MIRROR 10.10.2014
Selling the product of fraternities | 2
For whom the Baker bells toll| 3
Sports and Faith| 4-5
Cover Stories| 8 SHUOQI CHEN// THE DARTMOUTH
2// MIRROR
EDITOR’S NOTE
Courtesy of Erin Landau
This week, The Mirror is getting personal. I’m not really sure how it happened, but all of our writers this week added a little tinge of personal history to their stories. I feel like I’m consistently sharing those deep personal secrets with my very limited readership — although apparently I have 43 followers on Newsle who receive these little literary gems each week (hi Dad). I love the issues in this week’s edition because I have some personal stake in each and every one of them. As a former athlete-turned-NARP and a practicing Jew, the centerfold on faith and sports touched a lot of issues I haven’t grappled with since freshman year. It’s been challenging for me to find a religious community here — when I came to Dartmouth I tried to get involved with Hillel and Chabad, but they weren’t really my scene. Whenever I’m home and attend Shabbat services I’m reminded of how much my faith means to me, and it saddens me that I have been unable to find that here at college. Last week, I attended Yom Kippur services at Dartmouth for the first time since freshman year. I didn’t have high expectations, having attended before and been highly disappointed, but I thought I’d give it another shot. Before the service began, a tremendous violinist played the Kol Nidre, arguably one of the most important prayers in Judaism, for those congregated in Rollins Chapel. I was unabashedly moved to tears. Here I was in a crowd of strangers singing prayers and connecting in a way I hadn’t thought possible outside of my own little Jewish community back home. This connection with members of my faith, with whom I shared very little else, got me thinking about some of the major issues I’ve had at my time at Dartmouth and how my identity is tied to the mistakes, successes and relationships I’ve made in my college career. While many of us do so many interesting and creative things with our time here, whether through Greek life or athletics or religious groups, we must realize that it is the amalgamation of them all, instead of the pieces themselves, that construct and form our identities.
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MIRROR R MIRROR EDITOR ERIN LANDAU
EDITOR-IN-CHIEF LINDSAY ELLIS PUBLISHER CARLA LARIN
EXECUTIVE EDITORS MICHAEL RIORDAN STEPHANIE McFEETERS
story story
During the first weeks of this term, my social relevance somehow increased . With fraternity rush impending, I, alongside many other men in my class, was starting to be taken seriously as a potential new member by fraternities. This was a strange reversal from our invisibility to the frat brothers when we hung around in their basements as freshmen — it was almost a throwback to orientation. “What are you taking this term?” and “Where are you from?” were questions I heard far too frequently. In the weeks leading up to rush, as I hung out at houses and attended pre-rush events, I felt almost as if each house were delivering a sales pitch and that the alphabet soup of Greek letters represented different product brands. At each house I went to, I was sold a distinct and well-packaged product. Perhaps, when one considers the way business culture is so intertwined with campus culture, it should come as no surprise that rush at Dartmouth shares some striking resemblances to the way businesses conduct marketing. Interestingly enough, the adage that ever y fraternity has a unique character to it proved to be true as I spent time at houses I hadn’t frequented freshman year. Sometimes, these characters came to life in an almost parody-like enactment of the houses’ respective reputations. If the fraternities were actually companies, some of their commercial slogans might sound like the following: “We’re not really into the frat scene... we just... are...” *snaps* “Line for pong is always six, no girls allowed.” “The only thing sweeter than our mixed drinks are our brothers!”
’18: “Why do I keep getting these blitzes about Casual Thursday on Wednesday?”
Blitz your overheards to mirror@thedartmouth.com!
ANNIKA PARK // THE DARTMOUTH
by james jia “Because our social dues are so high, we could play pong with champagne, but we still drink Keystone.” As I met fraternity members and even other ’17s who were looking to rush, I started to ponder why I was rushing at all. Last fall, I had the option to reinvent my identity by starting college, and this fall, I came to see rush as a way to live out that identity by surrounding myself with similar individuals in a Greek house. The only problem was, I still didn’t know who I wanted to be. From the onset, I knew that I wasn’t ever going to be a stereotypical party-hard “frat bro,” but at the same time, I wanted to meet new people and have a good time. Going into rush week, I had a few houses in mind that I was seriously considering. I made an effort to hang out and get to know the members I didn’t already know, but despite my attempts at casual conversation and assimilation, I would be plagued by a strange feeling by the end of the night. I tried to imagine the person I would be at each house — who I would be after two years of brotherhood — and no matter what house I was at, I wasn’t satisfied with my future self. It was for this reason that, even as I entered the last 15 minutes of rush night, I still did not know what house I wanted to end up in — whose slogan fit me best. I inadvertently entered into the mindset of thinking that my affiliation would entirely determine my identity. I bought into the concept of fraternities as businesses, as a collection of distinct brands. Through some twist of logic, however, instead of simply buying a product that they were selling,
’17: “I do have standards. If it’s -10 degrees I will not go for a booty call.”
