Avid readers of the Dartmouth may have noticed a pair of letters last week referring to an incident in which our own football team hired a stripper to entice a potential student. Is this the kind of behavior that we, as students of an Ivy League institution should condone and allow to happen on our campus? Should we even support the team that perpetrated such a lewd act?
Well, why not?
I see nothing wrong with the stripper, whom I, of course, didn't see, not being on the football team. But, had I seen the stripper, it's likely that I would have approved. If a naked, gyrating woman is going to improve our odds of winning the League, then I'm all for it. The only problem seems to be, it hasn't, yet. People whom I've spoken with have characterized the most recent stripper as only one part of a long-standing entertainment suite that has been used time and again to attract athletic talent to Dartmouth. Why, then, are our teams performing so poorly? As the one Ivy League that actually gives a damn about athletics, Dartmouth should be dominating in football, basketball, hockey, and all of the other sports in which we allegedly compete. Yet, our teams, despite the spirit backing them, seem to stumble and fall repeatedly. Perhaps we need strippers more consistently, such as before games and at half-time, in the locker room.
Some women may object to strippers on the grounds that they serve to "objectify" women." Why is it that the moment a man appreciates a woman for her beauty, holistically ("she's beautiful") or not ("what hooters"), he is immediately accused of such objectification and chastised? Men like to look at women. I've heard that the converse is also true. I'm personally in favor of hiring male strippers for the women's teams. We could dominate in field hockey and women's basketball if some of the men on campus, who I've been told are "hot slabs of beef-cake," could be persuaded to strip occasionally. I'd volunteer myself, but my schedule's been sort of full as of late. Maybe next term.
We must not let ourselves forget, however, that Dartmouth is one of the academic Ivies (i.e., not Cornell), and needs to behave accordingly. Why restrict strippers to just athletic prospects? Winners of high school math awards, English prizes, and the like should be similarly wooed by the College on the Hill. Currently, students hosting prospective students are supposed to show prospies an entertaining slice of Dartmouth life while avoiding fraternities and alcohol, a difficult job at best. Imagine how much easier it would be as a host to simply be able to say, as part of your tour's itinerary, "Eight o'clock: Dartmouth's own strippers strut their stuff in a special presentation about diversity on campus!" Just about any prospie would be impressed; Harvard sure as hell doesn't have strippers, although I've heard that Yale might.
In fact, strippers should become a bigger part of campus life, as a whole. First, they are inherently coeducational. The usual situations are men watching a woman (or, even better, several) or vice-versa. Although I realize that there are exceptions to this, all who wish to attend could watch strippers of their preferred sex, although finding a trans-gendered stripper in New Hampshire might be difficult. Strippers on Friday and Saturday nights at the Lone Pine Tavern could be a viable alternative to the frat parties that are currently our only social options. Even our beleaguered DDS would get a boost through increased sales during performances. This is really a win-win proposition.
"Sounds great," you vibrantly exclaim. "We need more strippers at Dartmouth. But who are we going to get to fill this enormous void?" Well, I'm glad you asked this, because this is the truly beautiful part of the plan. I'm guessing that many students would want to see strippers on a regular basis. It's also common knowledge that many students at Dartmouth are on financial aid and may need some extra cash. What I'm saying is that we have some huge untapped synergy here.
Student stripping could also provoke discussions about all sorts of body-image issues and even politics, given our country's recent history. Student Assembly elections are coming up shortly; just next term, in fact. Ask your candidate if he or she supports strippers at Dartmouth and is willing to put the SA's funds towards such a worthy cause. Acting together, we have the power to correct this horrible lack of quality adult entertainment on campus.
