On January 4, 1997, a date not too long before today's, I saw a rather interesting article in the New York Times.
"A Shy Scholar Transforms Dartmouth Into a Haven for Intellectuals," read the explosive headline. The article was by an eloquent writer named Sara Rimer, and presented a flattering portrait of our very own President James O. Freedman. In fact, the article at one point confirms what I and others who live and die for this school have long suspected: that Dartmouth College is, finally, a "hot college."
Hot? Try scalding -- we're talking core temperature of the sun at the very least. "Applications have risen 41 percent in the past five years," Ms. Rimer writes.
And why shouldn't applications be up? Too often we spoiled residents of that which President Bill Clinton two years ago referred to in his commencement address as "the most phat funkhouse in New England" forget how lucky we are to be here at Dartmouth.
But whom, you may wonder, do we have to thank for this "intellectual haven?" Why, James O. Freedman, of course. Upon his arrival amongst the stiff granite pillars of New Hampshire, President Freedman, according to Religion professor Hans Penner, "woke everyone up. He raised the intellectual ethos."
Raised it? No offense, Professor Penner, but I, for one, hardly think that the waifish and dingly verb "raise" will suffice to express adequately the incredible impact of President Freedman's mere presence. President Freedman's done more than "raise" our intellectual etho-whatever -- he's rocked it! Bashed it through the moon! Ladies and gentlemen, WE HAVE BEEN NUKED.
And how did the man behind the O. accomplish this daunting task with such verve? Well, according to Ms. Rimer, by transforming Dartmouth into an institution that "embraces those students whom he [President Freedman] calls creative loners."
Yes sir. Although I was once embarrassed to admit it, I myself was at one time one of those "creative loners" -- back in high school, as a matter of fact. I sat in my lonely but creative bedroom, mastering my cello, solving a mathematical riddle here, a mathematical riddle there, translating the most lubricious Catullus passages I could find (like I said, I was lonely), and writing reams upon reams of poetry.
Once I came to Dartmouth, however, I lost most of my creatively lonely instincts, and became a more or less normal human being (I use the term "normal" loosely, of course), capable of plenty of needless social interaction, as well as utterly useless alcohol-induced intoxication.
I know what you're thinking -- my personal anecdote contravenes the idea of President Freedman's transformed Dartmouth. But let us not use little maladjusted old me as a representative example of a Dartmouth student. Sara Rimer was certainly shrewd enough not to ask me for a tasty quotable nosh; instead, she went straight to 1996 graduate Monica Oberkofler, who, in typical Dartmouth student fashion, graduated summa cum laude, and has since gone off to grad school at Oxford.
I won't bother to repeat Ms. Oberkofler's comments in this column; suffice to say she was trenchant, concise, yet holistically life-affirming. And for those of you who feel that Ms. Oberkofler might somehow fall short of representing your opinion as a typical Dartmouth student, you need not worry, for Ms. Rimer also solicited some resonant pith from another typical Dartmouth student: President of the Student Body, Jon Heavey.
"Too many creative loners are coming," President Heavey declares in the article. President Heavey, excuse my insolence, but have you gone positively daft? You can never, EVER have too many creative loners! So what if Webster Avenue is about as loud as cellular mitosis by 1:00 a.m. on the average Friday night? My God, man, we're translating Catullus!
But still, the article certainly did its job in obtaining a good representation of both faculty and student opinion concerning our nascent "transformation." The article also went to great length to recount President Freedman's inspiring defeat of the Dartmouth Review, an act which, in all seriousness, I heartily support. Review writers may have been bitter, insouciant loners, but they were never all that creative.
Gentle readers, I hate to moralize, but I think that in our haste to perform our lonely creations, we forget to pay tribute to the one man who has made it all possible for us. We are all, in a sense, lambs of the Freedman flock.
And as Sara Rimer pointed out, we're hotter than ever.
Burn, creative loners, burn.