’18: “He had the audacity to complain about the art in McLaughlin — that’s like a Dartmouth firs- world problem.”
I envisioned myself as a product for them to brand. As if I were some gray, formless matter, I had sought an identity entirely based on and constructed from the Greek system. So at 8:55 p.m., there I stood on Webster Avenue — paralyzed by doubt and anxiety, thinking about ever y version of my future self and wondering if it had been a good idea to rush at all. Finally, I realized that ultimately, which house I decided on didn’t matter. After having been alive for 19 years, I had already developed an identity that I was satisfied with, and I didn’t need to be in a Greek house to live up to my perceived ideal. A Greek house wouldn’t change who I was, only I could do that. It was so simple. All the internal turmoil and indecision that had been building up for weeks ended with perhaps the most anticlimactic five minutes of my life. I simply walked to the house I was most comfortable at, shook out and that was that. People choose to rush for all sorts of reasons. Some do it for the sense of community. Others do so because they like the upperclassmen at a house or because their friends rushed. Some rush for social status and some just do it to tr y something new. All of these are perfectly fine reasons to rush a house. For me, rush was about defining myself as an individual before it was about finding a group of guys that I liked hanging out with. For future classes, you are not the product — Greek life is. And it’s your decision whether or not to buy it. So rush. Or don’t rush. Just know that, either way, your affiliation or lack thereof doesn’t define you.
Women’s and gender studies professor: “Orgasming is like sneezing — everyone’s gotta do it!”
’15: “I danced with way too many people I TA’ed...”
For Whom the Baker Bells Toll story
By Hannah Hyun-Jeong Nam
NATALIE CANTAVE // THE DARTMOUTH SENIOR STAFF
As the air gets colder and the sky starts to merge darker shades of blue and purple, I often find myself, whether suffocating in the stacks on Sunday night, hanging in my room or lounging on the Green, absentmindedly wondering why the bells of Baker Librar y haven’t yet tolled the “Alma Mater.” It is not long after I pause my work and mull over this thought that the bells unfailingly begin, and it is then that I resume my work with a habitual nod of satisfaction. When I first came to Dartmouth a few weeks back, ever y upperclassman I met would talk to me about the bells and the diverse and seemingly random songs that rung out across campus at 3:47 p.m. on some idle Tuesday. Although my “ooh”s and “aah”s started to get a little strained by the 16th or so time that the stor y was recounted, the aura of myster y surrounding the bells did not dwindle. As time passed, I came to believe that the myth about the bells was just that, a myth, another vestige of the safety talk — not once had they struck a tune other than the “Alma Mater.” At 10 p.m. on a Saturday night as I pored over a psychology textbook for a midterm, something inconceivable happened — the theme to “Harr y Potter” boomed across the empty (sidenote: I will never be studying on a Saturday night again) librar y, the bells tolling away for not just the first verse, but also the second. Stu-
dents greeted this iconic theme song with a sudden roar streaming from outside, and even inside, the librar y in clear delight. Freshmen talked about it the next day, and so many questions lingered in our minds — who, or what, rings the bells? Who decides which songs to play? How could songs even be requested? People had a vague notion that it was possible, yet not a single person knew the details. So I kept asking. Ever y student who I approached was stumped. “I really like them — they’re really encouraging when you hear songs that you know and you’re like ‘Oh!’ It makes my day,” Ashley Kekona ’18 said. However, not even Nigel Mills ’15, who works at the librar y, knew how the songs were requested — or even that they could be. “I didn’t know you could — I thought the College just chose... based off of feedback from alumni,” he said. This is wrong. Other students expressed confusion over the nature of the bell playing in and of itself. Some had a few hypotheses. “My friend Young told me that it’s a machine that actually plays it, not a person,” said Taeho Sung ’17. He also did not know how to request songs. Kristina Williams ’16 heard the bells even before she even enrolled, through a Dartmouth program for high school students. “Well, when I first got to Dart-
mouth [it was] my senior year in high school and I remember I was going to the bell tower, and they were playing a song,” she said, adding that the bells were a reason she came to Dartmouth. Annie Ahn ’18 said the bells provide a needed distraction during long days. “I really like them because whenever I’m having a busy day and the bells start playing it makes me feel calm, and it kind of reminds me of my school pride,” she said. “It also motivates me to move for ward each day.” When asked what song would play on the bells in her ideal world, she chose “Crazy Love” by Mindy Gledhill. While shrouded in myster y, the actual process of requesting a song is ver y simple (I even figured it out from the Internet). All you need to do is Blitz “Bells” with a song name and a date and time. If you want the song to be played on a specific date, then send the blitz well in advance as new songs have to be programmed. Thankfully we’re not the first generation of Dartmouth undergrads to be confused about the nature of the bells. In a 1960 issue of The Dartmouth, the mechanisms of the bells were disclosed for the first time after much speculation. About 20 years later, in the 1981 winter edition of Kiewit Comments, another article regarding the bells was published, titled “Who Rings Baker Bells?” Decades later, it is high time to revive the topic.
