In the week before Commencement, we asked our graduating reporters and columnists to imagine returning to campus for their 25th reunion. Where would they see the most change? The strongest continuities?
I hope I won’t have to wait 25 years to see Dartmouth become a more safe, inclusive, affordable, and accessible place for each member of its community. Twenty five years from now, I imagine that the social scene will have transformed to be more engaged, friendly and welcoming toward an increasingly diverse student body.
I predict this will involve a transition away from Greek life toward more inclusive coed residential communities. Buildings may look different and will hopefully be more sustainable. Maybe the library will be digitized, the stacks made obsolete.
But the most important parts of Dartmouth will remain: brilliant professors who care, the 6 p.m. peal of the alma mater, the friends I can’t imagine leaving and all the beautiful and gritty and real memories of four of the most transformative years of my life.
The changes I hope to see will restore my faith that institutions can and do get better over time, while the continuities of the things I’ve loved here will remind me that I’ve finally come home to Dartmouth.
— Kate Bradshaw ’14
More students will come to the College to major in engineering and computer sciences. The demand for STEM degrees is high and will only increase, and students are shifting gradually toward such concentrations as they realize this.
Dartmouth will always remain a liberal arts school, but the Thayer School of Engineering will attract more students, which might sway the academic culture. Certain Dartmouth traditions like the bonfire and Dartmouth Outing Club first-year trips will remain constant, there will still be a heavy concentration of students majoring in economics and government and the Rockefeller Center will still be going strong with all of its programming.
The wild card in all of this is the Greek system. I think the Greek system will remain a major part of Dartmouth’s social life. The key, however, will be how well the president’s administration (both College President Phil Hanlon’s and his successor’s) can work with the Greek system — and vice versa. If they can’t, then, for better or worse, things will get interesting.
— Josh Schiefelbein ’14
Frankly, it’s hard to predict what will and won’t change at Dartmouth, an institution that was rated one of the world’s most enduring institutions by - Booz Allen Hamilton — although that was in 2005, I can imagine the admissions office is still trotting out that fact.
I’d like to see Dartmouth get all its energy from solar panels and finally put a coffee place in the Life Sciences Center so bio majors and premeds don’t have to trudge all the way to Novack for caffeine. I’d like students to be able to choose to join or not join whatever organizations they like, and have no one judge them for it. The Dartmoose will become an official mascot, replacing beloved unofficial mascot Keggy.
The old traditions probably won’t fail. In 25 years, we’ll still be running around bonfires, jumping in frozen ponds and being naked in public. Dartmouth students will still be ambitious, adventurous and secretly weird.
— Katie Sinclair ’14
Imagining Dartmouth in the future is a sobering thought. Imagining myself at 47 is downright terrifying.
I think that the largest changes at the College will be a shift away from the style of liberal arts education and quarter system that the school operates on now, moving toward more conventional, larger university methods of education.
The truth is, the way Dartmouth structures its terms and credit makes majoring in departments like the hard sciences and engineering more difficult than it needs to be. The D-Plan is anachronistic and will probably go the way of fraternities.
I think that the strongest continuity will be a reluctance to change. Dartmouth is isolated, which makes it intractable. Big changes to the school’s social life, administration or misadministration and academics will inevitably occur, but I doubt they will ever occur easily or without major backlash from stubborn alumni and students. Hopefully in the future the college will tackle issues of change, social justice and tolerance with more skill than it has done over the past few years.
— Andrew Shanahan ’14
