The Dartmouth 04/28/2023

Swastika found on Green

Jessica Chiriboga ’24 and Kiara Ortiz ’24 speak on Student Government election wins

This article was originally published on April 27, 2023.

the email stated.

This article was originally published on April 21, 2023.

On Thursday morning, Safety and Security was notifed that a swastika — a hate symbol representing antisemitism, genocide and hatred co-opted by Adolf Hitler’s Nazi Party — had been etched into the dirt on the side of the Green, according to an email sent to the Dartmouth community by the Provost’s Ofce.

According to the email, the College documented the incident and immediately removed the symbol. The swastika’s discovery comes less than a week after the College commemorated

Yom HaShoah — known in English as Holocaust Remembrance Day and observed globally on April 17 and 18 — by reading the names of children killed by Nazis in the Holocaust. The incident also follows rising antisemitism in the U.S., the email noted. On Sunday, the eve of Yom HaShoah, an individual vandalized a Seattle synagogue with antisemitic messaging, CNN reported. According to a report published by the Anti-Defamation League in March, 2022 saw the most antisemitic incidents since the group started recording in 1979, with a 36% total increase from 2021 and a nearly 50% increase in campus and school incidents.

“Antisemitism has been on the rise in the U.S. and has no place at Dartmouth,”

The College has faced antisemitic incidents in the past. In December, Carlos Wilcox — a former member of the Class of 2023 — was charged with vandalizing a menorah on the Green in December 2020. In 1997, the New York Times also published an article discussing Dartmouth’s antisemitic past, pointing to anti-Jewish biases in admissions and on campus in the 20th century.

According to the email, students can reach out to the College Counseling Center, College Chaplain Nancy Vogele at the Tucker Center, Rabbi Moshe Gray and Chani Gray at the Hilary Chana Chabad House and Rabbi Seth Linfeld at Dartmouth Hillel for support. Other individuals at Chabad and the Roth Center are also available.

Pride 2023 honors LGBTQ+ community

BY Lorraine Liu The Dartmouth Senior Staff

This article was originally published on April 25, 2023.

From April 7 to May 25, campus organizations including the Office of Pluralism and Leadership have planned a series of events to commemorate Pride 2023, an annual celebration of the LGBTQ+ community on campus.

Pride 2023 is organized by the student-run Pride committee, which works with OPAL to plan a number of events. Organizers have scheduled the College’s first ever Pride parade for May 7 and the relaunch of the Rainbow Room — a queer study space in Robinson Hall — for April 27. On May 11, the Pride committee will host an LGBTQ+ critical dialogue panel, and on May 5, the House of Lewan will hold its annual Transform drag show, according to OPAL Program Coordinator of Community and Leadership Development Angélique Bouthot.

Unlike past years, Pride 2023 lacks a theme, which allows for Pride to be “up for interpretation by the community,” said Pride 2023 planning committee co-chair Rosario Rosales ’25.

“We just kind of want to experiment with [a themeless Pride] especially because it allows for an openness of events,” she said. “We don’t feel so restricted.”

According to Rosales, the seven member Pride 2023 committee started planning near the end of winter

term, when they “consolidated a list of events.” The bulk of the Pride 2023 planning work was student-led and involved budgeting, recruiting volunteers and wrangling student organizations or faculty members to participate at the events.

Administrators from OPAL provided organizers with institutional support, funding and advice when necessary, Rosales said.

When determining the events they wanted for Pride, Rosales said they wanted “at least one huge, go all out event.”

“In this case, [that event] is the Pride parade,” Rosales said. “We have to go all out and we didn’t want two of those kinds of events. It was also just mainly what felt right.”

According to Rosales, the Pride parade on May 7 involves marching from Triangle House to Massachusetts Row, with student speakers and music.

Anna Timchenko ’26, a Pride 2023 volunteer, said they are especially looking forward to the Pride parade.

“I’ve never been to a full-on Pride parade, so it’d be lovely for me to go,” Timchenko said.

In an email statement, Bouthot wrote about the “incredible value” of Pride programming on campus, which provides students of marginalized identities with the knowledge that “they are celebrated.”

“Many places in the US and the world are not safe, physically, emotionally — or in terms of legal

On April 23, the Elections Planning and Advisory Committee and The Dartmouth co-hosted a forum for Student Government presidential candidate Jess Chiriboga ’24 and Student Government vice presidential candidate Kiara Ortiz ’24 to answer students’ questions and discuss their platform. Chiriboga and Ortiz ran unopposed on the ballot and won their election, garnering 1,173 and 1,056 votes, respectively.

Students voted electronically from April 24 at 5 p.m. to April 26 at 5 p.m. Elections for representatives for Student Government, Class Council, the Committee on Standards and the Organizational Adjudication Committee representatives ran concurrently.

In the forum, Ortiz said she hopes to guide the new Dartmouth administration, which will take office under incoming College President Sian Leah Beilock on July 1, toward policies that best serve student needs.

“Our job is to advocate for what the students want,” Ortiz said. “We’re pushing forward, and I think the administration is kind of like, ‘Yeah, these students are not going to settle for any less than this, so, let’s figure out a way to solve this issue.’”

In the 2023-2024 academic year, the duo plans to focus on sustainability, equity and town relations. Chiriboga and Ortiz are also working to implement free and functional laundry, indoor and outdoor wellness spaces, shuttles to A-lot and institutionalized transportation vouchers, according to a campus-wide email they sent on Monday.

However, Chiriboga and Ortiz both stressed in the forum that their top priority in working with the new administration is to advocate for student mental health and expand access to resources. This past year, Student Government –– led by president David Millman ’23 with Chriboga as vice president –– successfully spearheaded 24/7 UWill therapy for students.

Chiriboga and Ortiz in the forum said they will prioritize expanding long-term, in-person therapy options at the counseling center and creating additional funds for students to receive counseling services in the Upper Valley.

They also hope to implement termly wellness days, though Chiriboga said

in the forum they are unclear on how a “Day of Caring” would work in practice. Chiriboga added that she hopes to ensure that “in every sector of student life,” the College takes student mental health and wellness into its approach.

Ortiz currently serves as the Student Government chief of staff and West House senator. According to Chiriboga, through their extensive involvement in Student Government since freshman year, she and Ortiz have experience building relationships with senior administrators, the Board of Trustees and staff members across campus, with a proven track record of establishing new initiatives.

“That [track record] is going to put us in a great position to be the best advocates for students next year because they’re going to need somebody in a student role who’s had prior experience,” Chiriboga said in the forum.

In the past year, Chiriboga and Ortiz’s work in Student Government also led to access to the Headspace app for all undergraduates, the reopening of late night at the Class of 1953 Commons and the installation of Wifi on the Green, among other programs.

Chiriboga said her identity motivates her to serve on Student Government and foster change.

“I have no political aspirations,” Chiriboga said in the forum. “I do Student Government work because it’s always been important to me as a woman of color, as somebody who really cares deeply about mental health and LGBTQ+ people to be active in my community and to try to make the areas around me a better place.”