Ozias Silsby, Class of 1785, rang the first campus bell, earning a two-pound-and-twoshilling hourly wage. (For clarification’s sake, the 15 original bells of Baker Librar y were first installed and played in 1928, with a 16th donated in 1981.) When I first set out to discover the myster y behind the bells, I tried to inter view the current bell ringer, figuring that this person must be an expert musician and extremely knowledgeable about the histor y of one of our campus’s most distinguishable features. This person does not exist. A mechanical system of the bells made by Walter Durrschmidt in the College’s own physics laborator y controls the physical ringing of the bells. The bells went digital in 1997, after music major Peter Yoo ’98 and computer science major Jon Feldman ’97 undertook an electronic overhaul of the previous programming. I tried to reach out to the bell programer, but recieved no response, so some parts of the stor y will just have to remain a myster y. Now when I hear a tune start to echo across campus from the bells of Baker Tower, I pause and reflect on this rare moment of clarity amid the confusion that we face throughout our over whelming days. I think about who chose that particular song for that particular day and hour and who is probably feeling the same way, too.
MIRROR //3
Trending D @ RTMOUTH
Shonda Thursdays
Bake Sales It’s that time of year again. Head to Novack for your sugar fix.
Bonfire?
So even though they start building way too late every year, it seems like this is cutting it close...
Probation Oops, clearly some people are not taking the whole “no pledging” thing very seriously. Tsk tsk.
Interviews Try to be nice to your peers you see wandering around in real people clothes.
Creepy alums Too soon? We’ve seen them out there.
Winter is coming
Courtesy of Eli Burakian
4// MIRROR
Playing For a H Centerfold
By
Adam Frank ’15 is a non-denominational co-leader of the Dartmouth chapter of the Fellowship of Christian Athletes, a religious group that aims to connect students — athletes and non-athletes — to their faith through athletics. Frank, a member of the baseball team, has been involved with FCA since his freshman year. He said he sees competing as an opportunity to share his stor y with others. “I’m not really playing for myself,” Frank said. “I’m playing for a higher purpose, and I’m under the belief that God has blessed me with the opportunity to play at a high level, and I just use that to the best of my ability.” The question of balancing faith, aggression and competition arises when thinking about faith in the context of identity. How can you be truly competitive and successful while also living a faithbased life? Frank said his faith helped him pull through a difficult time in his baseball career — in determining what role his faith would play in his competitive life. After a successful freshman year as starting pitcher for the Big Green baseball team, Frank saw a decline in his performance his sophomore and junior years. Junior year was especially difficult, as Frank had wanted to be drafted to play professionally in Major League Baseball. “I pitched probably four times all year,” Frank said. “It was a big shot to the ego.” Frank decided to either put more time and effort into baseball — at the cost of his academic career — or give up. In hindsight, he said he realized his pride prevented him from seeing the “big picture” — that God meant for him to finish his time at Dartmouth. Frank said he decided to let go of what he wanted and accept what God planned for him. Now, he is looking for ward to his senior season. Sportsmanship is the first word that comes to mind when I think about the intersection between athletics and faith. For 12 years I played basketball and attended Catholic school, where I was taught that sportsmanship was what set me apart from other teams and players. I learned that respect and consideration for opponents was how to put my faith into action. I imagine that quite a number of people associate faith with courtesy and respect. I hope ever yone is taught the “golden rule,” and it is one of the principal teachings I can remember from Catholic school. The intersection between sportsmanship, faith and athletics has inspired many before me, religion professor and department chair Randall Balmer informed me. Balmer said the “Muscular Christianity” movement of 19th-centur y England influenced many sports, and even basketball creator James Naismith incorporated the idea of sportsmanship when inventing the game. You’ve probably heard a rumor about that one class the entire football team is taking. Just like a rumor, it’s based in fact, but exaggerated. Each day almost 300 students — athletes and nonathletes — get ready for their religion course. Titled “Sports, Ethics and Religion,” Religion 65 has the