Two Shootings, One Mistake: The Cost of Leniency in Dartmouth’s Boom Boom Lodge Debacle

Colloquially known as the Boom Boom Lodge incident, the fatal shooting of graduating student Joseph Maroney in 1920 unsettled Dartmouth College in ways that administrators would have preferred to avoid. From the obvious displeasure of the student body to the criticism in the news to even some scrutiny from the government, the whole debacle was pleasant for none.  The shooter, Albert Meads, was hardly an unknown given he had previously been involved in the supposedly accidental death of Norman F. Arnold in 1916, a casual “misfiring” of a gun in the dorm halls they said. Accounts of the 1920 incident, both in Dartmouth histories and in contemporary press coverage though, simplified the Maroney shooting into a quarrel over liquor prices in the Prohibition era. This neat framing conveniently leaves out the awkward fact that Maroney had been sober for more than a year and that there was no grand thief-in-the-night tale. The more uncomfortable part of this story concerns not just the tragedy of 1920, but Dartmouth’s earlier decision to allow Meads back on campus after Arnold’s death, which, in hindsight, reads as a heavily misjudged decision. 

After Maroney’s death, correspondence between President Ernest Martin Hopkins and former faculty member Frederick Adler revealed how uneasy many already were about Meads’ presence. Adler, who had taught Meads himself, condemned Meads’ character in no uncertain terms, and Hopkins admitted that it was “a pity beyond measure that Meads should ever have returned to the College campus.” He assured Adler that Dartmouth would take “no action, direct or indirect, to temper the law’s course in this matter.” Hopkins’ comments acknowledge, if indirectly, that Meads’ readmission had been an error and perhaps one that now looked far more consequential than it had in 1916. More than that however, it strikes one as quite odd that, in opposition to the past, the law would operate as per normal and perhaps there was more than meets the eye to how Hopkins handled the first shooting.

The surviving correspondence on the case is equally notable for how much energy was devoted to Dartmouth’s public image. From friends, alumni, and occasional influential onlookers, Hopkins received a steady stream of offers of legal advice, reassurance about alumni opinion, suggestions on how to manage rumors about alcohol on campus, and more than a few invites to what could be viewed as emotional-support-and-friendly-catch-up golf. In a letter to the Associated Press, he expressed reluctance to make any public statement unless it was necessary to protect Maroney’s reputation, separating Dartmouth as an institution from Meads as an individual. “Among the exceptions there will be men potentially dangerous to the welfare and reputation of the group as a whole,” he wrote.

Even in 1920 though, some observers accused the college of mishandling the situation. One letter claimed that Dartmouth had sided with Maroney because of his “popularity”, using Meads as a convenient scapegoat and expediting his removal from campus before commencement. Hopkins, in private, rejected the idea, insisting that Meads had already benefited from extraordinary leniency after the Arnold shooting but did concede that perhaps it was a mistake to have let Meads roam free. His tendency to bootleg alcohol for instance, was a well known campus and administrative fact. 

What emerges from this all is a picture of an administration attempting to balance accountability with the instinct for institutional self-preservation. The Maroney case prompts a few difficult questions: Why was someone who killed another student, accidental or not, allowed to return to campus with little supervision? How much weight did Dartmouth place on its reputation compared to student safety? More than a century later, those questions still feel uncomfortably familiar, especially following the events of the past year. As such, Dartmouth’s 1920 tragedy remains more than just a curious episode of college lore; it serves as a reminder of how institutions manage crises. Unfortunately for the colleges, it's not always with the clarity or foresight they would like or wish to claim.

To read this and more correspondence about the Meads-Maroney shooting, request DP-11, box 6766, folder 17 at Rauner Library.

Posted for Erica Mao '28, recipient of a Historical Accountability Student Research Fellowship for the 2025 summer term. The Historical Accountability Student Research Program provides funding for Dartmouth students to conduct research with primary sources on a topic related to issues of inclusivity and diversity in the college's past. For more information, visit the program's website.