It seems that since the resignation of Danielle Moore '95 as student body president this past fall, everyone wants to discuss the role of women at Dartmouth. I spent the first five months of my tenure here going through what they call transition and watching this ongoing conversation and debate. I'd say that at this point I'm about as adjusted as I'm going to get, so if all of you on that bandwagon will move over, I'm ready to put in my two cents.
Let me start with an anecdote. In the first year when I was writing for my high school newspaper, the Op-Ed editor was a buff senior football player with broad shoulders and manicured blonde hair. He was a visual, and perhaps self-styled, stereotype. Invariably he wore his team jersey and Timberlands to lay-out. When I handed him my first article, a piece on the Clarence Thomas hearings, he glanced at it and said, "We have one of these already. Are you for or against him?" When I replied, "Against," he quipped, "Ohhhh, the chick's point of view."
I wasn't sure exactly how to react. This was the first time that anyone had suggested that my sex was a factor in my opinion.
What should the role of women be here, at one of the finest schools in the country? Ideally, I'd like to be able to say that our role is exactly the same as the men's role, the way it's described in glossy brochures: We're here to become educated, well-rounded adults. We're here to be readied for graduate school or the job market. We're here to learn and enjoy ourselves and find a deeper meaning in life than we knew it had. We're here to grow up and become leaders and pioneers.
But I can't look at the world or our campus through such thickly tinted lenses. Even if the color is rose, if it's too dark it obscures my vision. And anyway, our role as women should not be prescribed by such sentimental cliches.
The first task for me as a Dartmouth woman has been learning to characterize myself as one. It's a big leap from girlhood to womanhood, yet on arrival here, I suddenly found myself sporting the title of"WOMAN." I'd been dropped into two foreign environments at once -- the dense forest of college discovery and the jungle of womanhood.
It made me think back to childhood games,-- playing "pin the tail on the donkey" at birthday parties, getting spun around until I didn't know what was in any direction. Or playing "Marco Polo" in a swimming pool -- sightlessly following the voices.
The title "Woman" is the least of it. With the title comes the yoke of being not only individuals but representatives of our sex. And occasionally, we feel like tokens to prove a non-sexist, multi-cultural environment exists here. The flannel-shirted, L.L Bean-booted, hard drinking, conservative Dartmouth male is notorious. But what of the Dartmouth female? Perhaps we're lucky to be lacking such a strictly defined and laughable stereotype.
I'm beginning to understand that it is, in fact, part of my "role" to simply be strong and excel at whatever I can; to stand up for myself no matter what the situation; to be more vocal. In the process of making myself a better individual, I can also be a sort of suffragette for the 21st century. And as much as it sounds like a sappy reminiscence for the rocking chair far in my future, I'm paving the way for my daughters and granddaughters so that one day they can look out on a world so ideal that they find themselves checking their lenses to make sure that they are, indeed, clear.
So when my editor referred to my article as having the "chick's" point of view, I laughed it off. And even though I didn't know it at the time, that was the right way to deal with the situation. His comment, coming from the mouth of an 18-year-old lad who was about to find himself struggling into manhood, was not a big deal at all.
Women need to respect themselves and protect each other. We women need to forge ahead even when it seems that success is impossible. And therefore, to some extent, I'm sorry that Moore relinquished her pivotal role as student body president.
At the same time, in the midst all this somber advice, we need to take ourselves less seriously. We have to realize that sometimes "chick" is just a benign word. Being called a "woman" scares me a lot more.
