We attend a strange school where a systemic culture of abuse exists under a college president who has the power and experience to change what can only be described as a public health crisis of the utmost importance: the endemic culture of physical and psychological abuse that occupies the heart of Dartmouth's Greek community.
Richard Nixon only got it half right when he wrote during the Reagan years: "At present we occupy a treacherous no man's land between peace and war, a time of growing fear that our military might has expanded beyond our capacity to control it and our political differences widened beyond our ability to bridge them." Nixon's words were those of a man who had nothing left to lose American presidents seldom have the wherewithal to speak the truth until they have left office.
As Dartmouth's annual term of fraternity hazing finally culminates in hell nights this week, less secret violence is attracting news in the country at large.
The Joe Paterno scandal at Pennsylvania State University wherein the beloved football coach with the most wins in NCAA history did far less than enough to address child rape committed by his defensive coordinator Jerry Sandusky represents much of what is wrong with the state of college athletics and offers an opportunity to reflect on a system that has distorted our values. Sandusky's outrageous crimes and Paterno's unethical negligence have hurt and angered many, most of all the victims and their families.
I really wish that Herman Cain would spend more time in New Hampshire. Not because I want him to win our primary, and not because he could actually ever win, but because New Hampshire deserves a chance to get to know America's favorite third-rate fast- food-mogul-turned-aspiring-national-politician.
Last week an editor at The Daily Caller, a Dartmouth '91, reached out to current students as a part of his advance research on protest or flash mob action taking place on campus to coincide with the Republican debate.
As my professors, classmates, friends and the anonymously-libelous internet commenters who troll my articles know, I'm sometimes a contrarian just for the sake of contrarianism.
Having been away from Dartmouth and in the "real world" for the past year, I've had to make the awkward transition back into this skewed landscape of wasted privilege, lockstep anti-intellectualism and rapacious yearning to at any cost to ourselves and each other become or remain upper class.
Correction appended At a party last week, a friend told me that Bridgewater Associates paid her $100 to explain why she didn't participate in sophomore Summer corporate recruiting.