9.19.2014
MIR ROR
the results are in...| 2
Faculty thoughts | 3
STATE OF THE COLLEGE| 4-5
’18 Again| 8 KATHY RAO// THE DARTMOUTH STAFF
2// MIRROR
The Results are In...
EDITOR’S NOTE
2018 1%
Graduating Year
2017 27%
Last weekend, we sent a 51-question survey to 2,827 undergraduates, who offered their thoughts on the state of the College, tidbits about their personal lives and more. Here’s a look at the 284 students who shared their insights with us. (As a bonus, we included some of the responses they wrote in.)
2015 35%
Courtesy of Erin Landau
2016 37%
Hi guys! Remember me? It’s been a while. Emma and Jasmine are off doing big things, and I’ve been (re)charged with the job of providing you with your weekly dose of campus culture. But weirdly enough, I’ve got nothing to say. How is it that I’m starting my last year at this institution and can’t produce a single nugget of wisdom to share? Thankfully I’ve got a team of talented writers, and even all of you survey-takers, to do the sharing for me. First and foremost, let’s all give a warm welcome to AP’15 (you might know him from “Pigeons of Boston”) and Marian Lurio ’15 (a seasoned Mirror pro), our senior columnists for the 2014-15 year. Both of them have plenty of writing experience and fantastic senses of humor, so I’m confident in saying that all potential reader needs will be taken care of. Second, as you’ll soon see, this week’s edition is a little different. If you’ve checked blitz in the past few days, you’d see the massive and semi-exhaustive survey blitzed out to students and faculty covering topics ranging from cheating to sex to marijuana legalization to satisfaction with the Greek system. It is certainly not reflective of all students on campus, but we were able to manage around a 10-percent response rate (which, as those of you who have taken stats at Dartmouth know, is pretty good for a survey with more than 50 questions.) You can read all the juicy tidbits inside, but it’s time to learn a little bit about me. Now that I’ve taken a grand total of two statistics class periods, it’s safe to say I can share some nominal stats about the way I spend my time — 50 percent is spent working from my bed, 25 percent is spent placing orders to Jewel of India from Robinson Hall, 15 percent is spent calling my slumlord landlord about plumbing issues and the final 10 percent is spent crying about the looming reality of my jobless future. I hope you find the way I, and 280 other Dartmouth students, spend time interesting enough to enjoy the many firsts The Mirror has to offer.
Gender
Gender queer 1%
“I like men.”
Female 45%
Sexual Orientation
Other No Answer Queer 5% 6% Asexual 1% 1% Bisexual 2%
Male 52%
“Panromantic asexual.”
Gay 4% Straight 81% “Bicurious.” “I love Jesus.” “A little less than straight.”
Top 6 Religious Identifications Interdisciplinary Studies 6%
follow @thedmirror
No Answer
Undecided 5%
Atheist
Major
MIRROR R
Agnostic Jewish None
Humanities 18%
MIRROR EDITOR ERIN LANDAU
EDITOR-IN-CHIEF LINDSAY ELLIS
Social Sciences 48%
Christian Catholic 0
Sciences 23%
PUBLISHER CARLA LARIN
EXECUTIVE EDITORS MICHAEL RIORDAN STEPHANIE McFEETERS
10
20
30
40
50
“Christian lite.”
2% 0%
Greens No answer
7%
Multiracial
1%
Political Affiliation
No answer Democrat
Libertarians
Middle Eastern or Arab American
Independent
Do not know/ Indifferent
8%
Native American South Asian or Indian American
11%
Latino or Hispanic American
Republicans
East Asian or Asian American Black or African American
23%
Non-Hispanic White or European American
Independents 20
40
60
80 100 120 140 160 180 200
60
“Ehh, idk.”