Anthony Fosu ’24, who was elected as Senior Class vice president alongside Senior Class president Kami Arabian ’24, wrote that he hopes to make changes to benefit the community, uniting the Class of 2024 and ensuring his classmates feel a sense of belonging.

“For me, running with Kami was motivated by wanting to serve as much of our class as possible, and to do it in a way that could help bring different parts of campus together,” Fosu wrote. “I am extremely excited to get to work serving our classmates.”

Chiriboga and Ortiz said that all of their Student Government meetings are open to the public, adding that if a student attends three meetings, they can become a representative and lead their own projects.

Chiriboga is a former member of The Dartmouth staff.

ZOE OLSON/THE DARTMOUTH STAFF

BY The Dartmouth Senior Staff

LORRAINE LIU/THE DARTMOUTH SENIOR STAFF

NAOMI LAM/THE DARTMOUTH

BY Farah Daredia The Dartmouth

Dartmouth celebrates Earth Week

Plum Village monastic teachers visit Dartmouth

BY Kent Friel

The Dartmouth

On April 21, the Dartmouth community began celebrations for Earth Week — marking Dartmouth’s 53rd celebration of the global holiday aimed at fostering environmentalism. Campus events and activities, which will continue until April 30, have ranged from a town hall on the College’s sustainable energy transition to wildfower planting around the Upper Valley.

Other events included public talks, teach-ins, workshops and pop-up shops. According to College sustainability director Rosie Kerr, the Sustainability Ofce aimed to involve a diverse array of community members in programming.

“Our ofce has a whole menu of events,” Kerr said. “The idea is to have a variety of events that engage a diverse audience in climate and sustainabilityrelated programming.”

According to Sustainability Corps program manager Marcus Welker, the Sustainability Office chose to ofer the majority of its Earth Week programming the week following global Earth Day — which was celebrated on April 22 — in order to avoid confict with Pride 2023 programming, which began April 7. Last year, Earth Week was observed one week earlier, Welker said.

Dartmouth frst celebrated Earth Day in April 1970, when the holiday was conceived as a nationwide environmental teach-in, Dartmouth Alumni News reported. Although the original Earth Day focused more on individual actions than systemwide change, Dartmouth students in 1970 indicated a desire to bring the Dartmouth community together for discussion — a mentality that has lived on in the 2023 celebrations.

On April 21, senior monastic Dharma teachers from Deer Park Monastery in California gave a lecture titled “Mindfulness and Climate Change” as part of a weeklong campus visit, according to the Dartmouth Sustainability Office website. The following day, a student group called Fossil-Free Dartmouth hosted a teach-in that examined the relationship between fossil fuels and research at Dartmouth, according to the group’s website.

On April 25, the Design Initiative at Dartmouth hosted a series of events on design and climate adaptation, led by mechanical engineer and PamLab Design and Engineering

owner Pamela Silva Díaz, according to the Dartmouth Engineering website. The following day, DIAD and the Irving Institute for Energy and Society hosted a panel of Dartmouth faculty to speak about climate and energy for a speculative fction project, Irving academic initiatives manager Megan Litwhiler said.

The same day, the Sustainability Ofce held an energy town hall event titled “Transition to a Low- Carbon Energy Future,” according to its website.

During the event, Kerr spoke about Dartmouth’s transition to greener energy, as well as the importance and challenge of moving away from greenhouse gasses. Kerr explained that Dartmouth’s energy system has run “essentially the same way it has since the late 1800s.”

In 2021, the most recent reporting year, Dartmouth emitted the equivalent of 43,739 metric tons of carbon dioxide, making it the 11th highest source of greenhouse gas emissions in the state, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Greenhouse Gas Reporting Program.

Kerr said Dartmouth is currently transitioning from a steam heating system and central heating plant to a new system that relies on high-efciency hot water heating. During the town hall, energy infrastructure renewal program manager Julia Pfeifer said that much of Dartmouth will need to switch to this new heating system, explaining that solving energy problems is “a really complex puzzle.”

“The next fve to 15 years are going to have a high impact [on Dartmouth’s clean energy transition],” Pfeifer said.

The Sustainability Ofce is also working with Dartmouth Student Government to collect data on how students are impacted by climate change, Sustainability Ofce intern Rachel Kent ’21 said.

According to Welker, Dartmouth committed to a series of sustainability goals in 2017 — including moving toward 50% renewable energy by 2025 — in an initiative called “Our Green Future.” On Oct. 22, the College began the process of re-examining the initiative and creating an updated set of goals, according to an April 22 email sent by College President Phil Hanlon ’77 and president-elect Sian Beilock and the Sustainability Ofce website. The new framework, “Our Green Future 2.0,” was a response to the United Nations’ 2023 climate

report demanding more urgent action, according to the email.

Kerr said Dartmouth has maintained its goal of shifting away from greenhouse gasses but explained that the College will have to work “faster than … anticipated” to achieve its sustainable energy goals.

Although Welker said that the energy transition will be a “major undertaking,” he said it would also be a solution to “supporting a more environmentally friendly institution.”

“The College has set ambitious targets for reducing its greenhouse gas emissions,” Welker said. “Those targets that were set in [2017] were in line with the best science at the time. However, science has evolved and the need to react has increased.”

Assistant geography professor Justin Mankin, who was involved with Our Green Future 2.0, said he worked to “re-envision how we heat and cool our campus.” While Mankin recognized the value of Earth Week, he said eforts must extend beyond a single week.

“The idea of there being a week where there’s wider campus engagement on environment and climate related issues is great, but what we try to do with our scholarship is to put those issues front of mind every day,” Mankin said.

“What matters is for Dartmouth to put its money where its mouth is and be a leader.”

Mankin said he is optimistic that Dartmouth will follow up on its Our Green Future 2.0 goals. He said that Dartmouth students are “more concerned” about the environment with each incoming class, adding that the teams in charge of making the College more sustainable — including the facilities and infrastructure teams — are making a positive impact.

Geography department chair Christopher Sneddon, who was also involved in Our Green Future 2.0, agreed that more change is needed.

“It’s great to have events that get people excited, but it will also be great to see more material change on campus,” he said. “There is really a tremendous opportunity to take advantage of Dartmouth’s location and reputation [as an environmentally friendly institution].”

In addition to professors, Kerr said that student voices have been essential to starting the green energy transition initiative.

This article was originally published on April 24, 2023.

This past week, senior monastic Dharma teachers from Deer Park Monastery in California visited Dartmouth to conduct presentations, discussions and meditation sessions with members of the community, according to a Tucker Center fier promoting their visit.

The monks practice in the Plum Village Tradition, credited as the inspiration behind engaged Buddhism. The Tradition was founded by Vietnamese zen master Thich Nhat Hanh, who is known as the father of mindfulness.

“[The monastics] will share practical examples of how mindfulness practices can be applied in our daily lives so we can fnd dynamic responses to the ever-changing difculties in our study, work and relationships,” the fier stated.

“When we train our mind and learn to trust our inherent goodness, new possibilities manifest that cannot be discovered by thinking alone.”

Epidemiology professor at Geisel School of Medicine Diane GilbertDiamond organized the event after she received a message from monastic Douglas Bachman ’97, her former Dartmouth classmate, asking to visit Dartmouth.