highest enrollment in the department this fall. The course’s popularity far exceeded the expectations of Balmer, who designed and teaches the course. Balmer thought about the course for years before designing it to garner interest in the department, and to get students to consider sports and religion in a different context. The class includes debates and a segment that Balmer likes to call “men behaving badly, or boys will be boys?” where he shows a clip of a sports current event and asks students to discuss the event’s ethics. Despite this rather unsporstmanly conduct, upon talking to Christian student athletes about how their faith influences them, the issue of sportsmanship didn’t come up. Anthony Anzivino ’16, a Catholic FCA leadership council member, shares the idea that playing a sport is merely a facet of a greater purpose. Anzivino is a member of both the cross-countr y team
MIRROR //5
Higher Purpose Veronique Davis and the track team, making him “in-season” in the fall, winter and spring. “God’s given me a gift,” Anzivino said. “On the surface, when I’m going to practice, it’s because I want to get faster for the next race. But I want to get faster for the next race, because I want to use this gift to the best of my ability.” So yes, sportsmanship can be a measure of living a faith-based life, but the same thing can be said for those not involved with faith. Why is there a connection between sports and faith at all? For Anzivino, the answer is simple. When he looks at running in the context of his faith, it’s easier to run with his faith then without it. With his faith, Anzivino is relieved of the pressure to run a certain distance or time. He struggles with this, as it’s easy to fall into the “trap” of focusing on the small things like the time and winning. But when he’s able to let go of the pressure, “it’s the most freeing thing,” Anzivino said. For FCA leadership council member Sarah DeLozier ’15, the connection is similar. She sees her faith as an influence on the “big picture” of her life, though this wasn’t always true. DeLozier is a “technically Episcopalian” member of the cross-countr y and track teams, but she doesn’t feel strongly affiliated with her denomination. DeLoizer said she is still working out how God influences her life. “I honestly believe that God put running in my life... to challenge [me] in ways I might not have gotten other wise,” she said, agreeing that sports ser ves a higher purpose. These students and countless others consider their faith an essential part of life on campus. Yet when I was thinking of students to inter view for this article, I found myself at a loss for whom to contact. I was sure I had friends involved in faith-based groups, but I realized that faith was rarely a topic of conversation. How can such a fundamental part of student life take a back seat to other aspects of our lives? Student athletes must selectively choose how to spend their limited amounts of free time, and a number of these athletes choose faith and religion. So why don’t we hear more about it? DeLozier said she feels that it’s not her place to bring up a topic that seems to make others uncomfortable. She said she thought the discomfort people feel is interesting because her faith is “harmless,” but she would love to talk about her faith with others. This could be due to propriety or politics, but it reflects campus culture. It may be time to think about how we interact with each other. How can students truly feel at home if they minimize a crucial part of their identity? Clearly, my belief that sportsmanship is the only connection between faith and sports is elementar y at best. I’ve got plenty of time to figure things out, according to DeLozier, who says that faith is definitely a process. “God loves me for who I am right now ... and he knows where I am in each moment,” she said. DeLozier said she tries to live her life with a strong connection to God, but struggles with it ever y day. She added that FCA helps in the effort, as a way for her to target her week in a faithfilled direction. According to Balmer, we all might be a little “religious,” or mystic, in terms of sports. The focus of his course looks at religion through a different lens. Is a sport any less sacred than a religion? Obviously a vast difference exists between St. Peter’s Basilica and Fenway Park, but the essence and the feelings they evoke in people could be comparable. The space itself is important, but not as much as the experience. The same could be said for sacred rites and rituals, or sacred beings. Religious, athletic, both or neither, we’re all essentially the same. “[We’re] just stumbling through things that ever ybody’s dealing with,” Frank said. “Nobody’s perfect, and nobody’s tr ying to be ... we’re just tr ying to get a little bit better ever y day.”