*Double majors counted twice
Race
0
No Answer 2%
Republican
48% Democrats
Do not know/Indifferent Libertarian Green None No answer
70
MIRROR //3
Trending
Faculty Reflections story
B y Luke McCann and Victoria Nelsen
Disapprove 8%
No answer 2%
opinion 5% “
No opinion 49% Approve 41%
D @ RTMOUTH
Have you given students an undeserved grade? No
Phil Hanlon Approval
”
Freedom Budget Sit In Approval
No answer 5%
Yes 39%
No opinion 26%
Freshman freeze
No 56%
Disapprove 43%
YiK Yak
Approve 26%
Do you believe the Greek system will undergo an overhaul in the next 3 years? No answer asnwer No 5% opinion 13%
Maybe we’re just old, but this app is too much.
Perceived Relationship Between Faculty and Administration No answer
Ill Fayze
Very bad
An ’18 told us his rap battle at Sig Ep was the party of the century.
Very good
No 44%
Bad
Neutral
Yes 38%
Good 0
For decades, Dartmouth’s faculty have been invested in the wellness of their students, both inside and outside of the classroom — with the small community at the College, separating the two is almost impossible. A 32-question Mirror survey allowed faculty to reflect on the current state of the College, and the results reveal that discussions about major issues are far from finished. We contacted 411 faculty members with this survey, and 39 submitted their answers to questions, ranging from the frequency of cheating to overhauling the Greek system. Of those respondents, 70 percent indicated that they would approve of abolishing the Greek system. Celia Chen ’78, a biology professor, falls in the majority of faculty members who believes the system should be abolished. She said that the Greek system may harm admissions, as the high percentage of involvement may cause prospective students to assume that participation in the Greek scene is a prerequisite for having an enjoyable social life. While the antics of Dartmouth fraternities and sororities have received substantial media attention lately, Chen said these issues are not new developments. “This has been a problem since I was an undergrad,” she said. “The unacceptable behaviors that go on in a lot of fraternities are a real worry.” The relationship between the Dartmouth faculty and the Greek system has historically been a tumultuous one, sparking decades of debate over the ef-
fects of Greek life on the academic and social lives of students. Faculty made their opinions on the matter clear in 1978, when they voted 67-16 in favor of abolishing the Greek system. Faculty once again voted for abolishment in three separate instances in the 1990s. These moves, however, did not end the debate, and faculty members began to express their concern in more vocal ways. In 2001, 101 faculty members signed a letter decrying the “institutionalized practices of sexist and racist humiliation” that they alleged festered in campus Greek culture, the New York Times reported. In 2012, 105 faculty members issued a similar statement, in which they condemned the Greek system for operating against the College’s values. Still, several faculty members oppose abolishing the Greek system. “The faculty focus on getting rid of the Greek system is misguided,” math professor Dana Williams said. “I think the problem is a generic one across campus. At Dartmouth, the fraternities are the center of the social scene, so things are going to happen there.” Williams acknowledged that his opinion on the issue places him in the minority among faculty. He said he foresees upcoming changes to the Greek system, especially because of the prominence of issues like binge drinking, sexual assault and diversity within the organizations. Classics professor Paul Christesen also noted the importance of Greek life in the campus social scene. “I think in the short term there’s no socially functional alternative, so
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a unilateral abolition would create a major complication,” he said. “I think for the foreseeable future, primarily having to do with the drinking age, something like the Greek scene is a necessity.” Faculty members may hold various opinions on how to reform the Greek system, but math professor Carolyn Gordon said she believes that sexual assault is the biggest issue that Dartmouth faces, an opinion with which Williams and Chen both agreed (Chen also listed binge drinking and hazing). Survey respondents also named sexual assault the most important issue facing Dartmouth today. Aside from topics surrounding the Greek system, the survey also addressed issues of academic honesty, grade inflation and dedication to classwork. When asked whether students dedicate more time to schoolwork or extracurricular activities, student and faculty responses differed. While a majority of students said they spend more time on classwork, faculty members said they expect students to prioritize extracurriculars (for student survey data and methodology, see pages 4 and 5). Williams said he does not know what students spend more time doing, adding that a better question would ask if students spend an appropriate amount of time on classwork. “I find it a little surprising that there’s a night during the week that would be considered a party night,” Williams said. “If students are partying fairly freely during the week, I don’t
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think they have enough work to do.” Christesen suggested that the groups’ responses may differ because professors could use their own classes to gauge how much work students do. “Typically, we only see a student in one class,” he said. “I think maybe we are simply projecting outward from the workload we assign individually, whereas students are handling three classes.” Some faculty members — 11 of the 29 who expressed an opinion on the matter — also said that Dartmouth should change its name to Dartmouth University. Chen said that Dartmouth could change its name and still retain committed to high-quality undergraduate teaching. Williams and Chen agreed that grade inflation is a common problem at Dartmouth and at colleges across the nation, and said that their classes’ medians match those of their respective departments. Williams’s grades are appropriate for the way that Dartmouth currently grades, he said. He said that any pressure to give students higher grades is self-imposed, but that grade inflation is something Dartmouth must address as an institution. “You can’t change grades unilaterally,” Williams said. “That would be grossly unfair. I like my students. I see that they work hard, and that makes me want to give them grades that reflect that.”