Bachman, who now goes by Brother Stream or Phap Luu in Vietnamese, said he was surprised by the broad support the visit elicited in the Dartmouth community, with over 100 people attending one 8 a.m. guided meditation session. The monastics last visited in 2011 on the Sunday after homecoming, which Brother Stream said led to a low turnout.

Brother Stream said his experience at Dartmouth inspired him to pursue a profession as a monastic.

“I had a deep experience at Dartmouth as a student,” Brother Stream said. “I had a deep sense my senior year that I still need to learn so much more. Four years at Dartmouth opens up how much understanding we need in the world in order to be a true human being.”

Hanover resident Cheryl Andrew said she visited Vietnam in 2020 and met Hanh. She described the monastic’s meditation as “very gentle, very tenderhearted.”

“It’s a privilege to have them,” Andrew said of the monastics who visited.

According to chaplain and director of the William Jewett Tucker Center Nancy Vogele, the monastics led a “beautiful” relaxation meditation session with more than 65 people, each on their own yoga mat. Vogele said she hosted many of the events in Rollins Chapel, a space large enough to accommodate the size of the group and one that refects the sacredness of the activities.

Tammy Stemen, a friend of a Dartmouth community member, traveled to Hanover for the event and found “it was so much better than anything [she] expected.”

“Why don’t I meditate all the time?” Stemen said. “It was so special to have the monks visit.”

Gilbert-Diamond said she experienced social isolation during her frst year as a student at Dartmouth, adding that she believes the monastics can help mitigate those feelings.

“I am so happy that the monastic visit has helped so many members of the Dartmouth community connect with each other and feel each other’s support and love,” Gibert-Diamond said.

Bryanna Entwistle ’23 said the monastics spoke about their experiences practicing mindfulness during her REL 41.04: “Buddhist Meditation Theory” class, inspiring her to attend one of the monastic guided meditation sessions. She said she left feeling calmer and more attentive.

Sovi Wellons ’24, also in the class, said she had been “struggling” with meditation prior to the event, and she appreciated the guidance provided by the monastics.

“It was lovely to hear and learn from [the monastics],” Wellons said.

Gilbert-Diamond said the monastics have helped teach the community how to show themselves compassion.

House of Lewan to host Transform show on May 5

FROM PRIDE PAGE 1

While some of the Pride 2023 events are being organized by the College and the Pride 2023 committee, other events are being independently hosted by student groups across campus, Bouthot wrote. The House of Lewan, a student drag club, is hosting its annual Transform show in the Kemeny courtyard, according to House of Lewan house mother Jaime Aranzabal ’24.

According to Aranzabal, the House of Lewan hosts shows at least

once a term. Although Transform was originally a Pride event that was more like a “fashion show,” it has since evolved to become a “drag performance-based show.”

“We build our own little scene here on campus,” Aranzabal said. “It’s House of Lewan’s biggest drag show of the term, and it is always very exciting because we get to go all out in terms of performances and production.”

This year, Transform is especially important due to the political climate, with several states “passing bills specifically attacking LGBT youth [and] banning gender-affirming care and drag,” Aranzabal said. Even now, performing drag often involves “facing some form of hate,” he added.

“We don’t shy away from it or try to make ourselves palatable to others,”

Aranzabal said. “It really means a lot to all of our performers to be able to do drag, and so we’re taking this opportunity to show that.”

Pride 2023 also comes at a time when the amount and visibility of antitrans legislation has risen compared to previous years, Timchenko said.

“A lot of what we’re doing now is the result of student passions 10 years ago,” she said. protections and access to healthcare — for the LGBTQIA+ community,” Bouthot wrote. “Events like Pride are an opportunity for the community to show up in a visible way to support us and our unique experiences.”

“There’s been a growing movement towards removing the ‘T’ in LGBT, which is gross,” Timchenko said. “I think [Pride 2023] is good to remind people on campus that this is still a visible issue and that we’re all united rather than splintered.”

Ultimately, Rosales hopes that this year’s Pride programming allows members of the queer community to feel “good about [their] identity.”

“I hope that they see that there are spaces for them to take up,” she said.

After a temporary job at a Hanover bookstore post-college, Brother Stream became ordained as a monastic in Plum Village, France. He once traveled with Hanh to Vietnam and has practiced monasticism for the past 20 years.

“The monastics have taught us that… we are enough just the way we are, and that cultivating that understanding will give us the capacity for immeasurable growth and learning,” Gilbert-Diamond said. “It will also give us the capacity to love and support each other, and to make a positive impact on the world.”

“We just always believe in starting small and growing up so that we can learn and refne,” Barthelmes said.

BY Julia Abbott

The Dartmouth

PHOTO COURTESY OF DEER PARK MONASTERY WEBSITE

KENT FRIEL/THE DARTMOUTH

On Wednesday, the Elections Planning and Advisory Committee announced the results of the 2023 undergraduate student elections. Besides the hotly contested elections for senior class president and vice president, the majority of races were either uncompetitive or nonexistent. Only two candidates were running on the ballot for three seats on the Class of 2026 class council, and four out of six Housing Communities did not have a full slate of balloted candidates for their respective class senator positions. Zero students ran for the Committee on Standards or Organizational Adjudication Committee seats, leaving these crucial roles in Dartmouth’s student disciplinary process temporarily undecided while the Elections Planning and Advisory Committee evaluates write-in candidates. Even in elections that managed to secure a full slate of candidates without write-in votes, there was only one contested election other than senior class president and vice president. Student indifference towards undergraduate elections hinders Dartmouth Student Government’s ability to represent the student body properly, and students should put in more of an efort to engage with their governing bodies — by voting in elections at a minimum, and by running for positions themselves

Verbum Ultimum: Every Vote Counts

Dartmouth students must get more involved with Student Government electons.

if they want to efect positive change.

The lack of student interest continues a concerning electoral trend on campus. Dartmouth students cast 1,231 ballots for the Student Government presidential election — down 15% from last year and 19% from the year before. With 4,458 undergraduates, this means just 27% of students voted. Considering that 75% of the graduating Class of 2022 held a negative view of the administration, and approval ratings for Student Government were 36% favorable and 34% unfavorable, students clearly want to see both the College and Student Government heading in a diferent direction. So why do so few students bother to run, much less vote, for the only positions capable of making a diference?

With the low voter turnout and lack of competition, some elections had less than ten votes cast — such as the Class of 2024 senators for East Wheelock, South House and School House.

It’s hard to blame students for not wanting to vote; when virtually no elections are contested, it can feel like voting is meaningless. Yet, we want to stress that the lack of student participation in elections can send a risky message. Why should the administration listen to a student government

CONTRIBUTING COLUMNIST ADAM TOBECK ‘ 25

Paying Our Elected O cials is Actually a Good ing

Compensatng legislators adequately can create a more diverse state government that beter represents New Hampshire.

