MIR ROR JUNE 28, 2013
UNPAID BUT A-OKAY // 3
IF ONLY THEY KNEW... // 2
SUMMER SENSATIONS // 4
A TIME TO EXPLORE // 4
MULIN XIONG // THE DARTMOUTH STAFF
2// MIRROR
EDITOR’S NOTE
If my spinning instructor’s shouts of encouragement were any indication, I would make a darn good cyclist. I was convinced that if I could pedal until I felt the devil between my thighs in a windowless room for an hour, I would be more than capable of biking up the 40-foot hill that separates my summer apartment from the rest of Dartmouth campus. As I heaved up the seemingly endless incline with my legs buckling beneath me, I felt deceived. Curses on you, Buff Brad. This wasn’t the first time I’ve had to stop and catch my breath this term. The midpoint in your Dartmouth career can hit you hard. You inevitably begin to reflect on how you’ve spent the time. If you’re smart, you begin to devise all sorts of bucket lists that will help you make the most of what’s left of it. This week, we investigate the ways in which Dartmouth students have gleaned valuable lessons from their unpaid internships, and we speculate which dirty little secrets Parkhurst might uncover about students if it did some investigating of its own. We see how the summer sun messes with our body chemistry, and we talk to students who are using the term to spice up their transcripts. With the end of the first full week of classes and July 4th less than a week away, there’s plenty to celebrate. Here’s to a long-awaited Friday and an even longer-awaited Sophomore Summer!
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MIR ROR MIRROR EDITOR MYREL ITURREY EDITOR-IN-CHIEF JENNY CHE PUBLISHER GARDINER KREGLOW EXECUTIVE EDITOR ASHLEY ULRICH GRAPHICS EDITOR MULIN XIONG
OVER HEARDS
IF THEY ONLY KNEW...
What would Parkhurst learn if it snooped on us NSA-style? BY ELIZABETH TRAGER
You may judge me for saying this, but my spirit animal is a fly. Yes, that’s exactly what I said. A fly. For all of you scoffing at my choice, condescendingly shaking your heads for my failure to align myself with a more noble and majestic creature, you must understand the power of a fly on a wall. I am certainly not alone in appreciating the thrill of discovering a secret. Parkhurst thrives on punishing violators, endeavoring to pluck out those who breach established codes of conduct at Dartmouth to uphold the integrity of this institution. In this regard, our administration has only been moderately successful — there is much that they have been missing. Were Parkhurst to spy on us a la NSA, be the flies on the walls through which we walk and talk, they would become privy to what occurs behind closed doors, in dark rooms and through hushed voices and subtle gestures here at the College. The administration might in fact realize just how many transgressions are tucked under each of our belts. While we are all (presumably) academics and intellectuals, fueled by a thirst for knowledge and on endless quests to learn, the reality of many students’ academic experience may be far less pure. Coming to Dartmouth, we all knew we were joining a school on the smaller end of the spectrum, embedded in a charming and cozy town that beckoned us with open arms. We knew, of course, that the intimate environment would be just what we needed to feel at home, to have the power to shape our school and to familiarize ourselves with fellow students and teachers. With elaborate sur veillance techniques, would Parkhurst discover that this process of familiarization has gone too far?
I’ll begin with our cherished office hours. To the flirtatious and mischievous student, these are channels through which flirtation and seduction can bloom. A casual hand graze as you point to a confusing line in the text, a giddy laugh about that strange student in the fourth row or a playful blitz thanking your professor for their time can be used to fuel an amorous fire. As time passes at Dartmouth, the pickings seem squashed, flattened and deprecated, and efforts to find love feel increasingly futile. Whether the cause of such a situation is rooted in a desperate need for a good grade, sexual frustration or academic stimulation, behind the closed door of a dimly lit office, who is to say that inappropriate romance is not brewing? Or let us consider twins. Humor me for this temporar y aside, but seven-year-old-me was convinced that having an incessant and loyal partner in crime, a walking and living mirror, would be the greatest blessing of all. I believed twins had an extraordinar y and inimitable power to fool, confuse and deceive. At college, this power could be exploited, especially through academic trickeries. We all have those moments in which we wished we could be in two places at once, or have an understudy take control for us. In this sense, twins have it made. So while Dartmouth is so eager to accept twins and oddly similarlooking siblings, maybe the College should consider the academic credibility of two identical individuals on the same campus. No offense, all you identical twins out there, but I’ve seen it done before. In acceptance letters and welcoming packets and informational tours for prospies, Dartmouth never fails to inform us that we are brilliant, unique, interesting and special.
