop beer and other liquids.
The Tap Room is the wood-paneled “Basement” known to generations of Dartmouth College co-eds and is the most well known public accessed area of the fraternity. The Tap Room is fitted with a working fireplace, two or more pong tables, wood benches, and a brick-and-wood working bar.
Perhaps the strangest and most interesting architectural feature of Gamma Delta Chi is a two-storied sub-basement known as “the Pit”. Originally a squash court, the Pit has been reinvented multiple times, from a mid-fifties make-out parlor to a half-sized basketball court to its current iteration as a multi-table arena for pong tournaments. At other times, the pit has been flooded with water and used for alcohol-infused naval battles, or filled with fog machines and laser lights equipment for rave-like techno parties.
One particularly notorious incident occurred when three members of the Phi Delta Tau, sneaking in through a basement fire escape in order to steal a keg, mistook in the dark the Pit’s fifteen-foot high fire escape balcony for the Tap Room bar. One brother hopped over the balcony, expecting to land safely on the other side of a four foot bar, instead plunged fifteen feet below onto the hardwood floor of the Pit.
[edit] GDX Pong
Lob:
Beer pong (“Pong”) is a central feature of fraternity life at Dartmouth College[10]. Brothers are expected to learn during their pledge period to become familiar with the fraternity’s specific house games and rules. The level of play among House members has historically been considered above-average compared to other Dartmouth fraternities.
As in most other Dartmouth houses, the default House game is lob – a four player game of 2 two-person teams. Players hit the ball in an upward trajectory with the aim of hitting the side of the opposing players’ cups or, preferably, sinking the ball inside the opposing cups. Scoring is done with a four-point ascending count (i.e., one, two, three, and four). Players must drink when the first two points are scored against them. At three points, the players being scored against must finish their beer to the half-cup mark. Four points constitutes a win; the loosing players should empty their cup before returning to the table.
Missing the other side of the table on a serve constitutes a “fault”. Two faults in a row on the serve results in the loss of one point. A brother who commits four consecutive faults (i.e., two double-faults) is punished with a Tap Suck, wherein a brother puts his lips to a beer tap and continues to drink while the collected brotherhood chants one of an assortment of house songs, most frequently, “Why was he born so beautiful? Why was he born at all? He’s no fucking good to anyone. He’s no fucking good at all.” Non-brothers who commit a double-fault are simply asked to leave the table in favor of more sober players.
It should be noted, though, that the fraternity stresses a “gentleman’s game”: only above-the-shoulder lobs are considered sufficient; it is impossible to win a game based on the opposing players’ double faults.
One differentiating feature is the GDX “slam”: when a player’s lob overshoots the other side of the table, the opposing player may wait for a single bounce of the pong ball and slam the ball after that bounce into the opposing players’ cups. Knocking over the opposing players’ cup or cups in such a maneuver constitutes a clean win regardless of the points otherwise scored during that game. A particularly rare but satisfying slam will result in two full cups of beer being spilled directly onto the opposing players’ pants (a feat that requires no small amount of muscle, coordination and athleticism).
Gamma Delta Chi’s pong rules are also different from many other house rules in that balls hit off of the Tap Room’s various fixtures (spectator benches, steam pipes, beer mirrors) remain in play through the first bounce on the floor. Similarly, a ball that hits a cup may none-the-less be saved by hitting the ball in an upwards lob so that the ball is returned to the opposing half of the table with a single bounce or less. If done properly, the ball remains in play and the rally continues with the point “one on.” If the opposing players miss their next return, the point drops and play continues as normal. Should another player score another hit, however, then the rally finishes but the successful players earns two points. Such rallies may continue with successive “one on”, “two on,” etc. until one team either scores a point or fouls out.
Rallies have been known to continue with as many as “six points on.” Under strict House rules (i.e., rules played on meetings’ nights, Sink Night, or Hell Night), a victory accomplished by greater than four points on requires the loosing team to drink one additional beer (10 oz. regulation cup) for each point greater than four before being allowed back to the table. Visitors to the House, or indeed to Dartmouth College, may perhaps marvel at the rigid demarcation of social practices incorporating heavy alcohol consumption, esoteric rulemaking, and basic math.
Other games:
The other traditional House games include Slam; Death Star; Battleship; and Pearl Harbor.
Death Star is a derivation of Lob that consists of sixteen beers per side with fifteen in a circular pattern and a single beer offset to the bottom right quadrant of the table in imitation of the Death Star [11] from the original Star Wars film [ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Wars_Episode_IV:_A_New_Hope].