Dartmouth students have often found ways to engage in politics at the state level. Several have run to represent Hanover in the state house, most notably Garrett Muscatel ’20, who won a seat in 2018. I like to think that this helps us pay a little more attention to local politics than we might otherwise. However, the state legislature has a perhaps unexpected, yet glaring, problem: elected representatives are paid far too little. Currently, New Hampshire legislators are paid only $200 per term in office plus some compensation for travel costs. Compare this to our neighbors across the Connecticut River in Vermont. Their legislators — who are paid around $700 per week during session — make more in a week than New Hampshire state representatives will make over the course of their two year term.

This abysmally low salary — if it can even be called that — creates an environment where those who have prior financial resources and extra time are far more likely to be able to serve in state government. The state’s salary for elected officials effectively excludes people from middle and lower income backgrounds from running. They must figure out how to put food on the table at home, something that is extremely difficult without some sort of real salary. The question of how to afford spending their time lawmaking in Concord is just not a realistic one to ask of them. Oftentimes, these are younger people whose perspectives would contribute greatly to the political process.

There are some who might be opposed to paying our elected representatives more, believing that politicians represent the “elite” of society and are out of touch with the needs of the average person. They say that by paying legislators more, we’d only be supporting those who have little interest in doing the same for us. It would be understandably difficult to justify spending government dollars on legislator salaries if there is little trust that they will be working to benefit the average taxpayer. But the reality is that we have out of touch representation because we don’t compensate legislators fairly, not the reverse. By not paying our elected officials a livable wage, we are only perpetuating the cycle of having a state legislature dominated by older, wealthier individuals that are perceived as being part of the elite.

In 2015, the average age of New Hampshire

lawmakers was 66 years old — making it the oldest legislature in the United States. Even with the average age of the state house declining to 61 years in 2018, New Hampshire still falls far behind other states in diversifying the age of our legislators — an indication that there is still more progress to be made. Given that the New Hampshire state house is the largest state legislative chamber in the country, New Hampshire can and should be ground zero for having elected officials that are reflective of their constituents.

I don’t mean to suggest that having older people in office is a bad thing in and of itself — there is a lot of value that comes with life experience. At the same time, there are numerous examples of older politicians who have had difficulty engaging with modern topics. Former U.S. senator Orrin Hatch, R-Utah — then age 84 — went viral in 2018 for questioning Mark Zuckerberg about how Facebook could be provided to users for free while remaining a business. Meanwhile, young legislators nationwide, such as Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-NY, and Rep. Maxwell Frost, D-FL, expressed how they struggled to find an apartment in Washington D.C. due to high rents and a lack of money prior to their election. Increasing legislative salaries would allow younger legislators like these to better perform their duties without having to worry about financial burdens. By having a legislature that is diverse in age and economic status, we can complement the experience of older legislators with that of younger generations, becoming even better equipped to handle the issues of our day.

We entrust our elected officials with confronting and solving some of the most divisive and pressing issues of our day. Paying them fairly not only dignifies the work that they are doing, but provides a larger portion of the population the chance to participate in our democratic system. We are better served if those that we vote into office can focus solely and completely on working for New Hampshire, something they currently cannot do. The financial costs associated with completing the people’s work should not be prohibitive to getting things done — our state government should do better and provide for our elected officials.

Opinion articles represent the views of their author(s), which are not necessarily those of The Dartmouth.

HANNAH BROOKS ’26: SPRING TEA TIME

that purportedly represents all students, but can only muster a small percentage of them to cast a ballot? If students continue to demonstrate their disinterest, the Student Government’s authority in the eyes of the administration may plummet.

The potential for higher voter turnout is clear. Dartmouth is as politically involved as any college campus. Our prime position on the presidential campaign trail, our top-notch government department and the scores of students who voice their concerns in this newspaper and elsewhere all foster a vibrant culture of political engagement. Unfortunately, when it comes to our own elections, we waste that potential.

It’s not as though Dartmouth students do not value democracy. After all, the Dartmouth Political Union recently hosted several Democracy Summit events, such as where experts discussed the deterioration of democracy in India and the Jan. 6th insurrection. But it seems far-fetched to believe we can solve the problems of democracies halfway around the world when we don’t even bother to care about our own democratic institutions here on campus.

The past year saw the Dartmouth Student Government achieve several important reforms,

including the resumption of Foco Late Night, reinstating universal dorm access, ensuring Wif is available on the Green and expanding the Campus Connector shuttle system. This year’s newly elected presidential ticket ran on a platform of termly wellness days, further expansion of campus shuttle availability and free laundry. While it is true that there are limits on what Student Government can realistically accomplish for us, all of these are smart and feasible changes that, if enacted, will signifcantly improve the quality of life for students. Together with Student Government’s hefty annual budget of more than $60,000, there is enormous potential for Dartmouth students to implement the changes we wish to see around campus using the levers of Student Government. But this is only possible if we uphold this important democratic institution by thoroughly engaging in our student elections.

The editorial board consists of opinion staf columnists, the opinion editors, the executive editors and the editor-inchief. Opinion editor Kami Arabian ’24 was not involved in the writing or editing of this editorial due to a confict of interest.

CONTRIBUTING COLUMNIST RAMSEY ALSHEIKH ‘ 26

Make Fun With the Town

College administraton and Hanover ofcials should cooperate to organize fairs, fundraisers and other events between students and the town.

It’s well-known that Dartmouth and the Town of Hanover don’t often mix. Many students are too busy worrying about their 10-week term to really care about what goes on in Hanover, and residents of the town are too busy dealing with real-life problems to care much about what goes on at Dartmouth. Where we do interact, it’s rarely positive: issues of New Hampshire voting and election candidates for the state House of Representatives frequently pit college and town against each other, making for an oddly antagonistic relationship.

This has been the status quo for a while now, and most people don’t think much about it. Yet, consciously or not, both students and local residents are sufering negative consequences as a result of this state of afairs.

Especially post-COVID-19, local businesses are struggling more than ever to stay afoat, as the recent closures of Traditionally Trendy and Hanover True Value show. Even sales at the record store, a wonderful bastion of Dartmouth history and culture, are at an all-time low, putting the continued existence of the “longtime Hanover mainstay” in jeopardy. This afects not just the business owners, but the entire town: Fewer businesses means fewer reasons for a resident to leave their house and enjoy the outside world.

Students, too, are struggling. Most of us have been sucked into the Dartmouth bubble and have forgotten that the town, while small, does have experiences to ofer — experiences that can be more meaningful than just an occasional dinner in the town, and which can provide much needed stress-relief from the vagaries of college life. I would argue that, in a small way, the mental health crisis on campus is being worsened by our ignoring the town around us. We are depriving ourselves of the town as a healthy, enjoyable escape from the normal routine of drinking and partying.

I argue that this relationship must be fxed by those who are best suited to fx it: the College administration and Hanover town ofcials. They should collaborate to organize regular programming between students, townies and local businesses.

There are many forms that this programming could take. Close-of Main Street from cars for an afternoon, and have a weekend fair every so often. Set up tables and chairs on the street and sidewalk, and organize an outdoor barbecue or potluck on Main Street. Even better, let’s encourage more local businesses to invite student bands to do a live show every so often. Once or twice a term, coordinate a day for all the local business ideas to take some of their merchandise outside and run a sale and ofer special deals. Perhaps Dartmouth Dining could partner with local restaurants to make dining dollars usable in the town every so often. There are endless ways that the administration and town could partner to get a fun atmosphere in Hanover every once in a while.