KATHY RAO // THE DARTMOUTH
6// MIRROR
Through The Looking Glass Tuning In COLUMN
B y emmanuel Kim
As I enter my senior year, I’m reminded of our collective dream to lead happy and successful lives. It’s difficult to avoid the contagious excitement that pervades our campus — we’re all here to figure out how to build and live a great life, while frequently having a bit too much college-rated fun. Behind the optimism, however, there are other realities. We’re often afraid to be alone. We’re not always grounded in a core sense of self that transcends group expectations or negative situations. We all feel stressed. Most of us haven’t found a life-long calling. We all wouldn’t mind more “likes” on that new profile picture. We want to ask out that guy or girl but fear rejection and vulnerability. FOMO exists. And most conversations don’t resonate with that deep passion lying dormant within each of us. These are symptoms of a communal neglect — we’ve overlooked something while striving for our happiness and success. We feel we’re missing a deep sense of purpose, core confidence, groundedness and unbounded joy. That intangible something. Instead of looking within, we often turn to culture, society, mentors, parents and friends to mask this unease. We’re constantly discouraged from tuning into our inner voice — society, the system, civilization, whatever you decide to label it, has put us into boxes. We wake up from a box, to sit inside a box, to get information from a paper box, to turn on electronic boxes to check our inboxes. Our days get compar tmentalized into “work” and “play.” We feel mental security in constructing our careers with simple, linear steps. Emotions are utilized in tails, meetings and practice — we’re afraid of not being accepted for how we truly feel. Back in our hunter-gatherer days, life wasn’t this enclosed. We had greater freedom from material want. Time waxed and waned with the seasons. Everything was fresh, vibrant, on the edge. I’m not saying that we should just return to the wild, but the fact remains we’re not as connected with our instincts and spontaneity as we were when living bare, raw, dangerously and organically. We’ve gradually been penned in, tuned out and stressed out by modernity. In the classroom we’re only encouraged to develop “how we think.” There is not one class called “Emotional Management,” “How to Listen to your Heart and Intuition” or “How to Discover your Life’s Purpose.” Perhaps we can get a bit visceral with the arts and humanities, but they are still
KATE HERRINGTON // THE DARTMOUTH STAFF
Emmanuel Kim ’15 dishes out some advice on how to take a second and think in the present instead of focusing too much on the future. quite cerebral in their pedagogy. As a community, we’ve neglected the fact that to remain in touch with one’s intuitive and emotional self is fundamental to a life that is true to oneself. Not acknowledging this contributes to the fears and anxieties we experience daily. Hence the phrase from the Delphic Oracle, “Know thyself,” is not just dusty philosophy — it’s even relevant today. That timeless statement is not an instruction to merely “figure out our interests.” It’s an invitation to embark on a journey with yourself that ends with the last exhalation. So how can we start to break out of the mold and start living more grounded, authentic, free and peaceful lives? Let’s begin by realizing that we’re all in this together. We think, feel, crave, desire, avoid. We laugh, cr y, hold ourselves and each other. We dream, doubt, act, hide, repeat. We move, nap, sleep, eat, have sex (when we’re lucky), poop. We desire a hug from someone who cares. When the busyness of modern-day life tries to tune us out, we must remind
oureselves of our humanity. Our sense of connectedness is more important than our af filiations, backgrounds, resumes and wardrobes. Once we start accepting our humanity, we can truly get to know ourselves by listening to how our body and emotions react to our circumstances. We can start to understand where our feelings take us and choose to practice unconditional self-love, instead of selfjudgment. How do we practice self-love? For a moment, take a break. What do you see, hear, smell, touch, feel? What thoughts are racing in your head? When you tune into the moment, you live in reality. Ever y time we deviate from “living in the moment” by thinking about the past or future, we are not appreciating our current selves. Philosopher Eckhart Tolle noted, “We live as if the present moment is some obstacle we need to overcome in order to get to some better point in their lives ... this makes living hard, effortful.” Self-love happens when we get out of our mental projections and simply accept ourselves at ever y moment of our lives. The more present and mindful
we become of our whole selves, our thoughts, feelings and actions will align with what will naturally make us happy and embrace success. Ideas, people, community and love will flow into our lives when we do things that truly make us happy. And we will give ourselves permission to seek opportunities that will make us successful in our own right. My recommendations are: Let us breathe deeper and lose ourselves to the moment. Let us listen to our bodies and emotions, not just our thoughts. Let us give more permission to be our wild, primal selves. Let us trust our intuition, not the rules and stories we’ve been conditioned to believe. Let us love ourselves more, just because. Deep inside we know we’re at Dar tmouth to discover ourselves, look within, dissolve our fears and constr uct our solid, unshakable sense of self before heading out into the modern world. When we embark on our personal journeys of selfdiscover y, we establish the roots that will organically grow us into happy, fulfilled and successful people.
