The Mirror 04/11/14

4.11.2014

MIRROR

where’s my uga?| 2

DEBATE SUBCULTURE| 3

finding independence| 6

life tips from marian| 8 ANTHONY CHICAIZA // THE DARTMOUTH STAFF

2// MIRROR

EDITORS’ NOTE

ANNIE MA // THE DARTMOUTH STAFF

Jasmine would like to consider herself a civically responsible citizen who probably cares too much. Apathy is not something she battles with often. In high school, she voted in every election that she was allowed to participate in. The first three years of high school, she ran for three different student government positions, seduced by the promise of power. She lost all three elections, but found solace by remembering that Michael Jordan didn’t make his high school basketball team. As a Dartmouth student, she has voted in every student government election in addition to tabling for and voting in the 2012 general election.

In comparison, Emma is a terrible citizen. After a brief stint as eighth-grade honor society treasurer, she permanently resigned from the political sphere. She realized that she possesses neither the charisma nor cunning that rallying a student body behind the prospect of new vending machines requires. She does not remember if her high school had a class president and has not voted in a single Dartmouth election. Though she did vote in the presidential election, she was too lazy to drive to the polls in New Hampshire and instead filled out an absentee ballot for New York, one of the states where your vote counts least.

We can all agree that apathy is a serious demon to be reckoned with. As Maroon 5 once sang, “If you don’t know, then you can’t care.” This is the case with almost everything, including student government and student body elections. We both recognize that informing yourself about society’s issues and making an educated decision in voting is a prerequisite for becoming a real person. While it’s hard not to become disillusioned and apathetic if results aren’t tangible and the process seems ineffective, we have both decided to vote in Monday’s campus elections — if we don’t make an effort to care, why should we expect anyone else to?

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MIRROR R MIRROR EDITORS JASMINE SACHAR, EMMA MOLEY EDITOR-IN-CHIEF LINDSAY ELLIS PUBLISHER CARLA LARIN

EXECUTIVE EDITORS MICHAEL RIORDAN STEPHANIE McFEETERS

story

B y Maddie brown

JIN SHIN // THE DARTMOUTH STAFF

My heart is pounding, but I continue to walk toward the end of the hallway. It becomes darker and darker as I near the door at the end — the undergraduate advisor’s single. I finally come to the door, lit up by a single flickering light. Hesitantly, I reach my hand out and knock three times.

I am met with silence.

Now, I know what you’re all thinking: what exactly is a UGA? UGAs live in our buildings, on our floors and even in the rooms next door.

They send out cheerful blitzes and when no one’s watching, they decorate those bulletin boards above the floor trash cans. But does anyone even know who they are?

But like, actually, I’m kidding. Most people at Dartmouth know what a UGA is, but as we grow older, we start to forget what they are actually there for.

I fondly remember my first floor meeting.

We went outside to the white gazebo near Judge. It was dark, and we played this game that involved pretending to be somebody else in the group and then introducing yourself to the next person. I know my description of the game does not make any sense, but it didn’t make any sense at the time either. So I just made up names and hometowns for my floormates, secretly messing up the game.

Back then, we thought floor meetings were mandatory. We all showed up on time.

But fall 2012 was a lifetime ago. To better remember what these meetings were like, I decided to go undercover to a McLaughlin floor meeting. My undercover identity was quickly unveiled when the first freshman arrived. He was quick to point out that I did not live on this floor. Damn. Despite the fact that I was unable to blend in with my “floormates,” I stayed for the duration of the meeting. About

’16 Girl: Is that a condom? ’15 Girl: No, that’s an orange peel.

’16 Girl: Who can skip a workout when sophomore summer is 73 days away?!

15 students arrived. We started with highs and lows of the week. Lows were papers, the awful smell that came with the spring and not being able to find a table at FoCo. Highs were spending time with friends and finding a machine at the gym. After exchanging stories about the week, the UGA asked if any of her residents were confused about room draw.

The question-and-answer session went on for about 30 minutes as people tried to find out how to rig the system. The meeting was then adjourned. Although I make the meeting sound pretty boring, it was quite the contrary.

People laughed and ate chips. The salsa was delicious. Yum. Now, as an upperclassman, floor meetings are no longer part of the routine. I tried to attend a floor meeting to compare the scenes, but I struggled to find one since they’re no longer weekly.

When I asked her if she had been to a floor meeting this year, Perrin Hutcheson ’16 said that she had been to one — but only by accident.

“I went to a floor meeting once by mistake,” she said. “I was in the downstairs common room where the floor meeting was supposed to be happening. I was the only person that came.”

What would’ve happened if no one showed up? After asking over 20 upperclassmen with limited success, I finally found one other who had been to a floor meeting this term.

“The UGAs were friendly, but I’ve come to the point pretty quickly where I don’t have a lot of time to allot to floor or building goings-on,” said Penelope Williams ’16. “So I grabbed a cookie and left. If there’s food, I’ll definitely check it out, but like me most people can’t dawdle, so it was virtually empty.”

’14 Girl: I saw him at a slam poetry show over sophomore summer, and he performed, and I was like, “Wow, my clothes just fell off.”

Profound ’15 on Collis porch: If it’s not happening to you, it’s not happening to you.

What happened from freshman to sophomore year? Are we really that much more mature that we don’t need any guidance?