LET there be brie KAF is staying forever. Our DBA levels are not.
R.I.P. SALUBRE We hardly knew thee, but we heard that you had some decent breadsticks.
FIREWORKS ON THE GREEN auditions Sing your little hearts out, Class of 2018.
4// MIRROR
14.7%
At , the ’16s were the least supportive of the sit in. ’15s, ’17s and ’18s were all close to a 23% approval rate.
ACADEMICS
For the surveys, we contacted 411 faculty, of whom 39 responded, and 2,827 students, of whom 284 responded. Because the sample sizes are not representative, we did not calculate statistical significance for either the faculty survey or student survey, both of which were sent via email last weekend. Responses were considered through Wednesday.
Classwork vs. Extracurriculars No answer 2%
Extracurriculars Classwork
How many layups have you taken each year? Have you ever used a study drug?
2 28%
Yes
How many sexual partners have you had at Dartmouth? No answer 7%
0 32%
Have you cheated on schoolwork? Yes 7%
n/a 2%
4 5% 3 9%
No
86%
Have you had sex in the past year?
5+ 18%
14%
0 27%
1 30%
No 87%
Love and sex
58%
4 5 1% 1% 3 13%
Do you ever fe endangered at Da your identity
1 16%
No answer 1%
2 13%
How many rela,onships have you been in at Dartmouth?
No 36%
Yes 63%
4 1% 5 1%
3 6% 2 16%
0 42%
No 91%
1 34%
Male- and female- identified participants averaged close to the same number of sexual partners at Dartmouth:
2.47 for women and 2.85 for men.
?
40%
55.1% of unaffiliated people disapp 71.4% of affiliated people disappro
THE
St
Those who identified as s of heterosexual/straight who used the specific t were almost uniformly a “Freedom Budget” s
MIRROR //5
30.4% of those who are not
prove of the “Freedom Budget” sit in.
affiliated don’t drink.
7.1% of those who are affiliated
ove of the “Freedom Budget” sit in.
also don’t drink.
expectations
eel threatened or artmouth because of or background?
Is Dartmouth what you expected?
Phil Hanlon Approval Yes 13%
Have you sought out mental health counseling while at Dartmouth?
Disapprove No opinion 8%
o %
No opinion Disapprove 32%
No 46%
Approve 60%
No opinion 16%
Approve 20%
Yes 26% No 74%
"Freedom Budget" Approval No answer 0%
Yes 54%
Would you approve or disapprove of a plan to abolish the Greek system?
Was Dartmouth your first choice? No answer 0%
No answer 0% No opinion 10%
Disapprove 64%
Approve 26%
Disapprove 64%
No 36%
Yes 64%
Campus life
tate of the College?
E
some form t and those term gay against the sit in.