Whenever these fairs would be organized, it would be trivially easy for the College administration to advertise them to students. A few emails and a poster or two in Collis, and the College could get a good crowd going on Main Street for a fun Friday afternoon or Saturday morning. Likewise, Hanover town ofcials could easily market such an event to the town as a fun way to build community and get out of the house, potentially with the ofcial town

listserv. As long as College administrators and town ofcials can rally up the student body to engage with events like these, there’s not much that can go wrong. There are endless possibilities to expand on these ideas. If they want to get more ambitious, the College and the town could even organize a fun feld day or two for both students and townies. A game of red-lightgreen-light down Main Street would be ridiculously fun, in my opinion, and all the more so if I’m doing it with the whole town. Perhaps we could even install one of those giant chess boards somewhere in the town, and host small tournaments for prizes from the town. Any of these larger events would be easy to transform into a fundraiser as well, which would give people even more of a reason to turn out.

The greatest challenge that may arise would be getting students excited to engage with these events — this can be rectifed by involving student leadership on campus in the planning of these events. Similarly, the issue of putting too much strain on the town can be circumvented if we involve local residents and community leadership in the planning of DartmouthHanover programming. As long as we consult with representatives from all the involved parties, the sky’s the limit for what we can organize together.

Although these possibilities have been mostly ignored by the present administration, incoming College President Sian Beilock and her administration may be uniquely prepared to start this campaign of renewed college-town cooperation. Mental health is one of Beilock’s priorities coming into her tenure, and if done correctly, this campaign could signifcantly help the mental health of students on campus. By working with the town to provide more alternative social spaces, we can create a sense of belonging to a larger Hanover community that’s bigger than just academic classes and social cliques. Through organizing fun events with the town, students who haven’t yet found their niche on campus will be given a chance to make those bonds in an alternative space which opens them up to the world outside Dartmouth while reinforcing appreciation for the town we all live in. These events would help encourage students to explore new communities and get out of established routines, especially if they are organized by professionals from the town and College. In turn, these events can help open students’ eyes to the world around them and expose us to fun new ways to enjoy College life. In doing so, we all stand to improve our mental health and general college experience.

I strongly encourage the Beilock administration to rethink how they approach Hanover, the townies and local businesses — for the sake of the students, if no one else. All that we need is a little coordination between our community leaders, and we can all enjoy the benefts of a healthy Dartmouth-Hanover relationship. At the end of the day, students and townies live in the same town. We’re neighbors — so why don’t we start acting neighborly? Even if election season shakes things up, we can still have fun, interact, meet each other, be friends and make memories. We may live in the middle of nowhere, but we can at least live in the middle of nowhere, together.

Opinion articles represent the views of their author(s), which are not necessarily those of The Dartmouth.

Q&A: Daisy Alpert Florin ’95 on debut novel ‘My Last Innocent Year’

BY ELLE MULLER

The Dartmouth Senior Staff

This article was originally published on April 24.

On February 14, 2023, Daisy Alpert Florin ’95 released her debut novel “My Last Innocent Year” about a young woman’s final semester at a small college in New Hampshire. Florin was recently named a “Writer to Watch” by Apple Books. The Dartmouth sat down with Florin to learn more about what motivated her to write the novel.

What was your inspiration for writing “My Last Innocent Year?”

DAF: I had been writing personal essays for about three or four years before I started writing the novel. Many of the essays I had written — including a couple for The Dartmouth Alumni Magazine — were about my college years. Once I finished getting those stories down, I found that I was still really thinking about that time in my life. The book takes place during the main character’s last semester in college, so I was thinking about that moment when you’re standing on the edge of adulthood and leaving your childhood or adolescence behind: “Are you really ready?” I wanted to dive more into that: The setting of college, the 90s and that time of my life. But I wanted to do it on a bigger stage –– to write a full novel about it and explore some of the issues I had been thinking about, but that hadn’t specifically happened to me. How did the politics of the 90s play into the process of writing this novel?

DAF: When I started writing the book, it was vaguely set in the 90s, without a specific political backdrop. I was writing between 2015 and 2020, which was when a lot of things in our culture were happening, like the rise of Trump and #MeToo. I started to think about how to bring some of those political issues into the book. So I decided to set the book in 1998 to use the backdrop of the ClintonLewinsky scandal and think about how that might have impacted college students at the time.

It was interesting to revisit Clinton and Lewinsky while writing. Monica Lewinsky had recently come out of isolation and was speaking up in the context of #MeToo. Women my age were reflecting on things that had happened in the 90s and thinking about what it all really meant through a different lens. So I think that’s something we were doing both personally and on a cultural level. What was the significance of the protagonist’s Jewish identity in the creation of the novel?

DAF: I grew up in a mixed faith family. My dad is Jewish, but my mom was not Jewish, and I was raised without religion. But I was from New York City and felt culturally Jewish, which made me feel very different from the larger culture at Dartmouth.

I wanted to give Isabel — the protagonist — this unusual upbringing, where she’s from the Lower East Side of Manhattan and her dad owns this Jewish store, but she’s not religious. She doesn’t fit into the larger culture at Wilder College, but she also feels distant from the Jewish students on campus like her friend Debra who is more traditionally Jewish, or Zev who is Israeli. I think I was drawing on my own feelings of being kind of an outsider at Dartmouth, although I had a lot of things that made me an insider. I wanted to play with that feeling of outsiderness because I think everyone who comes to college is an outsider.

That’s one of the things I have come to learn now that I’m older and when I talk to people who went to Dartmouth with me. Even the people I perceived as being insiders or as part of the prevailing culture admit to feeling like they didn’t fit in either. And that was really an interesting revelation to me.

What do you hope that readers will take away from “My Last Innocent Year?”

DAF: I’ve gotten feedback from people of different ages who feel like it really speaks to their experience in a college community, particularly at a small liberal arts college. I’m also specifically writing for women who are looking back at how they came of age

Before the Curtain: Arts on Campus Week 5

and the different systemic forces that played into their development as women: as sexual beings, as creative beings, as artists. I really wanted to get at how women’s development can be derailed by patriarchal institutions and by the men who hold up those institutions.

I’ve also heard from young women who have read the book and appreciated that there’s a retrospective voice to the book. In the book, Isabel is telling the story from a point in the future, so she’s looking back on this experience, which lets us know that she has arrived on the other side of these things and has survived what has happened to her. It makes readers feel like they will also get through the things that have happened to them, that there is a point on the distant shore where they will finally arrive. What advice do you have for students at Dartmouth who might be interested in pursuing writing?

DAF: There are a lot of different ways to walk the creative path. You don’t have to know right after coming out of college that this is what you want to do. Sometimes it happens later, and that’s okay. Writing is not a path you can’t get back on after doing something else. It’s there anytime you want to come back to it. I feel that so strongly.