Freshmen and upperclassmen seem to have different perceptions about the role of a UGA. When asked, Alexa Sonnenfeld ’17 provided me with a textbook definition.

“The role of the UGA is to facilitate freshman floor bonding and to act as a resource for general advice, class advice and personal advice,” she said.

Similarly, Jake Donehey ’17 said that the role of a UGA is to “offer guidance during the first year and to help you settle disputes.”

Freshman go to floor meetings, Donehey said, because they have more questions about how processes at Dartmouth, like room draw, work.

Both of these definitions given by freshmen sound like direct quotes from the office of residential life website.

If no one goes to upperclassman floor meetings, why do they exist? Is the only role of upperclassman UGAs to decorate the building?

According to Janae Dunchack ’14, the UGA of North Fayerweather, UGAs serve a purpose, even if it is not always acknowledged.

“I feel like people are not using the UGA for their role,” she said. “We are someone they can talk to — a friend. We are supposed to be a less formal connection to the resources on campus.”

Upperclassmen — if you are seeking that fuzzy feeling that you used to get when you went to your freshman floor meetings, just know that you have all of the resources to do this: blitz your UGA. Maybe you’ll be able to relive your freshman glory.

’16 Girl: Watching “Frozen” is, like, the new thing to do on Friday nights.

CS Prof: Oops, guess I had too many glasses of wine making these lecture slides. Oh, and here’s another mistake, and now I’m hungover.

MIRROR //3

The world of College debate A debater excavates the time-intensive extracurricular story

Trending D @ RTMOUTH

B y JAKE BAYER

With my mind full of facts about organ donation, I stepped up in front of hundreds of debaters. My opponents shot glares and waited to tear apart my days of research.

Through the wall I could hear the policy debate students reading three times faster than I could, talking about the inevitable ties between federal infrastructure programs and nuclear war. I was in the 2011 Tournament of Champions Public Forum debate final in Lexington, Ky. Policy debate demands deep dives into annual topics. Its rounds last 30 to 38 minutes, growing longer in college. Speaking at hundreds of words per minute, policy debaters engage in loud, esoteric debates.

And then there’s the lingo. Policy debate involves the longest rounds, and debaters advocate for a policy change in the U.S. government. “Parli,” short for parliamentary, is a debate event that requires less in-depth knowledge; it is essentially a more basic version of policy debate. Public Forum or “PF” is a condensed version of policy available only in high schools, designed to be accessible to the general public. LincolnDouglas debate covers ethics and morality.

The National Debate Tournament and the Cross Examination Debate Association are two national debate tournaments that separated in the early 1970s.

Down the hall from The Dartmouth’s offices in Robinson Hall lies a small suite that houses the Dartmouth Forensics Union. Here, students hone a select set of debate skills over the course of a season, which spans from fall to the beginning of April. They read complex plans that details the impacts of a range of topics. (This past year’s resolution: “The United States Federal Government should substantially increase statutory and/or judicial restrictions on the war powers authority of the President of the United States in one or more of the following areas: targeted killing, indefinite detention, offensive cyber operations or introducing United States Armed Forces into hostilities.” We keep it light.)

This resolution gives you just a glimpse into the complexity that is college policy debate; it addresses two kinds of restrictions on four different foreign policy areas.

Debate probes deeper than academic classes or independent studies, asking students to defend their positions against other students who have put in just as much time researching the issues.

The competitive nature of debate makes for intense rivalries. Every debater knows the horror stories of competition — students will falsify evidence, selectively read academic research or even just target their opponent. Before the quarterfinals at the Tournament of Champions in high school, I watched one debater rattle his opponent by bringing up his breakup with a fellow debater.

Harvard University senior and debate champion Josh Zoffer pointed to the nuances of each category of the complex debate structure.

“College policy is kind of the pinnacle for debate, but it’s pretty hard to understand for a layperson,” he said. “PF and ‘parli’ are popular because they’re simpler and easier.

collis porch facetime

“game of thrones”

Scope out as many Sunday night viewing parties as possible.

$100 million KELLEY LIN // THE DARTMOUTH STAFF

There’s a great history to policy debate that you don’t really have in forensics, especially on the collegiate level.”

For our tournaments, we typically leave Friday afternoon, compete Saturday through Monday and return late on Monday. During the weekend, debaters will compete from 7 a.m. to 10 p.m., prepare new positions and research for a few hours and then catch four or five hours of sleep.

On average, Dartmouth debaters undergo the whole rigmarole of a debate tournament four times a term.

Research and speaking skills play the most important role in speech and debate.

Faced with mounds of information, debaters will sometimes spend more time on debate than they do on classes. The dedication required to win mirrors the average work week, with 30 to 40 hours spent sifting through articles and creating scenarios and reasonable explanations for why these arguments affect the judge. The information in each category is researched for months at a time. Coaches help the students perform more research, generate unique positions and aid with communication.

The refined skills and the amount of work required to compete on the college level turns off some students who expect to spend less time doing debate work.

“I did debate in high school, but it’s not something I do here,” Robbie Herbst ’16 said. “It’s just a big time commitment and a different world.”

In contrast, Jackie Chen ’16 found that debate complemented her academic skills, letting her critically analyze information both in and outside the classroom.

As students gain traction in an event, DFU director Ken Strange finds that they dedicate more time.