’15 Boy: The only thing that could have made the sex better is Nutella.
Blitz overheards to mirror@thedartmouth.com
ANNA DAVIES // THE DARTMOUTH STAFF
Dirt Cowboy Employee 1: I think she wanted raspberries in her smoothie. Dirt Cowboy Employee 2: She wants the whole world!
What the administration is certainly not aware of, however, is the sheer oddity that governs many of our more common interactions, and the degree to which many of its students relish in their impropriety. For one, the amount of naked parties that take place here is somewhat obscene. Don’t get me wrong, I love my birthday suit, and anyone who knows me well will understand, so I’ll pause for a moment of recognition and brief chuckles. Okay. But the prevalence of topless dance parties, bra soirees, classroom streakings, casual blue mooning conventions and skinny dipping is striking. I won’t point fingers, but let it be known that there are sports teams that regularly sit naked in the sauna, each with a beer or two in hand, just to kick back and have a grand old time. Additionally, does Parkhurst realize that the Dartmouth Seven isn’t a myth, and that students are actually and constantly having lewd public relations all over our sacred campus? Is it aware of our beloved shot fairies, whose Malibu-filled water guns and ragey attitudes corrupt a place of knowledge and wisdom? The likely answer to these questions is no, for despite student awareness of these little peculiarities, the secret nature of these traditions ultimately makes Dartmouth feel as if it belongs to us. For now, we can assume that there is much that Parkhurst does not know about its students. No whistle blower has stepped forward to expose invasive tracking mechanisms on our Dartmouth ID’s or nifty cameras in our dorms. Wherever you stand on your right to privacy and on the administration’s supposed right to do its job, we can probably all agree that sometimes, what Parkhurst doesn’t know won’t hurt it.
’15 Girl: I’m supposed to be on crutches for a week but like, that’s not gonna work with my social schedule. 10 year-old Boy in FoCo: I’ll start with ice cream.
MIRROR //3
UNPAID BUT A-OKAY
Students reflect on the value of their unpaid internships in light of recent controversy BY LUKE KATLER “Bright” would be a compliment to the fluorescent interior of your cubicle. You answer the phone, put on your chipper “greeting” voice and transfer the call with metronomic consistency. A stack of files sits ominously on the desk alongside your boss’ coffee, daring you to start the arduous process of alphabetizing them. Your stomach grumbles and you think you’ll run downstairs for a quick bit to eat. But, upon scavenging through your pockets for money, you come up with a chewed piece of gum and a ball of lint. Your lunch today depends entirely on whether or not your boss offers to buy it. He won’t. If any of this sounds like a memoir of your unpaid internship, chances are you’ve heard about the recent controversy on the matter. For those of you too busy filling out Excel spread sheets to keep up with current events, here’s a brief summar y: Eric Glatt, a middle-aged unemployed New Yorker seeking a job in the entertainment industr y, landed an unpaid internship on the set of Fox Searchlight Pictures’ “Black Swan.” After hundreds of hours of essential “grunt work” — making photo copies, taking lunch orders and answering phones — he filed suit against Fox for violating wage laws. Since then, many unpaid interns have faced off and won against their parent companies in court, forcing private employers across the nation to reinvent or even phase out their unpaid internship programs. Historically, Dar tmouth students have been particularly good at returning from their off-terms with some cash in their pockets to complement the experience under their belts. Nevertheless, their unpaid counterparts have nothing but glowing praise for their internship experiences. Fermin Liu Ku ’15, who interned for Voice 4 Girls, a nongovernmental organization based in India, said that the value of his experience could not be measured in dollars and cents. “Everyone ‘above me’ at VOICE treated me as an equal,” Liu Ku said. “It’s not the money. It’s whether or not the organization can bring someone on and make them feel a part of a team.” Adrian Ferrari ’14, a former intern at the White House Office of Public Engagement, explained that unpaid internships allow students to focus on pursuing their passions rather than making a quick buck. “If [the work] is what brings meaning and fulfillment to my life, then this is the time to be doing it,” he said. This philosophy has been the driving force behind the creation
TRENDING @ Dartmouth TUCK BRIDGE STUDENTS
They literally can’t sit with us.