I always thought writers were people who were English or creative writing majors, and wrote for the literary journal, and then they left school and got an MFA and they published short stories. I thought if I hadn’t done any of those things, I was “off the path,” or that it was not a path that was available to me. I then discovered that you can pursue writing at any time. You can spend 10 years working a different job because you need to make a living. And then you can decide: Now I want to pursue writing. It doesn’t leave you.

I really want to make that clear because I did not feel like anybody ever told me that. Hopefully it doesn’t take 25 years for you to find your way back to writing, but if it does, it does. And that will be the book you need to write.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity and length.

BY EMMA COULTER The Dartmouth

Friday, April 28

At 8 p.m. in Wilson 301, the theater department will put on its opening performance of “FAIRVIEW.” According to the Hopkins Center for the Arts website, Jackie Sibblies Drury’s 2019 Pulitzer Prize-winning play is “an interactive theatrical experience exploring the lenses through which we view other communities.” The performance follows the Frasiers, a middle-class Black family. In the play, Beverly, the protagonist, plans a birthday for her grandmother, which results in “complicated” family dynamics to surface.

“FAIRVIEW” is a sharp exploration of family drama and “the insidiousness of white supremacy.” Tickets are free and available through the Hopkins Center’s website.

At 9 p.m., The DoBros will perform at Sawtooth Kitchen. Based out of central New Hampshire, The DoBros’s style — often described as “farm-funk and dirt-grass” — is a synthesis of country, blues, bluegrass, rock, funk and Americana. Tickets are $5 and available on the Sawtooth Kitchen website.

Saturday, April 29

At 4 p.m., Sawtooth Kitchen will host Tommy Crawford for the final Saturday afternoon of his springtime residence. Crawford, who lives in White River Junction, will take the stage to play traditional folk tunes and original songs for all ages.

Tickets to his final performance are free and available on the Sawtooth Kitchen website. The theater department will put on its second performance of “FAIRVIEW” at 8 p.m. in Wilson 301. Tickets are free and available on the Hopkins Center’s website.

Sunday, April 30 At 4 p.m., the Hopkins Center will screen the film “All the Beauty and the Bloodshed” (2022) in Loew Auditorium. According to the Hop’s

website, Laura Poitras’s Oscar-nominated documentary is a “spellbinding look at the person, portfolio and politics of legendary photographer Nan Goldin.” In her work, Goldin focuses on LGBTQ+ visibility and activism, from the AIDS crisis in the 1980s to her criticism of the Sackler family for their role in the opioid crisis. “All the Beauty and the Bloodshed” follows Goldin’s journey “from Polaroids in dingy hotel rooms to die-ins at the Guggenheim.” Tickets are available on the Hopkins Center’s website and are $8 for general admission and $5 for students.

Wednesday, May 3

At 8 p.m. in Rollins Chapel, the Clarion choir will perform “All-Night Vigil” by Sergei Rachmaninoff in celebration of the Russian composer’s 150th anniversary. The Clarion Choir, conducted by Steven Fox ’00, is a three-time Grammy nominee and one of New York’s leading professional choirs. The choir has received numerous accolades for its recordings and tours throughout Europe and Russia. “AllNight Vigil” is a “quiet, reflective and deeply moving set of vespers that exudes light as it gradually moves toward daybreak.” Tickets are available on the Hopkins Center website. They are $35 for general admission and $10 for Dartmouth students.

Thursday, May 4

At 7 p.m. in Loew Auditorium, the Hopkins Center will screen the film “Revenge” (1989), directed by Ermek Shinabaev. The film is a part of the new wave of Kazakh cinema, which began during the late-Soviet era. It tells the story of a Korean boy who was raised to avenge the murder of his half-sister killed before his birth. “Revenge” encapsulates the sense of “national upheaval and intergenerational trauma” experienced by Kazakh filmmakers. Tickets can be purchased on the Hopkins Center’s website and are $8 for general admission and $5 for students.

SPORTS

e Look Ahead: Week 5

BY CAROLINE YORK The Dartmouth Staff

Friday, April 28

Women’s and men’s track and feld will compete in the University of Massachusetts Pre-Conference in Amherst, Massachusetts. Last weekend, Julia Reglewski ’25 took frst place in the shot put, throwing 14.54 meters at the Virginia Challenge. Last Friday at the George Davis Invitational, men’s track and feld had an impressive showing in the hammer throw with Jake Dalton ’23, Ben Pable ’25 and Michael Gabriel ’24 taking frst, second and third place, respectively.

Baseball will take on Brown University at Murray Stadium in Providence, Rhode Island for the frst game of the series at 3:30 p.m. The team is currently 1-32 and is seeking a win to break their 25- game losing streak. On Tuesday, the team fell 5-7 against the College of the Holy Cross. The team has yet to defeat an Ivy League opponent this season.

Softball will host Princeton University at home at the Chase Field Complex in a double header starting at 2 p.m. Although the Big Green also lost against Holy Cross last week, one highlight was Mary Beth Cahalan’s ’24 home run — the only home run made by Dartmouth in the entirety of the game.

Saturday, April 29

Lightweight rowing will travel to Ithaca, New York for the Baggaley Bowl, hosted by Cornell University. The team

has yet to beat an Ivy League opponent this season, most recently falling to Yale University in the Durand Cup. The team prepares for the Eastern Sprints next weekend before the fnal meet of the year, the IRA Championship.

Heavyweight rowing will host the Lake Morey Invite in Fairlee, Vermont against Syracuse University, Boston University, Georgetown University and the University of Wisconsin. The Big Green is coming of a victory from last weekend’s Atalanta Cup against Brown.

Dartmouth’s Varsity Eight finished almost fve seconds ahead of the Bears with a time of 5:44.39.

The sailing team will compete in the Women’s Team Race Nationals and the Coast Guard Alumni Bowl.

Last weekend, Dartmouth had a strong showing in the Boston Dinghy Cup with Oliver Hurwitz ’25, Maya Nguyen ’24 and Madeleine Regulla ’25 fnishing ffth in the “A” division.

Women and men’s track and feld teams will continue to compete at the UMass Pre-Conference.

Baseball will play two games to fnish the series, seeking a win over the Bears.

Softball will play to complete their series against Princeton.

Men’s lacrosse will host Brown at home for Senior Day at 1 p.m. The team is seeking to break a current four-game conference losing streak. The Big Green currently has a 6-5 overall record with their most recent 6-17 loss to Penn last weekend.

Women’s lacrosse will travel to

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, to take on Penn. The team is 6-8 overall and most recently defeated #24 Princeton 15-14 on Saturday, April 22. To celebrate Senior Day, Katie Elders ’23 scored three goals for the Big Green against the Tigers.

Sunday, April 30

Women’s rowing will travel to

Worcester, Massachusetts for the

Women’s Eastern Sprints Invitational on Lake Quinsigamond. Last weekend, the team swept all four races on Senior Day at Lake Morey. The Eastern Sprints Invitational marks the last regatta of the season before the Ivy League Championship. Sailing will continue with the Women’s

Team Race Nationals and the Coast Guard Alumni Bowl. Heavyweight rowing will compete in day two of the Lake Morey Invite.