“A lot of college is adjusting and getting better at time management and knowing what you need to do well to do well in a class,” Strange said. “It is a lot easier for juniors and seniors to get good grades with getting used to the time commitment.”

But for the dedicated, debate has a huge

payoff. Strange lists the statistical lores of debate: A quarter of four-year debaters end up as Phi Beta Kappa, over half graduate with honors. Almost all, he said, continue onto law school.

Dartmouth boasts one of the historically strongest programs. Strange, who has led the organization since the fall of 1980, has covered a broad range of topics and brought eight teams to the finals. He says he will likely retire after this year.

Strange is a unique figure in the debate community. He has seen the college community split, reunite and react to massive changes in technology. About five years before he coached his first team to the semifinals of the NDT, the debate community split between the traditional NDT and the more progressive CEDA. On the high school level, he saw Lincoln-Douglas emerge in the early 1990s and Public Forum in the mid-2000s.

“The research which used to be in the library is now online,” Strange said. “It used to have evidence produced on paper which are now all electronic. A decade ago we would have 10 tubs full of paper. Now they walk in with a computer and a legal pad.”

The debate team has a large institutional footprint outside of the halls of the second floor of Robo. During the summer term, high school policy debaters work alongside Dartmouth debaters, learning how to make arguments of their own, potentially preparing for college. Debate coaches for the College are often graduates who haven’t moved on to law school or the next stage of their career and wish to give back to their former team, Strange said.

The 2014 debate season came to a close with a relatively disappointing result. Our two-person team at NDT racked up only three wins in a difficult pool. Our team, left largely without seasoned upperclassmen, has entered a rebuilding year. Though the season has ended, the debate strategies and mindset we’ve learned will still prove useful in our everyday lives.

There’s a new Big Green in town, and it’s a huge anonymous check.

madeleine madness

The former Secretary of State charmed hundreds with policy talk and witty anecdotes.

student elections The facetimey are running for office.

MUDDY SPORTS ON THE GREEN

divided DIMENSIONS Start wooing ’18s.

4// MIRROR

Is student government a dy

Dartmouth student apathy toward elections and Student Assembly runs high, but o story

B y MAGGIE SHIELDS AND LAUREN HUFF

“They have the concert during Green Key, right?”

Wandering around Collis for half an hour and asking 10 passers-by their thoughts has convinced me that many at Dartmouth have ver y little idea what their elected representatives actually do.

Some said they did not remember if they voted last year for student body president. Others said they couldn’t remember who ran. Many even refused to talk to me because they claimed to know nothing about student government.

As stated on its website, Student Assembly aims “to coalesce and strengthen student participation in the College’s decision-making process.”

When he ran for student body president last spring, Adrian Ferrari ’14 said he tried to tackle a contradiction inherent to the Assembly: How do you get students to pay attention to student government if the Assembly has virtually no power and cannot actually create visible change within our community?

“I saw a dying institution,” he said. “I thought if I quit ever ything else I could nurture it back to life.”

Ferrari began his campaign because he believed previous presidents struggled due to a lack of managerial experience. As the co-chair of the Inter-Community Council, he felt he knew how to organize students and accomplish meaningful change on campus.

Ferrari blames the shadow government of the Undergraduate Finance Committee for part of the Assembly’s ineffectiveness. This body, he said, is not elected but has the power to finance Student Assembly, controlling what the elected government is able to accomplish. They tend to support funding for barbecues, tailgates and Pride Week events, Ferrari said.

“To me those seem like Programming Board activities, not the policy SA should be doing,” he said.

Representatives from the UFC could not be reached for comment.

At the start of his campaign, Ferrari said the Assembly president’s role should be that of a “work horse, not a show horse,” and has principally worked to re-organize the management of student government, placing more focus on the Assembly’s five committees. The Diversity and Community Affairs, for example, ran a focus group for the financial aid office about current administrative policies’ ef fect on low-income students. The Alcohol and Harm Reduction Committee helped formulate the proposal to the administration to expand and promote the Dartmouth Bystander Inter vention program. The Student Ser vices Committee focused on implementing cost-effective solutions to problems initially posted on the Improve Dartmouth website.

Despite being the type of individual inclined to participate in student government, Ferrari said he was originally uninterested in the Assembly because it does not create policy change or wield influence over the student body.

Emmanuel Kim ’15, the former 2015 Class Council president, explained that he thought the student body’s lack of interest in student government and elections may be a cultural phenomenon.

“The atmosphere of people that come here is selfaspiration,” he said. “Campus issues are happening, but unless it’s personal to us, people aren’t really going to pay attention.”

The “Freedom Budget” proposal, he said, shows that students care about change, but he said that they do not want to put in the time to make student government ef-

fective, choosing to make change in other ways.

Alison Flint ’15 noted a similar campus phenomenon.

“I think people are hesitant to run,” she said. “I think people are losing faith in the student government and finding other outlets to change campus.”

Kim stepped down as class president after sophomore summer because he felt he could do more on campus by becoming involved in entrepreneurship activities. He founded Dartmouth Advisors, a group which provides freshmen with advising resources, including advice for organizing D-Plans.

“I saw myself being more attracted to the entrepreneurial side of things,” he said. “I thought my vice president could do the same job I did. I wanted to make a bigger impact.”

Class Council must organize programs, merchandise and events over Homecoming, Winter Carnival and Parents’ Weekend, Kim said. However, he said the council had to use most of its budget for events that did not actually attract much attention or interest from the student body.

