In his novel "White Noise" Don DeLillo observes the omnipresent static of modern life, the hum of refrigerators and microwaves and gargantuan shopping centers, all of which coalesce into an ineffable yet subtly oppressive atmosphere which lends the novel its title. Dartmouth has its own version of this phenomenon, the unceasing din one might call "Green Noise."
Green Noise envelopes every aspect of Dartmouth life. It is work; it is play; it is what we care about and what we struggle against. It is the ultimate constant in our fluctuating collegiate existence.
Consider, how much of what we do each day is not tied into classes or social interaction? At least we have the reprieve of sleep, unless, of course, you're unlucky enough to be dreaming about these things.
Especially as the term creeps toward finals period, work begins to engulf us all. Everyone is preparing for an exam or a term paper; nearly everyone is tethered to the axis of academic achievement, an idea which is somehow, even if only tangentially, tethered to our nebulous conception of that which we obliquely call our "future."
As for our social life, it, too, dissolves into entropy. One social scene bleeds into another, until they all seem one amorphous mass of funk bands and pong games and shouted exchanges in poorly-lit rooms, abbreviated conversations at the Dirt Cowboy, small crowds poised outside of Murphy's on the brink of dissolution. Have you ever tried to trace back the thread of your average weekend? Where it started, where it took you to, where you wound up? It's a fun activity if you like existentialism, but for those of us who need concrete cause-and-effect, the task is enervating.
Green Noise, however, is more than just classes and parties -- it's also Dartmouth's irrepressible political discourse. The tenor of campus politics reminds me of Yeats -- "The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity." When I consider the perspective of Dartmouth's apathetic majority, I can't help but think of Shakespeare's musings on that which is "full of sound and fury, signifying nothing." Those who do care often verge on bombast; those who don't are effectively nihilists, and consequently destructive in their own oblivious fashion.
The protests, the rallies, the candlelight vigils -- I wonder, do they really help the causes they support? Perhaps the acts themselves are little more than self-expressive catharses, beneficial in as much as they allow the protesters to feel that their voice is at least being heard by someone.
After the protests come the protests about the protests -- Dartmouth's own meta-commentary. Each reaction removes us further from what it was we were originally discussing -- witness the way the "shit discourse" unfolded: first there was shit on the lawns, then the shit we didn't hear about, finally the condemnations of the word itself.
The debate eventually subsides. (No one seems particularly concerned about the abolition of the Religion Department these days.) Agendas fragment. Organizations splinter and re-form. Inevitably some campus conservative writes a column bemoaning the fact that "we've gone too far."
Still, every so often something breaks through. The static is disturbed by the suffering of real pain, be it racial slurs on somebody's door, or the violence of date rape after another night's drunken carousing, or even just miscommunication between friends -- the tragedies of college life. Besides the pain they cause and the conflicts they epitomize, these acts are here, I believe, to stir us from our lackadaisical stupor into which the all-pervasive Green Noise is constantly lulling us. Dartmouth politicos should understand their part in engendering this apathy; the trivial rallies will undercut the significance of the truly important ones.
But in the end they are merely another cog in the machine -- it's the finals, the engines labs, the critical essays, the lectures, the extensions, the blitzes, sent messages, automatic reply-tos, chickenburgers, Hop fries, manic performances in Bentley Theater, the formal dances, a cappella groups, the red and yellow and pink flyers pinned to bulletins boards in every academic building, every dorm, advertising this speaker or that guest lecturer, the stairmasters and racquetball goggles, the Thursday night Seinfeld feasts, and the Dartmouth caps, Dartmouth sweatshirts, Dartmouth sweatpants, Big Green pennants suffocating the dorm walls ...
And everywhere I go, every building on this campus I walk into, there's the Sports Weekly. The Sports Weekly, as ubiquitous and unchanging as the Green Noise that surrounds us, comprising the ideological undercurrent of our collective consciousness.