Tuesday, May 2

Baseball will host Merrimack College at Red Rolfe Field at Biondi Park. Game time is scheduled for 3 p.m.

Dartmouth women’s and men’s rugby take Ivy League 7s titles

BY Maia Stewart

It was a Big Green sweep this past weekend, with both the women’s varsity rugby team and Dartmouth Rugby Football Club clinching Ivy League 7s titles. The tournament took place at Brophy Field, the Big Green’s home pitch — an “incredible” environment due to support from the student body and families of the athletes, according to men’s head coach Kyle Sumsion.

Rugby 7s is quite a different game from rugby 15s, as only seven athletes take the feld at a time to play seven-minute rather than 40-minute halves. With less bodies on the feld, conditioning and ftness are heavily emphasized in preparing for these 7s tournaments. For the DRFC, this conditioning paid of in the fnal.

“They’ve worked really hard on their ftness,” Sumsion said about DRFC. “I think that showed in the fnal… all of our guys had more gas in the tank, so to speak, compared to our opposition.”

For the women’s elite team, there was a large emphasis on technical maneuvers to ensure a win this tournament, particularly after coming of a loss at the Tropical 7s tournament in Tampa, Florida, just two weeks prior to the Ivy League tournament.

Anjali Pant ’24 said the team practiced specifc edge moves to ensure that there were players there to support one another in “line breaks” — when a player is left alone to make tackles by themselves. In addition to these more technical focuses, Ariana Ramsey ’22 and Pant both noted their coaches’ advice to “stay loose and have fun with each other” –– a testament to the power of working as a team and staying calm in highpressure situations.

The women played highly competitive teams, notably Harvard University and Brown University. Pant described the strong mentality that she and her teammates had going into their game against Brown, as they knew it would be a tough match.

“Brown is definitely a super physical team, and we knew that coming in that they hit hard,” Pant said. “[We went in] respecting each team, knowing they were going to bring us a diferent type of challenge. What we have wins championships.”

Both rugby teams had some incredible performances, which played pivotal roles in earning these titles. Ramsey had two hattricks — three tries scored by one player in

a single game — in two games, one against Princeton and the second against Harvard in the fnal.

For the DRFC, Luke Wilson ’25 scored a breakaway try in the last minute of the fnal against Brown, assisted by one of the co-captains Jaime Chuidian ’23, who then passed of the ball to Wilson. Co-captain Matias Calvo ’23 described this game-winning try as “a story book ending.”

The men’s win against Brown in the fnal was made even sweeter by the fact that the Big Green had lost to the Bears in a very similar way this past fall. Calvo said that the team had

a desire to “rewrite that script.”

Chuidian added that Brown has more funding and about twice as many recruited rugby players as Dartmouth, yet it was the Big Green who came out on top. Sumsion emphasized the value of training in the DRFC’s success.

“As coaches and as a team, we put a lot of stock into individuals and make sure we coach them up, and that they get the training and the time to play, so that they are ready to compete,” Sumsion said. “Three out of our seven guys that were starting in that fnal started rugby when they frst came to Dartmouth, so I think it

is a testament that if anyone is willing to come and work hard and be part of the team, there is a place for you.”

The two DRFC co-captains also described the legacy they had hoped to leave behind, both on and of the pitch. Chuidian said that one of his main goals as a co-captain was fostering a greater love for the sport.

“[Matias and I] both grew up playing rugby, diferent from most Americans who have come [to Dartmouth] and learned, so we inherently have this massive love for the sport,” said Chuidian. “I think we’ve portrayed [rugby] in a way that we hope is infectious to other people,

just to show to other people how passionate we are, how committed we are to not just the club, but to the sport itself.”

Calvo said that one of his favorite memories from this past weekend was the spectators storming the feld after each team’s win. Ramsey echoed Calvo’s sentiment.

“When [DRFC] won, everyone ran out onto the feld, and when we won they did the same for us, so I feel like it was just a good time of unity between the two of us,” Ramsey said. “We both share a [feld] house, so the whole household won, and I think that’s really cool.”

The Dartmouth Staff

thrilling rugby 7s division championships meant multple Big Green victories in Ivy League competton at Brophy Field in Hanover.

MIRROR

It Takes a Village

By Selin Hos STORY

This article was originially published on April 26, 2023.

Last fall, a few days before Halloween, I stumbled upon an unusual scene unfolding on Webster Avenue, better known as “Frat Row.” All of the Greek houses had sprinkled their front lawns with candy and games as a trick-ortreating activity for local children.

I was told that this was an event for DREAM (Directing through Recreation, Education, Adventure and Mentoring), a nonproft mentorship program for local low-income kids. As I stood next to my friends on the Chi Gam lawn, I watched two kids dressed as a Roman emperor and a shark, respectively, run up to grab handfuls of candy. They then started dueling with their fake swords.

DREAM has quite the presence on Dartmouth’s campus. Initially founded in 1998 to provide after-school programming for kids living in a public housing development near Dartmouth, DREAM soon established a program at almost every major college in Vermont. By 2015, they had opened successful programs in Boston and expanded outside of New England with programs in Pennsylvania. Today, it still operates on a village mentoring system in which college students serve as mentors to nearby communities of low-income kids aged K-12. At Dartmouth, students specifcally serve kids from the Windsor Village & Union Square, Hollow Drive and Northwoods housing communities in the Upper Valley.

Ella Briman ’25 joined DREAM her freshman winter. Having participated in DREAM for over a year, she now serves as a co-chair for the Hollow Drive community.

Briman noted that DREAM’s work allows for students to engage outside of the “Dartmouth bubble,” which refers to the College’s isolation from the rest of the Upper Valley.

“I really was interested in the program itself and thought it was a really admirable initiative,” she said. “As amazing as it is

to go to school in Hanover, I think it’s so important that we don’t get caught up in this tiny little bubble.”

Through volunteering with DREAM, Dartmouth students spend their Friday afternoons with the kids doing a handful of activities. According to Briman, last Friday, they went to a local park to enjoy the afternoon sunshine. Providing the kids with a range of activities, from drawing with chalk to beading to playing on the playground, the mentors aimed to give the kids “the freedom … to do whatever they wvant to do.”

Briman also emphasized the inherent privilege in being at Dartmouth.

“I think that we have a duty as Dartmouth students to help those communities,” Briman said. “Obviously we are very fortunate to live in a town that is very privileged, but that is not the case for a lot of the areas right outside of Dartmouth. There are huge discrepancies on what is available to Dartmouth students versus students growing up in say, Lyme.”

Charlotte Paul ’23, a DREAM recruitment chair, shared similar opinions, stating that, “[DREAM] builds a lot of awareness. You end up being in a bubble here at Dartmouth, and it is hard to even conceptualize how much is going on even 10 minutes outside of here. It helps give Dartmouth students a greater sense of understanding of the community and a better sense of empathy.”

Paul highlighted how she felt that mentoring can have a “huge impact” on these kids, giving them time to be kids while also helping them develop some “soft skills.” She also stressed the importance of matching the personalities of the mentors to the mentees.