Data analyzed by Noah Bogdonoff
54.5% of female-identified and 39.7% of male-identified respondents said they were Democrats. Male-identified participants were also 6% more likely to identify as Republicans and 5.7% more likely to identify as Independents. ERIN O’NEIL // THE DARTMOUTH SENIOR STAFF
6// MIRROR
Through The Looking Glass A Great Hopportunity COLUMN
B y Aaron Ellis
When I told my parents that I had received $7,000 from Dartmouth to drive around the countr y drinking, researching beer and hanging out in national parks, my dad asked me if I was an alcoholic. I thought it was a joke, but as it turns out, he was really concerned. My adventures began in a desire to road trip and see America’s beauty, drink lots of wonderful beer and have someone else pay for it. This summer I drove almost 15,000 miles, stopping at breweries along the way in order to meet with brewers to talk about the Craft Beer Revolution. Starting in Hanover at the beginning of summer and going clockwise around the country, I was able to go to 10 national parks, visit friends and family and drink, on average, two pints of high quality beer a day. (The average pint cost me from $6 to $15.) To achieve this feat, I had to write a 15-page proposal convincing the anthropology department that I wasn’t just planning on getting drunk on their dime. Now I’m actually making this journey into my senior thesis by writing about how lots of white, middle-class men with beards are turning barley, hops and water into something magical. The bubble extends further than just our lack of caring for or understanding of current events. Beer at Dartmouth is ver y different from beer in the real world. The pale water-beer we drink to get drunk doesn’t taste like a bourbon aged sour from Oregon or a blood orange and lime saison from Vermont. Beer can be beautiful, exciting, refreshing or spicy. There are people out there who have given ever ything up — secure, million-dollar jobs — in order to brew beer. Some of them make mediocre stuff that tastes like what our frats pour on the floors. Others are artists who play with flavors to make beers so complex that make you question the existence of God, like the magnificence of a piece of music or even a painting. This summer, I learned more about beer than I ever thought I would. One man I met could tell you ever ything you ever wanted to know about Saccharomyces, Brettanomyces and Lactobacillus, water chemistr y and how to run a small business — all with an art degree. His beer is now some of the most sought-after in the world. He is a brewing genius, and I know that even a Ph.D. in molecular biology or chemistr y would have a hard time keeping up with him. I used to think that people who did these “lower-level” jobs, the ones who ser ve us and make our lives better, were somehow inferior. Now I suppose that would be similar to saying that da Vinci was an idiot because he wasn’t a doctor. Many of the people I met were artists who used a beverage
NATALIE CANTAVE // THE DARTMOUTH SENIOR STAFF
After receiving funding from the anthropology department to drink beer this summer, Aaron Ellis ’15 reflects on man’s greatest drink. to craft something distinct. As much fun as my research was, there were days when I wouldn’t see a single person I knew. No one really wants to text or call you when they’re working 80 hours a week and you’re complaining because the Grand Canyon was a little too crowded at sunset. I ate way more fast food than I’m proud of, and was lucky to never get bed bugs from the cheap hotels I frequented. Life on the road was tough, stressful and, at times, really boring. Most people think it is hilarious and slightly terrible that I was able to get funding to drink beer all summer. The absurdity hit me when I was at a July 4 party with some brewers. We tasted some fantastic beers from all over the countr y, things that took a lot of beer trading to get. (Side note: Beer trading is when people ship sought-after beers from one part of the world to another in return for one or more beers. It technically it
isn’t selling a beer because that’s illegal and the dollar price is not equal to the rarity of the beer. Beer is an incredibly localized product, and most rare beers are only available at the brewer y itself and only then after hours of waiting in line to taste it. So collectors and traders, rather than tr ying to go to all of these places, join online forums of beer traders and collectors and ship beers around the world in order to tr y new things.) I was getting a lot of special treatment. Then one of the guys took me outside and told me that we needed to hydrate. He proceeded to stab holes in a couple of Pabst Blue Ribbons, and we downed them ver y, ver y quickly on the porch. Pabst Blue Ribbon is affectionately called “brewer’s water” because it doesn’t taste like anything. Another thing I learned was to take seriously the idea that there is a beer for ever yone, even if he or she claims to not drink beer. The complexity of
the beverage goes further than light versus dark or hoppy versus malty. There are beers that taste like juice or salted caramel. Refreshing, hardworking, hot-weather beers. Sweet and smoky dessert beers. Brewers get to experiment with anything and ever ything around them, and most believe in using local ingredients. Maple syrup, blueberries, sage and juniper are found in beers all across the countr y. They say “Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy.” After this summer, I believe it. There is no drink more humble than beer. Beers can go with any food at any time of day. Beer brought the Pilgrims to Plymouth Rock. Beer let me see the countr y and be a local in ever y town. Beer now has me working at barhop and putting together their beer and cider lists. Beer is the best drink in the world. Cheers.
