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Traditions: Here's the Rub
A bronze bust of a beloved Dartmouth figure offers students—and parents—a little luck
“I don't know why we run laps around the bonfire, why we rush the field at Homecoming, or why we rub Warner Bentley's nose on our way into the Hopkins Center. But those are things we do anyway because we know many have done them before us and more will do them after we're gone.”
While no one knows its origins, the tradition of rubbing Warner Bentley's nose for luck was first chronicled by journalist Samuel Hirsch in the February 20, 1970, edition of the Boston Herald Traveler. Bentley, the longtime director of the Dartmouth Players and the first director of the Hopkins Center, was presented with the bronze bust at his retirement party in the spring of 1969. The statue was placed in a Hopkins Center corridor, opposite the Jaffe-Friede Gallery. Hirsch wrote, “Since then students have had the insight to realize that rubbing its nose as they pass on the way to exams brings good luck—and the high bronze shine above the smile and below the merry eyes testifies to the vigor of their faith.”
The tradition received national exposure in an episode of ABC's hit medical drama, Grey's Anatomy, created and produced by Dartmouth alumna Shonda Rhimes '91. In a voice-over opening narration, main character Meredith Grey, herself a Dartmouth alumna, told viewers, “My college has a magic statue.”
One theory for the popularity of rubbing Bentley's nose for luck is that students typically walk past it every day to retrieve their mail. Before the Hopkins Center opened on November 8, 1962, mail was delivered to the College's residence halls. Fearing that non-art students wouldn't venture into the new center and would never see the fliers advertising upcoming plays and concerts, College planners designed the Hinman Mail Center to create daily foot traffic in the building. En route to their mailboxes, students passed the bust of Bentley and habitually rubbed his nose.
The bust was temporarily removed from the Hop when an April Fool's prank in 1996 involving tarnish remover stripped off the dark chocolate patina that covered everything but the well-worn nose. While it was being repaired, the bust's void was filled by a Polaroid photo. Jake O'Shea '97, who rubbed the statue's nose regularly, wrote in The Dartmouth, “I discovered that rubbing a Polaroid certainly doesn't have the same appeal as rubbing Bentley's nose.” He pleaded for the return of the statue, noting, “It was a little tradition that had become a small but significant part of my Dartmouth experience.”
Kellen Haak '79, then the registrar at the Hood Museum of Art, volunteered for the restoration, which required painstakingly removing with a Q-tip the green gunk that filled the bust's crevices. Quoted in the May 2, 1996, issue of The Dartmouth, Haak termed the project a “labor of love, having rubbed Warner's nose on more than one occasion as an undergraduate.” Bentley's bust was finally returned to the Hop on May 2, just in time to bring students luck for midterms.