FRIDAYS WITH MARIAN COLUMN By Marian Lurio
Boots and RallIES
MIRROR //7
COLUMN By Aaron Pellowski
Today’s news coming to you straight outta Pyongyang ... or not. Did you ever play the ’90s computer game “Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego?” I really loved it. As we speak, the world — myself included — is dying to know the whereabouts of North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un. KJU hasn’t been spotted in more than a month. It appears that Kim Yo Jong, KJU’s sister — who is believed to have been born in 1987 or 1988 — has taken over KJU’s duties for the time being. On the topic of birth dates, take an educated guess as to the ages of KJU and his friend Dennis Rodman. Is it just me, or is it SHOCKING that: a) KJU is a spring chicken at 31 and b) Rodman is 53. If you are unfamiliar with Rodman’s eccentric-yet-constantlyin-flux “style” (and/or are looking for a villain to haunt your dreams), please take a moment to Google Image-search the term “Dennis Rodman.” Just a moment ago, I sent a tweet to Rodman asking him if he knew of KJU’s whereabouts. No word yet but I eagerly await his response. Then again, Rodman’s last tweet was sent on Oct. 3, so he may be in rehab or under a totalitarian and/ or communist regime. In case you’ve somehow missed out on the most gripping international affairs story of the last decade, allow me to fill you in. The two became fast friends upon meeting in North Korea when Rodman was there for basketball exhibitions (I don’t understand how/why either). Rodman and his posse are the only Americans to ever have met KJU since he took power, or so my inside sources tell me. This friendship has since blossomed. Not only has the star been to North Korea more times than anyone should, but he also serenaded the dictator on his birthday (hilarious — watch it on YouTube), is coaching the North Korean basketball team and has furiously defended KJU, describing him as his best friend on multiple occasions. Maybe the leader brainwashed him and is sending Rodman back to the U.S. for total world domination. Am I the only one who feels like he or she (wouldn’t you like to know!) is living in an alternate universe if Rodman is the only hope our nation has for its relationship with North Korea? The fact that Rodman is buddies with KJU just proves (because I think we were all a little torn on our thoughts about North Korean government) that North
Korea is the hot mess we all already knew it was. Meanwhile, the Internet has been abuzz with the rumor that Rodman would bless the Middle East with his diplomatic efforts. On Sept. 20, @dennisrodman wrote the following — “The story about me visiting ISIS leaders is NOT true. Some website is trying to be like @TheOnion, except without the humor or wit.” And there you have it. Back to the issue at hand. Did KJU go to rehab? Are KJU and Rodman in rehab ... together? Are they both just hiding out somewhere in North Korea? That might explain why a certain someone (you know who you are!) hasn’t tweeted me back. I’m just making an educated guess, but I have a feeling even the esteemed Rodman doesn’t have Twitter access over there. Then again, the same goes for rehab — or at least that’s the case in “Celebrity Rehab with Dr. Drew,” which Rodman was a cast member of in the show’s second season. AND he was on the second season of “Sober House.” You may be wondering my qualifications to speak on this subject. It all started in seventh-grade history ... isn’t that always how it starts? For our public speaking “competition” (I still don’t know why this was part of our history curriculum), I chose to speak on the demilitarized zone separating South Korea (<3) and North Korea (boo). Despite having harassed my teacher before and after class that day, ultimately I went home empty-handed and broken-hearted. Was I not the natural orator I’d always assumed I was? Keep in mind, this was back in the day when I held out hope that I would win school awards for which I had none of the prerequisites and was completely unqualified. As someone — an astrologist? Plato? Aristotle, was that you? — once said, “shoot for the moon and you’ll land among the stars.” If by stars you mean a plush pile of Juicy Couture tracksuits not located in or near North Korea, great. You know what I mean, Phil. Per my brother’s suggestion, on Jan. 1, 2014, I rang in the New Year by watching the documentary “Inside North Korea.” Having given a 60-second speech on the DMZ and having experienced North Korea for myself via Netflix, I think I know what I’m talking about. Mostly, though, it’s the only country I’m qualified to discuss because it’s the only country where even the U.S. government doesn’t know what the eff is going on.