“My mentee is really, really shy so it took a while — about a year — for us to get to a point where we could actually have a conversation and build a connection.”

Landon Armstrong ’23 has spent the past three years volunteering with DREAM and described how mentoring ofers the chance to fll a role that other people have played in his own life.

“I grew up having older kids in my community serving as mentors, so it kind of feels full circle,” Armstrong shared. According to various DREAM members, the kids really grow to love and appreciate the time that they spend with their mentees. According to Paul, they often get excited when they get to celebrate special occasions, like birthdays, with their mentors and miss them when Dartmouth is on break. It is always inevitable, however, that students will have to part ways with their mentors come graduation.

“It is tough, definitely, because with the nature of a mentor/mentee relationship the fact of leaving is always hard,” Armstrong said. “You want it to be a seamless transition for the kids themselves.”

Armstrong has been with his 11year old mentee since junior year, when Armstrong started working with his mentee. He said upon his graduation, he wants to make his mentee’s transition to another mentor as easy as possible.

“I’ve been looking for other students in DREAM who can take my place as his mentor — kind of like passing the torch, so that my mentee always has someone to look up to and throw a ball around with,” he said.

However, the connections students have made through DREAM are unlikely to fade, since DREAM boasts a considerable alumni presence.

“We fundraise a lot and alumni of DREAM are a lot of [the] people who end up giving money to us,” Paul explained.

Alumni of DREAM will often come back to see the kids or ask the current mentors about their past mentees, continuing to be interested and involved in their lives even after leaving Hanover.

“People have a really strong connection with [DREAM] and want to give back to the program,” Paul said. “Whenever I run into someone who did DREAM, like a senior when I was a freshman, they will always ask me how everyone is doing.”

While the experiences provided through DREAM positively impact

the lives of these kids in many ways, Dartmouth student mentors also emphasize the impact their mentees have had on them. Especially for seniors so close to graduation, the mentors refect that they, too, have changed as a result of their relationship with their mentees.

“It has been really cool to see all of the diferent life phases [the kids] have been through. I’ve grown up with them

in a sense,” Paul said. Armstrong agreed, saying, “You get to see the world through their eyes. Especially with a lot of [the kids] in subsidized housing communities, some of the kids have a very positive mindset. They’re having a good time trying to fnd the nevvxt game to play,” Armstrong said. “Just being present with them has been a big lesson.”

Reflection: New Kid on the Block No Longer

By Noelle Blake STORY

This article was originally published on April 26, 2023.

“Are you guys ’27s?” a girl brightly asked me and the two ’27s I was showing around, as we stood in a large pack of unfamiliar faces.

While I am not a prospective member of the Class of 2027, the kids surrounding me certainly were. Their bright green lanyards, embossed Dartmouth folders and eager smiles gave them away instantly. The group of students that stood in front of me each embodied the quintessential prospective student — that near-graduation glow shone on their faces as they excitedly chatted about the next chapter of their lives.

Once I got over my initial surprise at the question, I answered, “No, I’m just showing these guys around.”

But, as I looked around at the group, I couldn’t deny it any longer: I am getting old.

I had previously ignored the fact of

my status as an almost-sophomore when I saw the follow requests from kids with “Dartmouth ’27” in their Instagram bios. I pretended not to see the jersey with “DARTMOUTH 27” in big letters in the display window at the Co-Op. I quickly swiped past the video of Lee Cofn signing admissions letters. But now, there was no running from reality.

The phrase “incoming freshman” contains so many feelings. It’s terrifying and exciting, and now, in my last term as a freshman, it’s almost nostalgic. As I stand beside this schmob-in-training, I overhear their conversations and recognize them fondly. They’re having the very same conversations I had a little over a year ago.

“Did you ED or RD?”

“I’m still undecided about what I’m going to study.”

“I’m visiting Cornell next weekend.”

The two ’27s that I was supposed to guide had merged with the larger group that approached us, while four more

waved enthusiastically as they neared us on the sidewalk. I smiled while the prospective students exchanged numbers and spoke about their possible majors, yet I couldn’t help but feel out of place. Wasn’t I supposed to be the young one?

I can’t quite say that I miss feeling overwhelmed in Foco during the dinner rush, begrudgingly telling people that I’m from Connecticut — like practically everyone else — or trying to hide that I’m using Google Maps to get to class. At the same time, however, seeing prospective students roam around campus reminds me of my frst Woccom –– walk around Occum pond –– or the moment I realized that I would never study government like I had said on my application.

Last fall, I went home to Connecticut for a weekend and thought to myself that my life was happening without me in Hanover — that I was missing out on two precious days. It’s hard to reconcile the fact that just a year ago, I was still a high school senior envisioning myself

stepping onto the Dartmouth Green, playing spike ball and high-fving my partner when we scored. These days I prefer to sunbathe or picnic, but you get the point.

Now here I am, attempting to explain how to get to Irving from Novack and playfully trashing Cornell despite having little-to-no stake in the “Best Ivy” debate.

And of course, there’s the jarring realization that I only get to be a college freshman once, and that this chance is only six weeks away from being over. I start to wonder — have I made the most of it?

Well, that depends on how you defne the ideal freshman experience at Dartmouth. Stargazing with friends on the golf course and learning to ski were frsts I wouldn’t trade for anything. But that time I sat on a rock and cried during First-Year Trips because I hadn’t showered in four days, I probably could’ve done without. I also wrote my frst piece for Mirror

in the middle of fall term. I talked about how freshmen have the opportunity to rebrand themselves in college and tried to determine what kind of student I’d be at Dartmouth. It’s a bit surreal now to refect on the end of my frst-year experience; it feels like I spoke about the beginnings of it only a short time ago. I think 22F me would be pleased to know that while I haven’t rebranded, I’ve defnitely changed as a student and as a person — I’m now much more confdent than the scared 18 year-old that arrived on campus three quarters ago. And I’m confronted by that personal growth every time I look at the ’27s.

More often than not, in classes and clubs, at socials and events, I’ve had a moment that’s made me think to myself: This is the part of life that I was so eager to live. As much as I dislike that I’m almost at the end of my freshman experience, I think I’m coming to accept that these years are going to fy by, whether I like it or not. I don’t really believe there’s a right way to do freshman year, though I did have delusions of grandeur about what I would do with the beginnings of my adult life. For some reason, I forgot the studying part when I drafted my great to-do list.

Being mistaken for a ’27 by ’27s is oddly humbling; I’m not insulted that they don’t see me as a college student as much as I am puzzled about the subtle ways that being in college changes you.

As far as I think I’ve come in my time here so far, they must smell the novelty on me in the same way that I see their class year stamped on their foreheads. I guess that we all blend together at some point, especially to those who are a few class years ahead.

Next year, the ’27s will also grapple with the end of their freshman year, and I’ll be even older. But I think that’s one of the most beautiful parts of college: everywhere you go, there are people to remind you of where you’ve been, just like these potential ’27s are reminding me of my frst year in the woods as I write this now. And I think I’m just about ready to pass on the torch.

HANNAH LI/THE DARTMOUTH