Both Kim and Ferrari said that the higher level of inter-

est in student elections seen at other institutions probably results from their student governments’ greater power to enact change.

If our scientific sur vey of Facebook newsfeed scanning is any indication, student government commands a far more significant presence on other campuses. Alicia Kaneb, a current Georgetown University freshman, worked on the campaigns of two Georgetown juniors with the slogan “Building Your Georgetown” as they ran for student body president and vice president. She noted the importance of bombarding social media to determine the outcome of elections.

Georgetown’s candidates, however, do not limit their campaigning to online initiatives. Kaneb, for example, spread the word about the campaign the old-fashioned way, knocking on dorm room doors to persuade voters to support her candidates.

At Stanford University, elections for student government, called Associated Students of Stanford University, are typically competitive and involve heavy campaigning.

Amartya Das, a current Stanford freshman and ASSU

MIRROR //5

ying institution?

our symptoms could be part of a larger nationwide trend at universities member, explained how popular campaign methods often include distributing freebies.

“Elections are super competitive for class presidents, senate and executive positions,” Das said. “Candidates for class president run in a group of four, and they do all kinds of events like giveaways with free food and T-shirts.

We have to pay out of pocket for election campaigning, but there is a spending limit.”

Tulane University caps campaign expenditures at $100, while Georgetown’s is $300 per campaign. Stanford lists its spending limit of $1,000 for executive positions as the second-highest in the nation, behind the University of Southern California at $1,500. The University of Texas at Austin caps expenditures for executive positions at $1,020 and for first-year representatives at $612.

On the other hand, campaigning at Har vard University seems to take on a more light-hearted tone. According to Bennett Capozzi, a Har vard freshman, the Har vard Undergraduate Council does not possess much power.

“This past election, two guys ran as a joke and they ended up winning,” Capozzi said. “Then one of them

stepped down because he didn’t actually want to do it.”

According to the Har vard Crimson, juniors Samuel Clark and Gus Mayopoulos boasted the slogan “You Could Do Worse.”

“Centered on the promises of tomato basil ravioli soup ser ved daily in the dining halls, thicker toilet paper for all and ‘divesting from gender neutral weekend shuttles,’ the campaign seeks to usher in a new approach to UC leadership,” the Crimson reported.

Har vard’s campaign spending limit ranges from $150 to $250, depending on the number of candidates. Up to $900 is offered for spending reimbursements.

Spending limits at Dartmouth for student body president and vice president elections are capped at $200, while Class Council president candidates can spend up to $60.

Ferrari said he spent $50 at most for chalk and posters, which Collis reimbursed. The rest of his campaign, which included a campaign video and a website by Heidi Meyers ‘14, was designed for free.

Voter turnout for last year’s Student Assembly elections at Dartmouth was 44 percent, while Stanford’s was

48%

48%

62 percent. At Har vard, 47 percent of eligible voters participated in the most recent election, and 59 percent of Georgetown’s undergraduate student body voted in the 2013 elections.

Though campaigning and election turnout may look different at other schools, difficulties with bureaucracy do not seem to be unique to Dartmouth’s student government.

Sam Karnes, a freshman member of the University of Texas at Austin’s student government, expressed concern that the UT government cannot always live up to its potential.

“I think the government does have the potential [to enact significant change on campus],” Karnes said. “The administration works ver y closely with student government, and it does value our opinion. Sometimes the bureaucracy gets in the way, and it gets kind of frustrating.

Obviously, student government doesn’t have as much impact as it could, but overall, it does have the potential, I think, to make a difference on campus.”

Sarah Bierbrier, a freshman and member of the undergraduate student government at Tulane, expressed a similar sense of frustration. She said it is sometimes difficult to enact long-lasting legislation.

“Administrators at Tulane are ver y willing to meet students on USG, but making lasting changes is sometimes a struggle,” Bierbrier said. “Despite this, USG has worked on projects in the past few years that I think will make a lasting impact on the university.”

Das, on the other hand, cited lack of communication as a main struggle of Stanford’s student government, potentially leading to a lack of interest in ASSU affairs.

Karnes said notable recent initiatives of UT government include opening the librar y all-day on weekdays during finals and instituting a “uRide” system, which offers students rides, including to areas off campus, through 3:00 a.m.

Members also push for agenda items that will excite students, Karnes said.

“They are also tr ying to do some student-oriented things, like getting tailgating on campus and beer at basketball games,” Karnes said.

Tulane’s student government has also demonstrated its ability to respond to student needs, Bierbrier said, promptly responding to anti-smoking sentiment on campus.

“After a referendum that was sent out last year showed that a large percent of the student body wanted a smoke-free campus, USG drafted legislation to urge the administration to make our campus smoke-free,” Bierbrier said. “This past academic year there have been designated smoking areas on campus, but the fall semester will be the first semester where Tulane is smoke-free.”

This academic year, GUSA launched the “What’s a Hoya?” program, which organizes sessions about issues of diversity, sexual assault and community, based on monthly themes, for first-year students. Participating students receive a boost in the housing selection process.

Though many students opt out of Dartmouth’s student government and instead pursue other outlets to express their opinions, apathy about elections can only fuel the sense of an absent Assembly on campus. Indifference to student elections seems to be prevalent on campuses across the nation, but many of these student governments still continue to propose creative initiatives that will improve student life and campus climate. In order to avoid a downward spiral of ineffective student democracy, students governments must maximize their potential to enact change, and students must engage with these campus leaders.