AMATEUR DANCE GROUPS
MARINA SHKIRATOV // THE DARTMOUTH STAFF
The uncoordinated masses discovering that their arms can bend that way, one frat show at a time.
Unpaid interns are often responsible for the “grunt work” of the operation, such as paperwork. of countless programs that award grants to students to pursuing internships in a field that excites them. The science is simple — if finances are taken out of the equation, students are free to choose an internship that best suits their interests and capabilities. “Having my parents’ and Dartmouth’s financial support, I would rather choose an internship to cultivate my interests and prepare me for when I’m out of college than one that pays but isn’t in line with what I want to do,” Liu Ku said. Brendan Goldrick ’15, who completed an internship through the Rockefeller Center’s First-Year Fellows program as a programs and management intern for the Department of Education, said he was thankful to have been given those resources. “Rocky’s generosity and the fact that I loved my internship made [working for free] worth it,” Goldrick said. “Without a paycheck it really is about the experience. It might help you focus more on what you’re learning and make you more reflective rather than going to work ever yday for the grind.” That said, Goldrick, along with nearly ever y student we spoke to, recognized the harsh realities of working for free and expressed a desire for a paid internship in the future. “I wouldn’t recommend an unpaid internship in a city that’s expensive to live in where you’re just going to get a resume-builder out of it,” Goldrick said. When asked if they would have
worked harder were there wages, almost ever y student confidently said yes. “With an unpaid internship, you just work less. I think getting paid to do something makes a difference,” said Jessica Venturino ’15, who interned for free at Craig Scott Capital in the sales department. Signe Taylor, a documentar y filmmaker who employs almost a dozen paid and unpaid interns, said that Dartmouth students who interned for her demonstrated the same quality of work ethic regardless of whether they were paid or not. “I’ve had fabulous interns, all of them are dedicated and hardworking and resourceful,” Taylor said. “I feel like Dartmouth students can rise to the challenge.” Like many students, however, Taylor conceded that there is a difference between an unpaid internship for a non-profit organization and one for a private corporation. “Non-profits need volunteer labor to sur vive,” Taylor said. “I don’t think Fox needs volunteer labor to sur vive.” Liu Ku agreed with Taylor’s sentiment. During his time in India, he was given the same responsibilities as any other volunteer. “With my internship I did what any other employee would do,” he said. “Working for non-profits is different — ever y person they take on should be the best.” In the for-profit sector, however, an unpaid internship violates the federal minimum wage law if the company derives an “immediate advantage” from the intern’s work
without providing any educational value to the intern. It seems as though Dartmouth students are more than happy to accept unpaid internships as long as they gain tangible experience and feel that they are contributing to a greater good. Rachel Hein ’15, who worked for the San Francisco Department of Public Health, felt that her “grunt work” ser ved a higher purpose. “The work I was doing was tedious, but the work that ever yone was doing was tedious,” she said. “I never got coffee or felt exploited or taken advantage of. I felt they were happy to have me there to help out where I could.” Ferrari acknowledged “grunt work” as a necessar y casualty of the learning process. “The thing about being on top of the repetitive tasks is that then you get asked to do other stuff,” he said. “If you do the grunt work well enough, it opens up more doors.” Guiding students’ optimism toward unpaid inter nships is the realization that internship opportunities are just that — oppor tunities. They are ways in which our society has allowed students to get a glimpse of the careers that most move them, and to bash such a privilege can feel ungrateful. Unlike Eric Glatt and the dozens of interns who have come for ward to file suit against their employers, many of us have yet to face the rent-paying, familyfeeding, reality of adult life, and we’re perfectly happy with our chance to explore diverse fields before we have to.
DEODORANT And with average daily temperatures in the 80’s, boy do we need it!
PADDLEBOARDING It’s trendier than canoeing.