My rental bike was stolen last week from the knoll between Fahey-McLane and frat row. Let me say, if you’re the mongrel who stole it and you’re reading this, I wish you no bodily harm. I would rather you grow up to perfectly resemble a parent you despise, or a person whose presence will remain addicting to you for the rest of your life breaks your heart, or you realize on an early deathbed that you never had a proud moment that came from within. I wish all of this because I live off campus and it’s a real pain in the craw walking to class. Those extra minutes add up, and as Dr. Charles Flyte (my dissertation advisor at the Delaware Advanced Institute of Unreality Studies) used to say, those minutes are breaths of death before the gust. The past few days of angr y anguish and brooding have given rise to some deeper contemplation on the topic of theft at Dartmouth. There’s actually a massive quantity of this sinful activity that escalates each term. It starts with stealing from DDS, justified with a beautiful example of what I call a Creon Complex, a phenomenon that occurs when a smart person generates an elegant, compelling and potentially even legitimate set of reasons for taking a controversial action, but those reasons aren’t actually true. Dar tmouth students walk out of FoCo, Collis, the Courtyard Cafe and Novack Cafe with pockets stuffed with goodies for later. But this is okay, because “DDS steals from us by having such high prices and exploitative meal plan options!” Now the sophomore with a fanny pack full of pesto pasta and the senior with a two pizza slices under his armpit aren’t petty thieves anymore — unthinkable that a salutatorian from Great Neck with a 2340 SAT score could ever partake in such a banal, third-class, proletariat crime — they’re actually Robin Hoods, stealing from the Pantagruelic Dartmouth Dining Ser vices and giving to themselves. The flaws of DDS in both the structure of its meal plan and the comically abysmal prices are so obvious that it’s boring to waste space on them here. The point is that these kids aren’t stealing in some virtuous act of rebellion — they’re stealing because they want something and common morality is no hindrance. The next instr uction in larceny comes early in freshman winter term, when you find yourself stumbling out
into the freezing bleakness of 1 a.m. Webster from a dance party without your North Face because you thought it would be sleek to get the plain black one, just like ever ybody else. You’re full of anger because you’re cold and down one pricey jacket, and in the snap of the moment you decide you’re going to walk back in and take somebody else’s jacket, since it’s not stealing if you’re replacing something that was stolen from you. A soberer, warmer version of you might reason that the right thing to do is to suck it up and cr y to your mom to buy you a Canada Goose with a combination lock built in. The ver y lowest it gets comes with stealing fraternity memorabilia. I’m thinking especially of composites here, which are not only extremely expensive in the first place, but have a value exceeding their mere monetar y worth. I’m dumbfounded that this practice exists at all, and I hope at least some silent majority is with me on this. What horrifies me most is the consideration that after careers in performing the re-circuitr y of moral computers in order to excuse their crimes before the tribunal of their own conscience, there are many (or even just a few) Dartmouth students who will go on to occupy positions of great power. And when they are in the position to make big moves in the worlds of politics, finance, education, agriculture and more that could rob half of America of its material wealth or well being, they have no moment of hesitation in which a microscopic voice asks “Is this evil?” because alternate logic is already hardfused in them to stamp that voice out. Perhaps I, one morning a decade from now, I will open an alumni magazine and read “Jimbo K. Waggoner, Dartmouth Class of 2016, announces his promising candidacy for president. While at Dartmouth, Mr. Waggoner majored in art histor y, played water polo and stole bikes.” I will take this as a sign that God wishes me to move to Italy and become an expatriate novelist right at that moment, before America curls up and perishes like a spider under a cigarette. So, Jimbo, if you want to save this countr y and your soul, please return my bike to me. On the advice of my mother, a first-grade teacher and an angel of love, I will forgive you on the spot and charge you nothing. Life is too beautiful to waste it on being bad in such ordinar y ways.
8// MIRROR
Putting Dartmouth In Context STORY
B y Hannah Petrone our circle of relationships grows smaller. What is unusual about Beverly’s life alone is the fact that she is almost entirely blind. I remember how stunned my classmates and I were as she demonstrated for us how she goes up and down her nearly vertical basement steps, crawling on her way up because she cannot see the steps. But Beverly never speaks of her loss of sight — rather, she speaks of lost connections and her constant ache for human interaction. On the final day of class last spring, we were able to give her this gift. I can still recall the sound of Beverly’s voice on the phone when I invited her to our end of the year reception to view the class’s final projects. Her excitement was palpable, contagious. I am not sure Beverly fully understood the nature of the event that day. Beverly’s lack of affiliation with higher education made it so that the notion of an academic presentation, especially through video documentation, was something entirely foreign to her. But the logistics were really irrelevant — she just wanted company. As I sat with Beverly at the reception, I realized that the essential ingredient in composing a poignant and authentic stor y was the subject of the piece and, more importantly in my case, forming a lasting relationship. It’s funny — Beverly was the star of the show that day and she didn’t even know it. (She did relay to me recently that she “tells ever ybody under the sun” that she was in a video, lamenting that she hasn’t seen it on TV yet.) Beverly couldn’t see our smiles as we watched her tell her stor y on the video, and she couldn’t see my tears, or anybody else’s, at the end of the event. Rather than pride, she radiated humility and unadulterated joy that day — she even
expressed regret that details about her spoon collection weren’t in the video. Early in our relationship when I spoke to Beverly, I sensed that her unspoken past was lurking just beneath the surface of our conversation as if, like Beverly’s life, her thoughts and emotions were circumscribed. I now think that this is not because Beverly’s mind is small but rather because, living alone and isolated for so long, her world is small and has not allowed her much opportunity to give voice to her feelings. As our relationship evolves and our friendship deepens, so do our conversations. Though I have given her the friendship and company that the human heart yearns for, Beverly has given me something much more profound — she has reconfigured the mechanism through which I perceive my environment. By accepting me into her life, my relationship with Beverly forced me to expand the boundaries of my head and heart beyond the confines of Dartmouth College, enabling me to appreciate and feel connected to Dartmouth in a way that I had been alienated from before. It is ironic, really, that it took somebody so completely separate from my environment to transform the way I experience it. My relationship with Beverly has enabled me to put my life here in context. Dartmouth is much more beautiful when viewed as part of a broader landscape of lives beyond its manicured green, when it is seen as a contributor to the community rather than the community in and of itself. I’ve enjoyed the rarefied air much more these days, for I am no longer under the impression that it is meant to be life sustaining or entirely satisfying on its own. It is only a temporar y and imperfect high, made much sweeter by the recognition of other climes.