FRIDAYS WITH MARIAN COLUMN By Marian Lurio
MIRROR //7
Boots and RallIES COLUMN By Aaron Pellowski
“If Jesus came back and saw what was going on in his name, he’d never stop throwing up.” — “Hannah and Her Sisters” (1986) Why am I writing this column? I have no clue. It’s my senior year, and I feel like I’m still a freshman. Correction: my knowledge of many Dartmouth traditions — i.e. the lyrics to our alma mater — is minimal despite my best efforts to inundate myself in our “campus culture” (i.e. Bean boots). Until I saw the giant sign, I thought the Triangle House was KD’s new physical plant. As I try to navigate my way through Hanover, I think it’s essential to stay up to date with what’s going on in the real world. The world outside the bubble makes more sense to me and is far more interesting — plus there’s more salacious gossip to study. This is my excuse for the copious amount of reality television I watch regularly. There’s also a lot to be learned from current events — for instance, I’ve got some insight into our legal system through Teresa Giudice’s fraud charges. More than anything, access to the Internet at all times keeps me sane — and distracted — in the woods of New Hampshire. After all, what would I do without the treasure trove that is my collection of Facebook friends. The worst kind of Facebook friends are: 1. The person who puts “breaking news” in their status as if they are indeed your source for worldly happenings. 2. The [uninformed] political junkie — “If Obama wins this election, I’m moving to Canada!” Often these types are one in the same. Beyond my precious cyber community, it always surprises me how relevant current events are to my life in the “woods” of Hanover, which leads me to the topic (or what is intended to be the topic) of this first column: the iPhone 6 and whatever else was unveiled at Apple’s tech conference. All the buzz around the new iPhone got me thinking about two things: 1. Why did I upgrade from the 4S to the 5 in July? 2. The only technological improvement to iPhones that has been particularly relevant to my life is the addition of the selfie camera years ago. Remember when the awkward raised arm would betray that you had taken the picture yourself? Or when it wasn’t cool to take photos of yourself and was just plain creepy? Ah, nostalgia. Unlike faster Internet speeds, the selfie camera has been life-changing for millions — perhaps billions, there’s no way of
knowing — of self-involved human beings around the world. Selfies are glorified, more sophisticated mirror pics. However, that still raises the question, why the craze? Selfies are like a larger-scale version of the planking fad, but unlike planking, selfies require no skill or core strength (phew). And while I’ll admit it looks cooler to be in a picture with some crazy backdrop than to be behind the lens, the sudden selfie obsession is downright annoying. And I don’t just mean the selfies people have been taking with corpses. Case in point — Kim Kardashian on her 352-page book of selfies: “I’m going to make some super-racy. I mean, every girl takes full pictures of their [rear] in the mirror...I might share some of them.” Yes, that quote happened. Then again, I’m pretty sure the Kardashian-Jenner clan was texting during the moment of silence for Ferguson at the MTV VMAs. Nothing is sacred. And it’s not just families whose claim to fame is the acquittal of O.J. Simpson and (debatably) releasing one’s own (daughter’s) sex tape. I expect more from the leader of the free world. What perhaps bothers me the most is that some of the most prominent people on the planet keep fueling the fire. Don’t you have some golfing to do, President Obama? But if Obama thinks it’s kosher to take a selfie at a funeral, how can the rest of us be expected to act appropriately ever again? Should we just live our lives a little more? Imagine a night out at Dartmouth without a cell phone — without any of your friends or literally anybody having a cell phone. Did students in the ’90s have pagers? Wouldn’t it be liberating to just rid ourselves of all cellular devices and technology for an evening or two? Actually, I’ve been down that road before. We all have. I distinctly recall freaking out when I was told I couldn’t bring my phone — then a Blackberry — on Trips. I’d just planned to keep it plugged into the wall of the cabin we were staying in. But there was no cabin. Of course, I reunited with my cellular device at the end of trips — to a disappointing number of texts and notifications. But despite that outcome, it’s not an exercise I’m trying to repeat. After all, I have a responsibility to inform my two-person readership. ’Sup, Phil Hanlon?