RUTH KETT
4 // MIRROR
SUMMER SENSATIONS
As the weather heats up, so do our tempers... By ERIN LANDAU and hormones. Watching my homemade mojito popsicle melt lazily on my front porch, I wondered how anyone could possibly live on the East Coast during the summer. As a Los Angeles native, I find the stifling humidity is keeping me from functioning like a normal human being. I’ve always known that hot weather is linked to faster metabolic rates, leading to heightened arousal and frenzied behavior, but until I spent my days in un-airconditioned buildings and my nights in a poorly ventilated apartment, I never realized just how behavior-altering the heat could be. Traditional Chinese medicine is based on the belief that an imbalance of hot and cold leads to illness. To stay healthy, the body must remain at a comfortable room temperature. Herbs and other treatments are often prescribed to ensure that excessive heat does not lead to the diseases that our own culture once diagnosed as hysteria. For those of you not up-to-date on your 19th century medicine, physicians often treated a female patient for hysteria if she exhibited “emotional outbursts.” Though we now call this being human or PMS-ing, doctors of the bygone era used vibratorlike instruments to “cure” women. It was believed that hitting the big O treated the
affliction by cooling body temperature and slowing down metabolic rates. Indeed, heat has always been linked to sexuality, even in language. A quick Google search will turn up scores of Cosmopolitan magazine articles about how to “heat up” your sex life or put the “heat back into a relationship.” Animals, just like humans, are said to be “in heat” during mating season and I can’t help but think that our own mating season is in full swing during the summer term. With the raging hormones of over a thousand 20-year-olds, violent heat waves and appropriately inappropriate outfits that bare it all, sophomore summer is reduced to one heat of the moment situation after another. Sure enough, summer brings about changes in the way we interact with each other and our environment. We’ve all heard the men of Dartmouth talk about their excitement when the sundresses finally emerge and women are no longer covered in layers of unflattering clothing. Walking down to the river, or even past Psi U, dozens of shirtless men provide eye candy because it is apparently, “just too hot to put a shirt on.” My recommendation is to remember that Dartmouth is as small as we think it is — even smaller now that three-fourths
NUSHY GOLRIZ // THE DARTMOUTH STAFF
Shirts v. skins, anyone? Playing a pick-up game of soccer is a great way to blow off steam. of its students are away. It would be wise to stop and think before you let the heat take control and give in to those bizarre impulses that emerge from within while you’re sun bathing by the river. According to an article in Wired Magazine, our heart rates, which are linked to our fight or flight responses, pick up speed in hot weather. Heat also revs up testosterone production, which is responsible for all things manly, such as grilling, fighting and generally acting like a barbarian. Add alcohol and the fact that we’ve been cooped up year round, and you’ve got yourself a deadly combination. Violent crime at Dartmouth is typically limited to the wee hours of the night when we decide to get ballsy and trash the dorm of the poor, unsuspecting freshman who lives in the room we once inhabited. But the summer sun beckons students outside and increases day drinking
and day debauchery, creating many more opportunities to stir up trouble. For all you hotheads out there, myself included, take a moment to cool down and step back from the situation before flying off the handle. I know the heat makes us lazy, our sticky clothes make us uncomfortable and being lied to about not having any work makes us annoyed, but slip into the library for some much needed air conditioning and KAF iced tea, and I’m sure the desire to break SAE’s pong tables will wither. While the heat can make us madder than a San Antonio Spurs fan, it’s important to remember that urges and impulses, though almost impossible to ignore, are fleeting. If there is a silver lining to the rainy, humid and sweltering days of summer, it is that unlike the Miami Heat’s all-star trio, Dartmouth’s weather will soon return to the cold we all know and secretly love.
