A few weeks ago, a '98 wrote that the "magic of the moment" (his entire DOC trip) had "gone up in smoke" when he was asked to consider the history of a tradition and learn something about Dartmouth in the process.
I only hope he does not have such a narrow view about what his Dartmouth education is going to entail, because it does not end when you leave the classroom. Nor, one hopes, should it be incompatible with having a good time.
One of my trippees was similarly dismayed to read an essay that cast a negative light on the Homecoming bonfire. It decried the waste of wood thatcould be used to repair and build homes, and noted the negative impact of the bonfire on the environment.
He felt like this knowledge had robbed him of part of his Dartmouth experience.
Sadly, because that information was neither untrue nor irrelevant, I couldn't take unrestricted pride in telling him about the tradition he would inherit from all of us.
Running laps around the bonfire and the enormous gathering on the Green is a warm memory, one I hold dear because I didn't know back then what I know now: that the bonfire tradition is simultaneously an enormous celebration of the whole community and a selfish orgy of waste.
Where did we go wrong? How can we incorporate our knowledge into an old tradition, one whose very power lies in its age?
On most college campuses, activism is a part of campus life and is embraced. Students seek knowledge about the world around them, embrace real-life issues like homelessness in the Upper Valley, like the preservation of the woods we hold so dear on our first-year trips, like the marginalization of real-life American Indians by the cartoon image of an Indian warrior.
Why do we stand for this assault on the world we will inherit? Why do we act as though we have no say and no stake in what happens to us, around us, because of us? We build the bonfire, after all.
I use the bonfire as an example because, like everything we do, the bonfire has implications beyond who will run around it at night.
I remain unconvinced that abolishing this tradition without a powerful substitute would be entirely constructive, though. As far as the Dartmouth community is concerned, this ritual serves to bind it together without excluding anyone. That does make it somewhat magical.
It does not take the magic away to know that building and burning the bonfire is not purely, irrefutably perfect as traditions go. Unless you grow up in Disneyland, sooner or later you have to accept the fact that we do not live in a cartoon world where everyone smiles and sings all the time. And good and evil do exist in the same people, and in the same actions.
The College will be teeming with alumni and alumnae this weekend. They will look at the bonfire with nostalgia because it is a symbol of their years at Dartmouth, of the excitement and glory of their first fall in Hanover and the thrilling beginnings of four years of education.
Most of them know the bonfire is not a perfect tradition, but it symbolizes a jumble of memories -- an experience and an education they will never forget. Their knowledge will not have robbed them of the chance to enjoy watching that phallic tower burn, even if it will have given them, as it did me, a different perspective.
The real "magic" of college is being in an environment where your only goal is to learn, and where what is expected of you is precisely that: seek knowledge, don't hide from it. The point of information isn't to take something away from you; the point is to teach you something along the way.
Dartmouth is not here to entertain you nearly so much as it is meant to challenge you to think.
Maybe we can amend the bonfire tradition so we use old wood that was meant to be incinerated anyway.
Maybe we will change the shape of the temporary edifice to more closely resemble a womb.
Maybe we will find a way to channel the heat to our dorms, or put a smoke filter on the highest level, or use fake logs that can be recycled from one year to the next.
Maybe we won't change it at all.
But isn't it fun to think of the possibilities?