Information courtesy of ASSU, Dartmouth SA, UT Student Government, Harvard UC and Georgetown Student Association website.

ARMIN MAHBANOOZADEH // THE DARTMOUTH STAFF

6// MIRROR

Through the Looking Glass

Finding independence through solitude COLUMN

B y abby cohen

“All alone! Whether you like it or not, alone is something you’ll be quite a lot.”

-- Dr. Seuss I think it’s a pretty common fear, regardless of how popular you were in high school, to worr y about making friends in college. There is safety in numbers, and we all had posses in some sense of the word (not necessarily the Regina George Plastics version) that we left behind coming to Dartmouth.

Enter the “shmob.” There is no trait more characteristic and distinguishing of a freshman than the inability to do anything alone. There’s that old joke that girls always have to go to the bathroom with a friend. That may seem so middle-school dance-like, but year after year, freshmen successfully recreate this phenomenon.

And it’s not only the inability to enter a basement alone — it’s the inability to go to the gym alone, walk into the first day of class without someone else or wait alone in the Hop grill line.

Freshman year I didn’t like to do anything alone. I didn’t think there was anything worse than making a solitar y walk down the FoCo runway — because obviously ever yone would be looking, judging me for being alone, right? I wish someone had told me that people don’t actually pay as much attention as we think they do. I was under this strange impression that even though I didn’t give a second thought to others’ solitude, ever yone else cared about mine.

It’s impossible for me to classify my freshman year as anything but the antithesis of independent. I was proud of myself for going 500 miles away from home for school, for successfully learning how to do laundry by myself and for only calling home a couple of times a week. In my mind, that’s what independence was. I was checking off boxes and thought it all added up. Yet in no way did my freshman-year self fit anywhere under the umbrella of independence.

There was security in surrounding myself with other people, whether or not they had values and lifestyles that aligned with my own. Others gave me a sense of validation, a reassurance that I belonged at Dartmouth and that how I spent my time was beneficial. I recognized that I was becoming a different person than I was in high school, and I assumed that just came with the territor y of my newfound, so-called independence. I was trapped in the Dartmouth happiness bubble, and in my mind, I equated being in a group with being happy.

I can’t pinpoint the moment when I realized how silly I was being and got over myself. Because that really is what it was — getting over my idea that for some reason, people who I didn’t know and didn’t know me were giving me more than a passing glance if I ever dared to undertake an activity alone. And I’m not implying that people don’t care about ever yone else in the Dartmouth community, because I think they do. I just wish that I had figured out long ago that it’s not all about sizing up

people from afar.

I don’t have some clichéd stor y about how my off-term working in D.C. or my study abroad in Madrid showed me what real independence was, because I don’t think that either of those experiences were any more formative than the terms I spent in Hanover. Though I think pursuing opportunities outside your comfort zone

“I have learned that there is also security in selfconfidencE.”

are crucial to becoming a more grounded, confident person, it doesn’t take an adventurous term to become more independent.

Becoming independent is a process of coming into your own in the places you feel most comfortable.

I didn’t wake up one morning and decide that I wanted to be a hermit and end my social interactions with other people. I didn’t decide that my friends weren’t fun or that I didn’t enjoy having company. I just realized that doing things alone didn’t reveal any sort of flaw or abnormality in my personality. For once, I noticed that doing things alone was actually a mark of confidence, a reflection of true independence of which I previously had an entirely misguided perception.

It’s hard to deny that it takes guts to have a solitar y meal at a dark side FoCo table during the 6:30 p.m. dinner rush. I still have yet to do that, nor do I think I ever will, but sometimes it’s nice to just leave my phone at home, exit out of blitz and be free from dealing with relationships for a day, or even just a couple of hours.

Getting caught up in the moment is so easy here — there is always so much that you could be doing, or rather, there is always so much that you feel that you should be doing. There is a tendency to go with the grain and make compromises, choosing company when the fact of the matter is, you’d rather be doing something alone. I felt that I occasionally lost sight of myself in the crowd. My self-reliance didn’t come from making new friends, tr ying new things or forcing myself to follow the norms. I became independent once I realized that I was truly happy with the person I am. Sports and academics defined my high school experience, and realizing, finally, that the world is so much wider than that instilled a sense of adventure in me.

Yes, I’m an economics and Spanish double major, but I have no idea where I want to be in five years. I’m moving abroad next year to ser ve in the Peace Corps, and most people don’t understand my motivations for that.

Courtesy of Abby Cohen

Her freshman year, Abby Cohen ’14 avoided being alone wherever she went. Now, she realizes the importance of solitude for developing self-confidence.

I’m not looking for validation or approval, though — I’m finally making decisions for me. Security may come from enjoying the anonymity of being just a face in a group, but I have learned that there is also security in self-confidence.

Confidence is a state of mind; you can find more comfort in your own strengths and abilities than in what other people can provide for you. It took me until this term, my senior spring, to realize one ver y basic thing: the reason you have friends is because people think that you are someone with whom

they’d like to spend time. And if other people think that, then you should, too.

As Dr. Seuss so tactfully stated, the person you are ultimately going to spend the most time with in your life is yourself. I think that people rarely frame that statement’s sentiment in a positive light. It’s a positive feedback cycle.

