I'm not even going to write this point/counterpoint saying that Dartmouth is the kind of place that gets really excited about changes, because that would be blatantly incorrect. The '16s don't start writing their keen, three-week old insights into Dartmouth culture in The Mirror for a couple weeks. Dartmouth students generally hate change. Luckily, Dartmouth students are also really busy, so Dartmouth doesn't like change but rather begrudgingly accepts it. Our collective attention span is too short, and we have too much going on to sustain a meaningful protest against a proposed or, more likely, imposed change. After some amount of time, that change ceases to be change at all.
Nearly every change that has happened to Dartmouth followed a pattern of outrage, acceptance and forgetting. Let's look at the illustrative example of the conversion of Thayer Dining Hall to the Class of 1953 Commons and the switch to meal swipes. Like all bad ideas, it was initially met with fierce opposition from students who didn't see the need to pay $13 to sit with their friends at dinner. However, rage quickly gave way to apathy as no one really cared enough to go to the meetings to discuss the changes or take part in the protest, thus paving the way. Not caring becomes the new caring.
When construction started on King Arthur Flour in the library, students lost their shit. The loyal defenders of the periodicals room claimed that the noise was ruining the only study space in the library worth using. Luckily, their protest lasted just long enough to jeer at the socialites studying on First Floor Berry. Now no one can imagine life without KAF.
This has happened for every change since Eleazar Wheelock first announced that he would be teaching lessons on the top of the hill rather than at its base. Students freaked out for a short while and then accepted the new normal, realizing that everything was fine. It happened when the College admitted women. It happened when Webster Hall started hosting old books instead of Bruce Springsteen concerts. It happened with the Student Life Initiative. All right, that was the one notable exception. Tough luck, Jim Wright.
As a side note that provides minimal support for my argument, it's not our fault that the administration mostly proposes terrible ideas for changes. Obviously I'm going to be against a mandate to pay bartenders to serve alcohol at a party, but give us an opportunity to replace Judge and French with nice dorms, and I'll lead the charge with a crowbar in one hand and a hammer in the other.
When the entire student population cycles through every four years, things that were once changes become tradition. A lot of things at Dartmouth that we assume have existed since 1769 probably weren't here 20 or even 10 years ago. I am terrified that in two years Dartmouth will be a school where almost no one in the student body will have any idea that Home Plate ever existed, and no one will feel a small pang of sadness when making a mediocre panini at FoCo, which they don't even call FoCo. No one will remember Pavillion as a bastion of warm cookies. Some people will even think Collis Market doesn't sound absurd.
Changes are constantly shaping Dartmouth no matter how much we complain about them and even hate it at times. I believe it was Richard Hatch from Survivor who said that change is the only constant. As much as many people hate to admit it, Dartmouth is receptive to change. Obviously some things are untouchable: The '16s will forever be the worst class ever, Keystone Light will remain the beer of choice and we'll always go outside in the winter and wonder why Eleazar Wheelock chose to educate Native Americans in such an unbearably cold place. Besides that, I'm fully prepared to come back for reunions and be shocked that things that I considered mainstays of Dartmouth no longer exist. But if they've gotten rid of chocolate chip cookies or scones, at Collis I will burn down Parkhurst.