A little blasphemous, a little extreme, very dark and maybe a little bit true. Or completely true, at least in spirit, as I judged when I heard this for the first time. Meet circa-2004 Aaron R. Pellowski ’15, a moody adolescent equipped with a decidedly anti-other-people disposition and an ego so bloated it almost burped. I became demonically obsessed with the theory that any person even remotely in touch with the world should be petrified with disgust. I pursued this notion all the way up through college — I ended up graduating magna cum laude from the Delaware Advance Institute of Post-Unreality Studies, with a double major in philosophy and social aesthetics. I wrote my senior honors thesis on Iggy Azalea. Zip forward to late 2010. I was awarded a quarter-million dollar grant from the National Endowment for the Arts to undertake an avant-garde project of exploratory pessimism, posing as undergraduate at Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire for three years. I was boldly prepared to submerge myself in a college-sized pool of freshly post-adolescent, entitled, brainiac sewage, ready to take it up to the eyes without closing them, my mouth or my mind. Even if that sensory nakedness provoked nausea of Christlike proportions, I would endure it with great fortitude. I thought I was brave. I thought I could make it out the other end an unchanged man. I was ignorant of the true magnitude of the risk of rubbing shoulders with you people. And I’m happy to report my investigation has been rewarded with great success — that is, if I’m allowed to use some really perverted definitions of “happy,” “reward” and “success.” I’ve found a lot here that stinks worse than the south end of a moose in heat. You are all terrifically nuts. Each one of you, a minimum 10 percent bonkers basket-case. All your ideas of fun are institutional clowning. Your dreams and ambitions are refabricated fears, traumatically inseminated in you by your parents. Your friendships are as shallow as beer stains. If I was a mildly bitter person prior to subjecting myself to this absurdist long-term experiment in performance art, then oh baby, there is no human word for what I am now. The damage to my world view is probably a permanent infection, like I’ve been made into some unholy monster of spitefulness. Under the full moon I experience an itching urge to sprout green fur and set up camp in a trash
can. Don’t get me wrong, Dartmouth isn’t the sole culprit. It’s the whole world — in my eyes, humankind seems a swarm of chattering infants with bloating diapers, soaked to the brim in narcissistic turpitude. There was a time in my childhood when I wished I could live forever, but I can barely remember it. I look around at you people and think “I am glad that I will be dead before this lunatic nightmare becomes irreversible.” But it’s not yet irreversible, and that’s key. If I really believed nothing could be done, I would hijack a Budweiser truck, drive it into the woods and never come home. But there’s a flicker of hope, and it needs a special type of kindling. I’m a bad person, you’re a bad person and the world is a bad place. A lot of ink has been poured into explosive prose calling out the individual choices and vague, oppressive structures that make the world hellish and gross. But we don’t take it the extra step. That is, I don’t just want to rub my peers’ face in their own excrement — I want them to do what Jesus would do. I want them to vomit, and then to heal. Now, vomiting claims an eerily centralized role in Dartmouth’s culture, or at least one of its circus’s subsections. Andrew Lohse’s extra-foul comparison of his fraternity brother’s vomit trickling down his body to amniotic fluid has received a lot of attention, some of it no doubt colored with a guilty empathy. We have this quasi-patriotic cheer, “Boot and rally!” that encourages a friend to eject the voluminous quantities of alcohol he’s imbibed so that he or she may party on, unhindered and unhinged. But there’s an apt metaphor here. Wait for it. All literal vomit aside, it’s been my observation that Dartmouth kids, whether they be of the “work-hard-play-harder,” or the “workhard-work-harder” or the “party-hard-partyharder” breed, push themselves habitually to the brink of gastronomic volcanism, right up to the eye-watering, the lip-curl and the tell-tale wet burp... and then they pause just long enough to tamp down the nasty and march ahead. This isn’t healthy. You come here to be a superhero, but you will not admit any moment of misery. Yet the misery has a meaning, and it’s a meaning that would make us better people if we dealt with it and did not deny it. It is better to look at yourself and your fellow human beings and feel crushing shame at your defects. In this suffering there is honesty, and in honesty there is a path to relief and then to real happiness. To survive at Dartmouth, to survive in the world, it is not enough to merely endure. You must boot and rally.