Battleship consists of a college-aged derivation of the popular Milton Bradley [12] strategy game [13]. The game requires two teams of two players. Thirty two (32) beers are placed on the table, with sixteen (16) on each side. Each team places their sixteen beers in formations akin to the classic strategy game (i.e., one sting of five beers as the carrier, another string of four beers as the battleship, a three-string row of beers as the destroyer, two cups of beer as the cruiser, and single cup submarine). Players proceed under traditional lob rules. However, empty cups remain on the table; an opposing player’s hit on one’s empty cup results in a quarter-cup’s worth of damage to the rest of the ship. When any single hit (quarter-cup worth of beer) results in the ship having less than half of the beer that existed at the start of the game, the entire ship is “sunk” and must be drunk before the game continues. Battleship is typically played during daylight hours, before the more social aspects of Dartmouth’s nightlife become available for brothers.
Among Dartmouth Pong enthusiasts, the ultimate challenge of pong athleticism and alcohol tolerance is Pearl Harbor: a double-game of Battleship played amongst four teams of eight players over two pong tables, encompassing sixty four (64) beers. During Freshman Week and Senior Week (the periods where many students remain on campus but there is relatively little course work to be done), it is not uncommon to see teams of bored brothers playing as many as three consecutive games of Pearl Harbor prior to heading out to other social venues.
GDX brother "Zod" invented the game of "War" in the late nineties: as one commentator has stated, "If Tree is the checkers of pong, War is the chess of pong" [14]. A game that originated in Gamma Delta Chi in the mid 1990s by brother Zod. Each side has 9 cups of full beer. 7 "soldiers" near the center back of the table, 1 "cannon" on the back left and right corner of the table, and 1 "general" 1 foot away from the net. Opponents only drink on hits, and sinks capture cups and bring them to your side. The cannon represents your ability to slam. If the ball goes off the table, opponents may slam the ball, off the floor, back at your cups for hits. Every team must have a general, and once teams start losing cups, they move cups from their cannon and soldiers to replace the general. Aces are worth half of a beer.
Since the late nineties, Tree and its softcore cousin, Shrub, have emerged as popular variations of Lob, although more traditionly minded brothers scoff at the notion of playing such inelegant varieties of pong.
An even less-elegant version of pong is "Tower of Boot" ("Boot" being the Dartmouth code-word for vomit). This arrangement is a Shrub on top of a Tree, with three cups on top of the Shrub, and finally a single cup on top of the 3. The formation is 4 cups high and includes 22 cups per side. This game is allegedly common at the House, much to the horror of many House alumni.
Finally, it should be noted that under ancient House rules, Dartmouth social pong, wherein an unlimited number of male-female couples are stationed in pairs of two around all four-sides of the table for a round-robin free-for-all game of lob, is strictly prohibited.
Historic GDX pong tables have included: • The 1992 blue and yellow “Scorpion on the Beach” table; • The 1993 “Punisher / Social Distortion” table painted by Jonathan Aimes ’93; • The 1998-1999 “Football Field’ table;
[edit] Trivia
Trivia:
The Latin motto expressed on the fraternity’s coat of arms and memorized by each new pledge on Sink Night is: Vite sin amocitias morte (“Life without friendship is death.”). The motto is an intentionally truncated version of the Spanish proverb, “Life without friendship is death without witness.”
The infrastructure of the house consists of steel I-beams, which allows the entire house to serve as a massive AM/FM radio antenna for amateur radio enthusiast brothers during the 1950s and 1960s.
The official house dog is named Riggy Mortis and is a life-like ceramic replica of a German Shepherd featured in many of the annual house “composites” – the annually produced poster-sized photo compilations of the entire brotherhood.
There is an electrical access tunnel that can be accessed from a hidden location in both the basement and the third floor. It is reported that vintage bottles of alcohol are hidden mid-way inside the access tunnel.
Each floor of the house can be cleaned by hosing the entire floor with water; the marble floors are slightly concave with a water drain conveniently located in the center of each.
For a brief period in the seventies, the fraternity was informally co-educational, as the house accepted three female members. Since then, while the fraternity has remained officially all-male, women have been allowed to live in the house (either as renters or as live-in girlfriends of brothers).
Gamma Delta Chi’s preferred method of punishment of brothers for petty offenses such as missing too many house meetings, incompetent performance on Dartmouth’s sports teams, or mangling of relationships with the fairer sex consists of the “Tap Suck."