Courtesy of Hannah Petrone
The rarefied air we breathe here at Dartmouth permeates our lives in both obvious and subtle ways. Although intoxicating and often imbuing us with a self-satisfied sense of importance, this air cannot, by itself, sustain us. As time goes on many of us develop a healthy craving for something different, something more... real. I have come to understand that the feelings of isolation and disconnect that characterized my freshman year at Dartmouth were a direct result of this — a kind of emotional hypoxia. The more people I have spoken to, the clearer it has become that not only is this is a common syndrome on campus, but its treatment is entirely dependent on us. We must find something or someone meaningful enough to help shepherd us through our descent into an environment more conducive to all sorts of life. For me, Beverly Daigle, an 81-year-old blind woman from Lebanon, New Hampshire, was that someone. I went to go visit Beverly a few days ago, just to catch up and reconnect. She greeted me at the porch in her pastel clothes that her aid matches for her a week in advance. She gazed past me as she reached out for a hug and asked me if I noticed that she now wears her hair straight. Although stark, Beverly’s home feels well lived-in. The first room you enter is the TV room, where she spends most of her time. The flat screen ser ves as her main form of company most days, even though she cannot see it. The walls hold some photos of Beverly and her family from over the years. So much effort has been put into the decoration of this room that I often forget Beverly cannot visually appreciate it. But perhaps, just knowing that she is surrounded by images of her family is enough. I admire that. The kitchen, where we visited with each other, is the only other major room on the first floor. In this room, I first realized how strictly Beverly’s home must be arranged. Due to her lack of eyesight, she relies entirely on familiarity with the layout of objects. As we sat at her kitchen table, I saw Beverly eating a Collis brownie and scone underneath a sign that read “Life is
Short; Eat Dessert First.” It was fantastic. Between bites she sheepishly disclosed to me that she is tr ying to lose weight. I met Beverly at the end of my freshman year through a class called “COVER Stories,” taught by environmental studies professor Terr y Osborne. The class is centered on the notion that activism “succeeds best when activists work in deliberate par tnership with human communities.” Students can apply their theoretical readings of social and environmental justice through the class’s partnership with COVER Home Repair, which strives to bridge the gap between ser vice and community. At the end of the term, each student chose an individual associated with COVER — either a volunteer, a staff member or a homeowner — to inter view about his or her experiences. We presented the culmination of our efforts, either a mini-documentar y or written piece, in front of our class, the COVER community, Tucker Foundation members and those who had been interviewed. I was somewhat skeptical about the possibility of effectively bringing COVER’s philosophy to fruition. Although I was not assigned to work on Beverly’s house last year, I was assigned to inter view her for the final project along with two of my classmates. We clicked immediately. Beverly has spent her entire life in Lebanon and over half of it in the same house on Church Street. As Dartmouth students, it is hard to imagine the level of familiarity with a place a lifetime breeds. But remaining in Lebanon all her life was certainly not something Beverly wanted. She confided to me her desires as a young woman to see the world. “I wanted to marr y somebody who lived out of town so I could move out of Lebanon — and of all things I married a Lebanon man,” she said, laughing, when I spoke to her in the beginning of our relationship. But her laughter betrayed a certain wistfulness. Today, Beverly lives alone — her husband passed many years ago from a tragic accident, and her four children have moved away. This is not unusual for a woman of Beverly’s age. As we progress through life,
Courtesy of Hannah Petrone