4// MIRROR
’18 Again profile
B y Kalie Marsicano
When I asked Maya Simone Moten ’18 where she called home, her first instinct was to share her campus housing in the River cluster in Judge Hall. Originally from Somerset, New Jersey, Moten found herself drawn to Dartmouth for various reasons, even though the College wasn’t on her radar until the summer before senior year. “Dartmouth was our last stop on the trip, and when I got here, it was like the combined things I liked from Northeastern, and the things I liked from Duke into one beautiful campus,” Moten said. “I really love the D-Plan, I love the idea that we’re actually on a college campus and I like all the people that I’ve met while I was here. Ever yone was really friendly
when I came to visit.” Moten can even recall the exact moment when she decided Dartmouth was the place for her. She plans to study mechanical engineering and astronomy, and during her student tour, when she found out she could go on an engineering-specific tour of the Thayer School of Engineering that day, she knew it was fate. When it comes to extracurricular involvement, Moten is seeking a change of scener y in college. “While I was in high school, I was a ver y huge performing arts person,” she said. “That was literally my passion, drive and life.” On top of participating in different ensembles, a women’s glee club and an a cappella group, Moten danced and acted. After
spending a lifetime in the performing arts, Moten is ready to move on to something new. Moten has already signed up to the Formula One Racing Team. She also hopes to tr y out for club sports, apply for the homecoming committee and join Programming Board and class council. The main goal, she explained, is to explore the things she didn’t get a chance to do in high school. And while a list like hers already had me hyper ventilating and imagining more than a few all-nighters, Moten is war y about tr ying to do too much. “When I over-commit myself, I always get worried about letting people down, or not being able to live up to everything, and not being able to give 100 percent of myself
to ever y activity that I’m in,” she said. “But at the same time, it’s all part of the experimental phase.” Read: she’s been here less than a month and has already calmly figured out what most of us take until senior spring to recognize. Aside from expanding her extracurricular horizons, Moten said she’s also excited to meet different people. Four other students from her high school are ’18s, but as she pointed out, that’s only four people out of more than 1,000. “Nobody knows who I really am,” she said. “I can kind of reinvent myself a little bit.” Moten said she hasn’t faced any major challenges yet, but encountered two issues worth nothing — tr ying to remember ever ybody’s names and managing her time.
Don’t worr y, I (kindly) told her to get used to both of those — some things never change. Given the competitive atmosphere of an Ivy League school, Moten said she has been caught by surprise by how collaborative and willing to help one another people are. As far as the social scene goes, she’s not concerned about the “freshman freeze.” “It’s forced us to have parties and not all of them have been the greatest, from what I hear — but it’s really no big deal,” she said. “It’s made no difference to me whether I’m going to a frat party or if I’m just hanging out in my dorm, because I’m still with people I enjoy, still having a good time and still not getting any sleep.”
