We have banned the G-word (the event we are attending today) and the A-word (what we become after the G-word.) We have had sappy conversations and teary trips down Memory Lane. We have watched each other spend a year (and especially the Spring) adjusting to the idea of Graduation. We have watched each other cope in our own fashion: Some of us have taken the Ledyard Challenge, while others have streaked the Green, the Reserves, and the Hanover Inn; some have imbibed too much, or acquired tattoos, or just behaved as juveniles, to prove that we are not yet adults, will not be adults, refuse to be adults. And yet, for all of our efforts, time has not stopped, the world has not ceased spinning, and June 14th has still arrived.
At the beginning of this term, Gabrielle Lucke, the Director of Health Resources, asked how I was doing. "Well," I replied, "last week I made a list of my faults." "Rachel!" she exclaimed, so I quickly added, "It's just that I feel that there are so many things about myself that were supposed to be perfected by now, and they're just not." "No, Rachel," she soothed, in the lilting tone that endears her to students, "that's not your twenties. It's not even your thirties. That's your forties. You're not supposed to be content with yourself yet."
I had been looking at graduation the way I look at deadlines for schoolwork: a few all-nighters and some intense, stress-filled flurries of activity produce a paper, and once you hand it in, you have no opportunity to review, re-think, and rewrite. June 14th was the penultimate deadline.
Recently, the inconsequential has loomed large--such as, I have over 200 return-address stickers with my Hanover address and no time to write 200 more letters. I have been pondering Dartmouth's equivalent of unanswerable questions--how does the "real world" measure time without three-month intervals? (When you cannot date an event as having happened in 96W or 97S or 94F, does it become difficult to locate, is it dispersed and even lost in the tides of experience?) I have also been wondering how I will function in a Windows-based world. In spite of the fact that my computer constantly hums like an emphesematic old woman, refuses to run Netscape and repeatedly quits because a mysterious "error of type 2 occurred," I am comfortable with my Macintosh Quadra 605, the teddy bear of computers. (I am convinced that if it were mobile, it would skip.) It is familiar, like Dartmouth.
After four years, Dartmouth is home. English does not make the distinction, as French does, between connaitre and savoir, so I can only say I know this school, really know it. I know the bells ring five minutes before each class period and play the Alma Mater at 6 p.m. each day. I know the face of the Baker Tower clock is lavender. I know there is a blue post-it note that reads "la lumiere" on the light in the first-floor bathroom in Lord Hall. I know what is inside the Sphinx. I know where to get funding for what kind of event--which administrators have discretionary funds, and what catch-phrases will inspire them to make a bequest.
Despite the annals of Dartmouth information at my fingertips, however, I still do not understand the pattern the traffic lights follow at the intersection by the Hanover Inn. No matter how many times I cross the street there, I will still waste several minutes wondering which direction traffic will come from next.
This preoccupation with minutiae is a good sign. I am not drowning in concern that I will lose my individuality, or my voice, or my sense of direction once I leave Dartmouth. I am quitting this locale convinced I will succeed and thrive.
I worry about the future of Dartmouth though. There are social ills at Dartmouth that remain in our wake. I look down at my hands and see fingernails broken and bloodied from attempting to tear down the fortresses of institutions that proved too heartily constructed for even our grassroots strength.
Along with my fellow activists, I have devoted much of my time here to race and gender issues. It has been 25 years since the inception of coeducation, but the pictures in the '02 room are still all males, the brothers of some fraternities still refer to women as "cracks" while in the warmth of their humble abode, and women confront problems both in leadership roles and in the classroom. There are still ways that Dartmouth systematically undermines its women. Students of color have not fared better.. I look into the eyes of the people I have loved here and I see the scars of hurts created and then sometimes healed at Dartmouth.
All this year in Palaeopitus we have heatedly discussed the fractures in our campus society and searched for means to inspire more personal responsibility and more effective communication. The '98 delegation of Palaeopitus was consumed with the possibility of creating one cohesive whole from the fragmented communities here at Dartmouth -- an age-old dilemma. The people who came before me, who overflowed with wisdom they were impatient to share with me, told me that by graduation day I would be bitter from years of running in place and the dawning realization that Dartmouth had changed me more than I could change Dartmouth.
They were right in part: I have changed at Dartmouth. Being female here has been empowering for me. I found unofficial sisterhood at Dartmouth: 95s, 96s and 97s who whispered oral history to me; my peers with whom I created a modicum of social agitation; younger students whom I now feel as protective toward as my mentors did of me. I have also found strong male friends here: they let me see them cry and held me when I did the same (without using words like "hysterical" to judge my entire gender on my temporary frailty.) At Dartmouth, I have begun to come to terms with my paradoxes.
So I am leaving with a sense of immense optimism. Today, I survey the faces of my fellow graduates--people who have inspired me, and led me, and followed me. People who have given me intellectual gifts--rich discourse, friendship and understanding. Students who have founded publications and organizations, given advice to administrators...and been listened to. The fortresses may still be standing, but I believe we have rocked the foundations, and the gatekeepers are a little less sure of the merits of their role. Our legacy is everywhere--both specific and intangible. I am proud of us.
Dartmouth is a better place for having known us, but Dartmouth, and all that is important to us, will continue next year without us. So shrug off the what-ifs and should-a-beens, throw up your cap and bid farewell with a smile. Dartmouth will be here when we come back.
