Sometimesit seems that Dartmouth is a breeding ground for doubles. How many times during the course of a day do we wave to someone, only to realize on closer inspection that we waved to the wrong person and then try to pretend that we were waving to someone off in the distance? Indeed, somewhere on campus, your doppleganger walks, and you probably know him. Is it just that all Dartmouth students look alike? Yes, they do and it's not for the lack of "diversity."
Originally, I was willing to pass off those mistaken identifications of randoms as just my Asian inability to tell people of the Caucasian persuasion apart. Then, I realized I did the same with everybody regardless of race, gender or shoe size. People here not only look alike but also seem to have the same mannerisms.
It's not that everybody looks just like everybody else, but most people on campus seem to fit into a few categories of similarly dressed similar looking people.
There is always the popular group of 5' 10" guys that sports short light brown hair under a baseball cap. On the women's side, there's the 5' 4" female with the clanking clog footwear and the curled light brown tresses extending below the shoulder. Then, of course, there's that cross-gender bunch who always have their legs in a Dartmouth Green pair of wind pants topped with an all-purpose fleece pullover.
Quite a few categories exist which range from the classically generic to the post-eighties different -- though it seems there's never too much divergence from Dartmouth's tried and true variations of the prep school look.
There might be a few different looks, but as for voices and tones of conversation, they're all the same. Everything is said without a trace of an accent. A few years at Dartmouth squelches even the strongest southern drawl into a pulp blandness.
It is sad that Dartmouth students end up not only looking so generic, but also becoming people who can be described with labels. People don't need to be searching for that new and different look; the look comes from within.
Dartmouth students have their friends, sports, clubs and money to burn on clothes and cosmetic surgery. So what do we do? We end up looking like our friends who are in the same clubs as us. The problems lie in the fact we stop caring about who we are and who others are individually. We've stopped looking within ourselves for who we are. It's easier to identify ourselves and others with some larger more encompassing group. How many times does someone begin a description of someone else with the line, "Yeah, he's a brother at Mu Nu. You know what they're like." The individual becomes lost in a sea of clubs, sports, majors and affiliation T-shirts.
Quitting all the organizations in the world won't make someone uniquely individual, nor will waking up early in the morning and searching for the ugliest clothes on campus. Individualism exudes from the essence of being, but here at Dartmouth it's as if we've been dipped in wax. Our individualism is inhibited. Everybody measures and restrains his actions on set standards. We talk the talk and walk the walk.
So in a better sense of the word, Dartmouth needs diversity -- a diversity of individuals. Dartmouth seems like a much smaller school than it is. Walking across campus, I may see 4,000 students, but they might only seem like a mere thousand because I think I'm just seeing the same people over and over.
Dartmouth is a school that has prided itself on a sense of rugged individualism. But it seems that in pursuing that goal, Dartmouth students have become the same rugged individual.