Once I broke free of my ridiculous aversion to being alone and my complementar y fear of judgment, I realized that independence stems from self-confidence and, simultaneously, selfconfidence stems from independence.

Cohen is a member of The Dartmouth staf f.

MIRROR //7

What have we done? IN CASE YOU WERE COLUMN By Seanie Civale and Amanda Smith WONDERING COLUMN By Katie Sinclair

Last week we said that senior spring is hilariously weird. This week, we were told that we are hilariously weird. We find that hilarious and weird. And so it goes.

The good news is, we have un-superglued ourselves from our futon/bed and we spent the week supergluing other things. We’ll get to that later. But we also did productive stuff like putting out fires, interviewing for real people jobs, ordering books for the term, cursing HBO Go then eating lots of chicken, petting therapy dogs, wearing a crop top, plotting our next hair color/cut and embarking on new adventures.

We have also realized that Drake’s song “Started from the Bottom” could have been written about Madeleine Albright. If not the whole song, then the chorus. She inspires us.

Although the “first female Secretary of State” ship has sailed, we hope that one day we too will rise from the bottom and do something cool. For now, this is what our “here” looks like: Once upon a time we didn’t want to do our homework. So we didn’t. Instead we borrowed a friend’s car, said “okay” when he asked us to be careful with the half-broken key that hung from a lanyard and set off on the open road.

We actually had a destination in mind. We didn’t know how to get there, but we trusted Google Maps for that. It all would’ve worked out okay, too, had we paid any attention to the Google Map. But we didn’t, so we missed our exit on the highway and then drove 18 miles out of our way to correct the mistake.

After a stop at the Quechee Gorge, we asked Google where in Vermont we could buy a pet piglet by Googling “piglets VT.” Our search was futile. We found only farm piglets raised for slaughter, not the type we might raise like a child. Though we didn’t give up hope on the piglet, we turned our attention to the small animal section of the Pet and Aquarium Center in Lebanon. There, Seanie terrified a guinea pig, and Amanda yelled at a rabbit for bullying its penmates. We stayed away from the Roborovski hamsters, as Seanie had received an extremely painful bite from one over spring break, leaving her with a nearly imperceptible scar on her left index finger.

Then we left. Or at least, we tried to leave, until we realized that the half-broken car key had broken all the way. The metal key part separated entirely from the top plastic bit, which now hung from the lanyard, sad and alone. The metal part, our ticket back to campus, was lost somewhere among the

animals of the Pet and Aquarium Center.

An exhaustive search yielded no key. A second exhaustive search also yielded no key. The situation was funny, and then it was dire. The third search was tinged with panic of the sort one feels when trapped in a New Hampshire pet shop. We were on our knees crawling beneath the parakeet pen when a shop employee came up to us.

She asked what were looking for — more of a judgmental statement on how pathetic we looked than a question. We told her about the half of a car key we were missing.

She said she had just thrown it away.

As we walked with her over to the garbage can in question, we briefly harbored the hope that she would know where to look, or that the key would be on top or some other lucky situation would arise that didn’t require us to dig with our hands through animal debris.

But alas. We picked at the trash delicately before admitting that delicacy would not serve us well here, and then we just went for it. Eventually the key was located, cushioned in a pile of bird feed beneath some questionable pellet-shaped items.

So overcome were we with exhaustion and relief that the only thing to do from there was a victory trip to Ice Cream Fore-U. Victory might have been sweeter had we not had to leave the cash-only ice cream shop to find a bank and pay a $3.75 service charge to take out cash to pay for a $2.50 ice cream. But still. We recommend the Fly Fishing Fudge.

It tastes like sweet bliss.

We made it back to campus in more than one piece, but that key situation was soon to be ameliorated. We brought out the big guns. Literally. We acquired a hot glue gun, superglue and tape. And used them all. On first trial in the ignition, the key broke again.

We glued and taped more until the key was nearly unidentifiable, at which point it worked better than new, if that’s possible. Much to our luck, the owner found the end result worthy of a chuckle.

Yesterday we checked in with the friend who let us use the car and were informed that the key is holding up “pretty well.” We consider that a victory.

We started at the bottom, stayed there for a while, now we’re here.

We still plan on purchasing a piglet. Unlike our fall plan to purchase a golf cart, this will not fall through. We are accepting donations toward a $4,000 high-quality piglet.

Yours from the middle-ish (but could be on the top with a piglet), Lucy & Ethel (& future piglet)

In case you were wondering, the traditional American breakfast of “bacon and eggs” was a marketing ploy invented

by Edward Bernays (nephew of Sigmund Freud) in the 1920s, aimed to increase the market share of Beech-Nut bacon. The breakfast combination had been around before then in England, of course, but the majority of Americans at the time started their days with toast and coffee. Bernays convinced doctors to testify about the health benefits of a “complete breakfast,” and America’s love affair with bacon began. While Bernays undoubtedly exaggerated the health benefits of a bacon and egg breakfast, I am grateful for his work.

Without bacon and eggs, there would be no impetus to invent the breakfast sandwich, which in my humble opinion, is the pinnacle of all breakfast food.

Two years ago, I was in France for the language study abroad program in L yon.