Megan Batangan ’18
Maya Moten’18 Oliver Engelhart ’18
Meet Oliver Engelhart ’18. He was born and raised in Hong Kong, where he attended an international school. Well, that’s the short answer. “I’d never consider myself an American although I’m half-American, half-British,” Engelhart said. “If someone asked me where I was from or what’s your nationality, I would actually respond by saying I’m from Hong Kong.” Englehart, who speaks Mandarin and grew up in the cultures of China and Southeast Asia, said that the combination of his multicultural identity and his decision to attend college in America has placed him in a challenging position. He said he finds “a huge divide and huge misunderstanding” between American and Chinese culture. “Because of my upbringing, I can work and connect the two in a different way than most poeople have before,” he said. Despite his American citizenship, Engelhart admits to having faced definite culture shock in his first few
weeks on campus. The biggest difference, he said, is the drinking culture. Back in Hong Kong, where citizens can legally drink at 18, Engelhart lived in the bar district and even worked as a bartender. His early exposure to alcohol, he explained, gave him a more relaxed attitude toward social drinking. “To me,” he said, “you can use alcohol to have fun, but you don’t need to get trollied to have a good time.” Engelhart hasn’t found himself terribly impressed with the “shmobbing around” he’s observed. As a member of the varsity sailing team, he wouldn’t be drinking anyway because of preseason, he said. While others are dorm-hopping, Engelhart and his teammates are finding their way to the golf course to stargaze. Although Engelhart chose Dartmouth in large part because of the sailing team, which is currently his most demanding time commitment, it is far from his only athletic pursuit. He considers rugby his second main sport, and about three years ago, he
also took up ultra-marathon running and triathlons. So far, the apparent super-human has done two 100-kilometer races and does triathlons or biathlons most weekends. When he’s not running more mileage in one day than I do in a year, Engelhart invests his time in social, humanitarian and environmental issues. Throughout high school, he worked to develop “Running to Stop the Traffic,” a 24-hour race to raise money and awareness to stop human trafficking. He also worked in conjunction with the Hong Kong Shark Foundation to stop the shark fin trade, which kills 100 million sharks annually just for their fins, which the Chinese use to make shark fin soup, he said. Although he’s not sure what to pursue academically, Engelhart said he hopes to study some combination of international relations, government, biology, environmental studies and Mandarin, and he’s excited to continue meeting new people from different cultural backgrounds.
Megan Batangan ’18 grew up in Maui, Hawaii, and hopes to double major in government and Native American studies. Between the strength of these departments, the promise of experiencing all four seasons and the great time she had at the Native American Fly-In program, Batangan felt that Dartmouth “checked ever ything off the list.” So far, Batangan’s biggest challenge has been the weather. “I’m already cold and I’m already running out of sweaters, basically,” she said. Despite the untimely chill in the air, Batangan has found a warm welcome all across campus. “Where I come from, ever yone’s kind of really, really nice, and they call it ‘the aloha spirit,’” Batangan said. “I thought coming here, people would be ver y preppy and ver y hardcore and cutthroat, and that hasn’t been the case at all. The students have been so nice, ever ybody’s been so welcoming and I can tell that I already love it here.” Even so, some things about Dartmouth, like our prep-uniform, don’t quite make sense to her. “I’ve never seen so many Sperr ys in my life in one area,” she said. “Even the pastel pants. That’s not normal at all where I come from.” Here at Dartmouth, she looks
for ward to getting to know a more multicultural group of people and hearing their perspectives. In high school, Batangan was passionately involved in debate, especially surrounding issues that pertain to indigenous people. She has already joined Natives at Dartmouth and hopes to get involved with the Tucker Foundation to participate in community ser vice on campus. In her spare time, she admits to being a huge movie buff and Netflix fan. She also loves to hike and stargaze. Although she didn’t apply for special program housing, Batangan lives in East Wheelock this year. “In the beginning, when I was assigned, I was kind of disappointed,” she said. Batangan feared that living in East Wheelock would rob her of the typical freshman housing experience. She was pleasantly surprised to find that only a few of her floormates had applied for the program housing too, and they all get along well. “Social life has been really, really fun,” she said. “I think the frat ban has allowed me to grow closer to the friends I’ve made here so far, my floormates and my roommate. We still have fun late at night. I know a lot of people are upset, but I’m good with it.”
TRACY WANG // THE DARTMOUTH SENIOR STAFF For an additional profile, see The Mirror online.