It was an overcast day in the fall of 1996 when Ms. Christine Pina, an associate in the College admissions office, visited my high school in Detroit. I had been working in Renaissance High School's guidance office since the second week of the semester when I had dropped art, to date the most difficult course of my academic career.
Ms. Pina arrived, and I was chosen to escort her to the room in which she would give her presentation. I was both nervous and uncomfortable speaking with someone whom I believed represented everything I was not, yet wanted to be: intelligent, quick-witted, knowledgeable, hard working, and lastly, and least, wealthy. Ms. Pina asked me about my role in the school, in both academics and extracurriculars. Although I was nearly at the top of my class, I felt inadequate as I juxtaposed myself with the broad, magnificent strokes Ms. Pina verbally painted for me of the Dartmouth campus and its seemingly great faculty and academically focused students.
Almost reluctantly, I signed a card with my address to which an undergraduate application would be sent. Three weeks later, I received an application for the 2001 class.
I opened the application packet with haste and visually drank the images of majesty, serenity, great academic advancement, and moral sanctity. The campus photographs portrayed perfection that was not just limited to the scenery but encompassed the people as well. Those pages envisaged an "esprit de corps" that transcended race, gender and class -- I witnessed the very essence, the Spirit of Dartmouth. The students seemed ready, willing and able to confront any academic challenges set before them. For me, this was something unmatched by anything I had ever experienced. Dartmouth's literature immediately established Hanover, New Hampshire as a utopia.
Dartmouth was a utopia in the sense that its members were intelligent, morally sound, upwardly mobile, and culturally omniscient. Dartmouth and its people were vibrant; it seemed that no one and no thing had ever experienced the perils of everyday life. Growing up in an urban environment, I occasionally lamented the fact that I regularly witnessed the moral and intellectual failing of man. The Dartmouth literature provided hope for me -- not in that I could apply for admittance and transport myself to this utopia, but in that somewhere, human beings were pushing the envelope of their potential.
I remember the phrase from the application brochure that did and will always put the fear of God into me: "Admission to Dartmouth is highly selective." My thoughts raced with the prospect of admission to what I thought was the last bastion of superior people. Superior in that they learned in an environment free from racism and all traces of prejudice, they didn't drink or smoke, maintained overall splendid dispositions and made every possible moment a learning experience.
Upon visiting the campus just after my acceptance, I learned two things: utopias are unattainable and Dartmouth in no way approached the glorified impression I obtained from the visually and verbally embellished literature. This is not to attack the administration; it just seemed that (until very recently) they were willing to perpetuate an aesthetically pleasing view of the College with little regard for pressing academic and social issues.
Today, the most pressing academic issue facing Dartmouth is the absence of learning in every aspect of the College. By this I mean that here, learning is regarded as something that can be turned on and off, like water out of a faucet. In the classroom, for example, learning steadily streams out and sometimes gushes forth. At guest lectures, it trickles into the mind like a slow leak -- we are learning, but not as intensely as in the classroom. In the residence hall and at the occasional social event, learning drips like water through a valve not quite closed. I do readily admit that in some instances, the reverse can be said of my examples. Nevertheless, my point lies in that some kind of learning must always take place if we are to take roles in the grand scheme of the human adventure.
Let us for a moment return to the Spirit of Dartmouth. Let us endeavor to define the Spirit of Dartmouth. We two, you and I, are the Spirit of Dartmouth. The fact that you just learned about convergence and divergence in Math 8 is the Spirit of Dartmouth. Your new friendship with the fellow from Sri Lanka is the Spirit of Dartmouth. Your mastering of a Jamaican dance you fancied at Culture Night is the Spirit of Dartmouth. My authorship of this article is the Spirit of Dartmouth. Succinctly, forward progression, whether academic, athletic or social, is the Spirit of Dartmouth.
In conclusion, if I were to speculate why the administration is ending the Greek system as we know it, I would guess that it believes fraternities and sororities currently do not immortalize the Spirit of Dartmouth, which has been half-dead for quite sometime. We are less and less becoming Dartmyth College of Hangover, New Hampshire and by and by realizing Eleazar Wheelock's Dartmouth College of Hanover, New Hampshire. Cry havoc and let slip the dogs of war! The Spirit is reawakening.