The French do many culinar y things well, but breakfast is not one of them. I would sit across the table from my ver y attractive host brother, with whom I never talked because I was ashamed of my French and in awe of his European good looks. He would proceed to down a bowl of coffee — yes, not a mug but a bowl, a practice all caffeine addicts of the world probably admire — and eat two scraps of a baguette with butter and jam. I usually think coffee can be counted as a nutritious-enough breakfast, but that is not the case when you have four hours of class and must sur vive until 1 p.m. to get lunch.

Also, the amount of baguette it takes for me to feel full in the morning is a bit excessive (we’re talking like half a baguette here), and I didn’t want to seriously deplete the Filhol family’s bread supply, so I spent most of my mid-mornings in L yon dreaming about the sublime meal that is a Collis breakfast sandwich. I did a lot of other things besides think about food, but this is a column about breakfast, so I felt it apt to show that all my homesickness and culture shock could be symbolized by my desperate longing for an English muffin with an egg inside it.

As a connoisseur of breakfast sandwiches, I can easily state that Collis’s are the best, hands down. I have eaten breakfast sandwiches at ever y dining establishment on campus that offers them, so I feel qualified to judge. Novack’s are the worst, followed closely by FoCo’s. One’s first thought would be that the Hop would be your go-to place for meat and eggs

on bread, but after many trials, Collis emerged as the clear winner for me.

Maybe it’s because they use real eggs, or maybe it’s because you can only get a breakfast sandwich before 10:30 a.m. but the fine chefs of Collis have somehow managed to create the perfect ratio of egg to cheese to sausage to wax paper. It’s like an egg McMuffin, yet made with love. A Collis breakfast sandwich has the ability to brighten your day, even if it starts with a 9L or an 8 a.m. final.

As my friends are well aware, I tend to schedule my days around food. “It’s 1:20 a.m.? Stop the pong game! It’s time to call it a night! Late Night Collis closes in 10 minutes!” Knowing that breakfast sandwiches will run out by 10:15 a.m. is one of the key ways I motivate myself to get out of bed before I start work at 11.

Annoying people keep mentioning that there are “seven weeks of term left,” which then leads seniors down a road of melancholic nostalgia. I wonder what I’ll miss. I’ll miss the Green, of course, but we spend approximately 50 percent of our time at Dartmouth missing the Green, since it’s either covered by snow or pungent mud. I’ll miss the wonderful people at the Hinman Mail Center who once let me claim a non-emergency package at 5:05 p.m.

I’ll miss my friends, my professors and even dorm life, because trust me, cleaning your own bathroom is sincerely overrated. But of course, one thing at the top of my “Things I’ll Miss” list is my morning Collis breakfast sandwich.

From a culinar y perspective, I’m sure there must exist a breakfast sandwich that is as good as or better than Collis’s. But it’s not just the sandwich — it’s what the sandwich represents. That perfect ratio of egg, cheese, bread and meat is an excellent metaphor for Dartmouth. Though we may all come from different animal byproducts, we still work together to create the platonic breakfast ideal.

While we’re all airing our grievances, I’m making a motion for a new campaign: Occupy Collis. Late risers deser ve an equal opportunity to enjoy the deliciousness that is a Collis breakfast sandwich, and as such, the system is inherently biased toward morning people and those with 10As. I’m also invested in making mozzarella sticks available 24/7, but on that, I’m willing to compromise.

8// MIRROR

STORY

life advice from MarianO B y marian lurio

Dartmouth students do plenty of “experiential learning” — maybe not the kind that College President Phil Hanlon has campaigned for. But simply being a college student necessitates experiential learning. As I enter the beginning of the end of junior year (aka the end of third week of term), I feel compelled to share what I’ve learned about Dartmouth so far. While I like to consider myself an active, in-the-know member of the Dartmouth community, I mistook a group of overeager high school Model United Nations students for Dimensions prospies a few weekends ago. I was also unaware that Dimensions is going to be taking place over three separate weekends this year until I told this stor y to my friend the other day. With that information in mind, I have some advice for you underclassmen (as well as any ’18s reading this, if this weekend happens to be one of the Dimensions weekends). Take it at your own risk.

Transitioning into Spring We all know the saying, “April showers bring May flowers.” If you take showers to mean melting snow and excessive manure, then spring has slowly but surely come to Hanover. My recent allergic flare-ups may be the best scientific indicator that spring is in the air. Or that Topliff is really, really dusty (and maybe moldy). But Har vey Dent once said, “The night is darkest just before the dawn.” Do not let the warmer temperature fool you — histor y and the trusted meteorologists over at Weather.com indicate that it’s not yet time for you to ship home your winter wardrobe and break out those sundresses. And unless you have enough self-control to avoid taking shortcuts through muddy pastures on the way to class, do wear rubber shoes (i.e. boots).

This is not the time to break out your fresh new kicks.

Take that, global warming.

Room Draw Room draw is no joke. If you somehow forget or miss your time slot, you’ve allowed those ranked below you in the lotter y system the chance to reser ve the room you’ve had your eye on. During room draw, I was prepared with an ordered list of 40 different rooms (all singles) I wanted in Ripley-WoodwardSmith and Topliff, which I ranked based off of square footage and what floor the room was on. Over the summer, I wondered how my mediocre housing number landed me a huge room, but I think I now know why.

When selecting rooms, find out if the ground floor is secretly below ground. (Hint: avoid Smith.) Little did I know during room draw that each dorm has a different definition of “ground floor,” and I ended up with a room literally next to the sidewalk.