A TIME TO EXPLORE: Interesting Classes Offered This Summer By SARA KASSIR
According to the Registrar’s website, 250 students are currently enrolled in Astronomy 1, 2 and 3 — a little less than one-fourth of the Class of 2015. The course has probably been a staple of sophomore summer for longer than the Ledyard Challenge, but in the spirit of using this term to do the unexpected, many students are also exploring a few wildcard options. Whether students are trying to fulfill hard-toget distributive requirements or spice up their major track, it’s more than likely that you know at least a few ’15s who are using this term to take classes that they wouldn’t normally. After all, a liberal arts education encourages students to step outside comfort zones and approach learning from a diversified perspective and over sophomore summer, our definitions of what qualifies as “diversified” may extend even further. We have a propensity to embrace the offbeat during our term at “Camp Dartmouth,” and the College and professors respond by giving us some academic opportunities to match. With the intention of making this term
different from the rest well-ingrained in the sophomore class, initiatives like those taken by classics and linguistics professor Timothy Pulju tend to receive a warm response. Pulju is teaching “Languages of Middle-Earth” this summer. The class will examine the works of J.R.R. Tolkien with a focus on his creation and use of languages. Ashton Slatev ’15, who is currently enrolled in the course, was immediately impressed. Students were required to have read all “The Lord of the Rings” books and “The Silmarillion” by the beginning of the term, and were given a quiz when they arrived in class last week. “We were given two maps of Middle Earth, Beleriand and all of the other places in Tolkien’s books,” Slatev said. “Based on our knowledge of the stories, we had to translate the names based on common sense. In a classroom with no native speakers of Elvish, no one had an advantage.” A linguistics major, Slatev decided to take “Languages of Middle Earth” after previous experiences with Pulju, but noted that not all of his classmates had the same reasoning. “There are definitely people I recognize in
ABBIE KOUZMANOFF // THE DARTMOUTH STAFF
Professor Timothy Pulju lectures on the linguistic traditions found in “The Lord of the Rings” series.
the class from other linguistics courses, but at the end of class on Friday, Pulju asked if anyone could repeat the Elvish scripture on the ring,” he said. “It’s fairly long, and about 10 people knew it, so I’m assuming there are some diehard ‘Lord of the Rings’ fans too.” Students expressed a wide variety of reasons for their selection of summer classes. Florence Gonsalves ’15 needed to take “Applied Ethics” as a part of her philosophyww major requirements, and this summer’s class focused on the ethics of food choice and policy. “I think the way people choose to eat is an interesting reflection of their values,” she said. “I took the class ‘Food and Power’ in the spring, and as a former vegetarian, I guess I’ve dabbled with the ethics of eating other animals in a modern society when we have options available to sustain ourselves.” Gonsalves added that,she was excited to take the class with philosophy professor David Plunkett. “He’s a cool guy and not mainstream in the least,” she said. “He wants to be called David and doesn’t like to have conversations over email when we can easily speak face-to-face on such a small campus. I think he’s going to spin the class in a way that’s engaging and puts learning in the hands of the students.” Another sophomore summer course notorious for its hands-on approach is “Ecological Agriculture,” more commonly referred to as Organic Farming. Offering a fun way to be outside while also fulfilling the TLA distributive, the class is being taught by environmental studies professor Michael Poage this summer. Juan Nicholls ’15 expressed a genuine interest in the questions that the course takes on. “I’m very interested in agricultural sustainability since we obviously need to keep eating, but still need to keep the world healthy,” he said.
“We can’t do that with the way we’re growing food right now.” Nicholls knew that if he wanted to take it, summer would be the only time. “At the beginning of the term you plant a crop and at the end you harvest and eat it, which you can only do this season,” he explained. “I’ve heard that at the end of the class, you cook a dish involving what you grew and bring it to class.” “Classical Mythology” is yet another popular course offered only over sophomore summer, fulfilling both the TMV and CI distributive requirements. The course aims to survey ancient Greek and Roman myth and is taught by classics lecturer David Riesbeck. Laura Hechtman ’15 was not initially planning on taking the course, but decided to sit through the first day. “I was a little Classics-ed out from my FSP in Greece last term, but ended up shopping it to see what it was like,” she said. “Professor Riesbeck is awesome and excited about the material, and it will help me complete my minor, so I decided to take it.” Ralph Scozzafava ’15 was drawn to the class given his previous experience with the subject. “I’m interested in mythology and took Latin in high school, and I used to do Latin Certamen, which is like Quiz Bowl for Latin,” he said. “I also heard it was fun and not that hard.” While many of us still find ourselves in the “Camp Dartmouth” mindset a week or two into the term, rumor has it that schoolwork will catch up with us. At some point, we’ll have to trade long days on the Green for longer ones in the library, but maybe stepping outside of your comfort zone and taking an unusual class or two is the way to make it all the more bearable. Unless of course it’s a 2A, in which case my suggestion to you would be to drop it. That’s precious river time.