Like most of you, thanks to the football game with Harvard this weekend, I have most of today off. But unlike most of you, I'm sure, this fact in a way bothers me. And I know what you are all going to say: Why on earth is he complaining about a day off from classes? In my opinion, it speaks volumes about where our priorities lie as an institution if we place a certain football game above our education, which is what we are here for.
And before I'm labeled as a geek or a wallflower, let me point out that I'm not adverse to celebration by any means. For instance, I have no problem whatsoever with the winter term equivalent of this cancellation of classes, namely the Friday of Winter Carnival. At this point, I'm sure there are those wondering what the difference is between the two. Quite simply, Winter Carnival is specifically a Dartmouth event. It is one of the things that defines the Dartmouth experience. Homecoming Weekend, with Dartmouth Night and the bonfire, is also a unique Dartmouth experience. A football game against Harvard should hardly be put on the same level. But that is precisely what we do with the Harvard game through the College's scheduling. An arrangement where Homecoming Weekend is half-a-day longer would be far more appropriate and far more useful to students.
"But it's HARVARD! Our rivals!" one might reply. Somehow I doubt that Harvard cancels its classes the day before its game with Dartmouth. If anything, they are probably more fixated on beating Yale than Dartmouth. Why should we make a bigger deal of this game than Harvard does, which we do by virtue of granting a partial holiday for it? Doesn't that make us in some way pathetic or indicate some sort of inferiority complex? Doesn't it in some subtle way confirm that stereotype that all of us wanted to go to Harvard but weren't admitted and are somehow bitter about it?
Whether or not that last statement is true makes no difference. It doesn't matter if we applied there or not, never mind whether we were accepted there. (Just for the record, I applied and didn't get accepted). We have no reason to measure ourselves in terms of any other institution. And if we have to measure Dartmouth in terms of another college, there must be more appropriate places than Harvard. We are a college with a strong emphasis on teaching and undergraduate education; Harvard is a university with more of an emphasis on research and graduate study. Our campus is small and surrounded by rustic countryside; their campus is large and in the middle of a massive metropolitan area.
And yet Dartmouth students are constantly claiming "superiority" to Harvard, whatever that means. But that is really like saying that apples are better than oranges. Dartmouth occupies a unique niche -- we are larger than the likes of Williams, Amherst and Bowdoin but are in the Ivy League with Harvard, Yale and Penn, which are far larger and very different from us. The only other Ivy League school that even remotely has similar attributes would be not Harvard but Princeton.
And despite these obvious facts, Dartmouth still suffers from what I call "the Harvard Complex." The Dartmouth Review likes to claim that the College expansion plans and promotion of social options are part of a drive to "Harvardize" Dartmouth. Any expression of a left-of-center political point may evoke a response like "You should be in Cambridge." People who dislike President Freedman, be they students or alumni, are always the quickest to point out that he went to Harvard, as if it mattered in any substantive way.
What exactly is "Harvardization" anyway? Does it mean trying to make the social scene not consist nearly exclusively of beer-swilling in crowded frat basements? Does it mean a climate where someone who would rather engage in other social activities doesn't feel like leaving town every weekend? Does it mean that there will be more space for a few more students, as well a little more office space for faculty? If that's "Harvardization," by all means, let's "Harvardize" immediately if not sooner.
But these things will not make Hanover into Cambridge, nor will they turn Dartmouth into a university dominated by graduate students or change most of the other things that differentiate us from that other college two hours south of us. There are plenty of good reasons that Dartmouth is not Harvard. So could we please try getting over this ridiculous "Harvard complex?" A good way to start would be treating the day before the Harvard game like any other Friday.