Consequently, I have not put up my window shades since the first day of classes. Also, don’t choose a room that is more than a 20-second walk away from the bathroom — after a few weeks, you realize that you’ve unconsciously trained yourself to drink less water.

Having a room on the “ground floor” (technically first floor) on the side of the main entr yway without a bathroom is an interesting combination. Rubbing shoulders with so many different students as they enter or leave the dorm has provided me with countless awkward interactions. I’ve seen it all: group hangouts (annoying — move elsewhere!), fights, makeouts, fights and then makeouts, a naked person walking from the bathroom to his or her room — the list goes on. Living in this precarious location has shamed me into wearing shower shoes.

Other perks of being on the first floor: participating in the U.S. Census! I have been visited multiple times this week by a man from the U.S. Census Bureau, who tells me I’ve been randomly selected from the hundreds of students in Topliff as one of 10 people he will sur vey. I expect to hear a loud knocking on my door tonight, since I was “too busy to talk” last time he came.

I was already skeptical of U.S. Census sur veys, since they fail to capture the true demographics of the countr y, but now I’m more than skeptical of their methodology. Both my nextdoor neighbor and the student who lives across from her have spoken with this man, whose name I have forgotten. Unless he actually is a huge creep and we have a whole other issue on our hands, I can’t help but think he is just inter viewing people on this floor to avoid using the stairs.

If you find yourself in a similar living situation, the most important tip I can give you is to make sure you own towels of an appropriate length. Also, while I personally haven’t been willing to make the financial commitment required to buy a new bathrobe, make sure you invest in a bathrobe rather than the one your mom bought before your middle-school growth spurt.

ERIN O’NEIL // THE DARTMOUTH SENIOR STAFF

Green Key Green Key is the one time a year students can pretend they go to a party school that’s not in the middle of an Arctic tundra. Since Green Key is all about enjoying the spring weather that has finally arrived, there are lots of outdoor activities.

Avoid sleeping until 2 p.m. during Green Key — unless it’s Sunday.

Ever y year, Programming Board hosts an evening concert, usually headlined by an artist probably past his or her prime. This isn’t the University of Pennsylvania’s Spring Fling. Last year, I was beyond excited to watch Shaggy perform some songs from his 2000 album “Hot Shot.” Although I was disappointed that he played only a few of his post-2000 songs, I still really wanted a picture with him. After befriending his backup dancers and singers as they wandered down Tuck Mall, I was able to press my face to the window of the SUV he rode in. Sadly, his driver told me that I would not be allowed to meet or get a picture with him because “he’s already taken his shirt off.” As a longtime fan of the one Shaggy album I’ve heard, I was understandably crushed.

Sophomore Summer I could write an entire book with funny stories from sophomore summer. Since there’s so much random advice you really need to know, I’ve made the following list of the dos and don’ts of sophomore summer: Don’t make this the term to get rid of that pesky QDS credit. More specifically, do not take statistics if you are a humanities-inclined student who hasn’t touched a calculator since high school calculus.

Do get an air conditioning unit for your window if your residence doesn’t have central air — totally worth the cost. This may only be allowed for students with allergies (like myself), so here’s hoping that’s a thing for you, too.

Don’t let heavy AC units fall out of your window!

For those who prefer to enjoy nature from the comfort of an airconditioned room with a view, rather than toil on a hike or swim in the river, don’t forget to take your vitamin D supplements.

Do learn to love the selections and obesity-inducing portion sizes at Ice Cream Fore-U. Proceed with caution if you are lactoseintolerant and/or have a weak digestive system.

Do appreciate the relative absence of long lines in Collis.

Applying for an Internship Corporate recruiting events are strikingly similar to women’s rush.

The same topics are pretty much off-limit in conversations, and the room is filled with forced enthusiasm. As far as I can tell, the biggest difference between the two is that there would be widespread support among upperclassman students for corporate recruiting events to adopt a freshman ban.

If you decide to join your peers and go corporate, know the answer to the following questions: “Why finance?” and “So, can you tell me what a bank does?”

Even if you’re not an aspiring financier, you will probably find that searching for an unpaid (or paid but not making nearly as much money as in finance) internship can present its own list of challenges. When an internship seeks out business, communications, marketing (and so on) majors, you may find yourself questioning the value and expense of your own liberal arts education.

If all else fails, consider a normal summer job.

Studying Abroad That you can only bring one large suitcase when visiting a foreign countr y for 10 weeks was enough to ensure that I never signed up for a study abroad program. My plans to “backpack” through Europe at some point in the near future may therefore be unrealistic. However, from what my more daring friends have shared about their experiences studying abroad and the assumptions I am prepared to make based on my viewing of the film “Taken,” I believe I am prepared to offer advice on this topic.

In terms of host families, hope for the best. Expect the worst.

The worse, the better in terms of funny stories you can tell your friends back home.

This is from my own personal experience vacationing with my parents. Don’t be fooled by how easy Europeans make bicycling through main traffic and the smaller streets and alleyways look. In my one-hour bike tour, I crashed into two outdoor cafes as well as a number of pedestrians. My failed attempt to be Euro-chic by way of bicycling (a beanie was also involved) has only increased my distaste for cyclists on the road, here and abroad.

Don’t tell people, namely random foreign men you’ve never met before, the exact location/building/floor/room where you are staying.