Is it just me or does Centerbrook sound like the name of a mental hospital? I don't expect anyone to think my opinion has any merit whatsoever. Not only am I rarely taken seriously in general, but add the pretty significant fact that I've been taking classes at Dartmouth for only a month and it gives me a complete lack of any semblance of legitimacy. Any random upperclassman could ramble on and on about Dartmouth, how it operates, what makes it tick, and I'm sitting here, twiddling my thumbs. I can't claim to know everything about this school and as I start up on my own ramblings I don't really expect anyone to take them to heart. But, in case you do happen to care, this is how one '03 sees it.
I'm going to be as careful as I can -- I promised myself I wouldn't do anything to get on the bad side of the administration so soon. And I don't have anything terribly drastic to offer anyway. I read Jorge Miranda's article from a few days back about how people need to stop giving up and start detailing specifics of what they want to see in the social realm and now I feel guilty for not providing any answers. But, not only am I the master of disclaimers, as you've already discovered, but I can also complain with the best of them! So here I go.
Let's start with me as a prospective. I bugged as many students as I could via email or instant messaging (if any upperclassmen remember AOL screenname ChisteVivo, a million apologies!) to try to get an idea about social life here. Unsurprisingly, everyone was resoundingly enthusiastic, assuring me that frats didn't totally dominate the social scene and that, despite having only the booming metropolis of Hanover as the only sign of civilization, there was never a lack of things to do.
Fast forward to a couple weeks ago, when I was hosting a prospective. Nice guy, Greg from Wyoming, but enthusiastic as I and every other student to whom I introduced him was, committed as we were to selling him on Dartmouth, we seemed to have trouble convincing him. And then I thought about it a little bit. The entire evening we basically walked around campus and I showed him the ropes as I know them, even going so far as to take him to East Wheelock and the River. But, try as I might, I had the damnedest time trying to actually think of some form of entertainment for him. So we played pool for a while and then I told him to ask any questions he had, but there wasn't really any place to go to hang out. And I realized that, yeah, Dartmouth does need more social space if there's nowhere you can go for just a little while to entertain a prospective.
Let me congratulate the administration for making such a thoroughly groundbreaking discovery, one a freshman made within his first month; we're in the middle of nowhere and there's not a whole lot to do that doesn't involve "frat" and "party" (but then again, I wouldn't know about hanging out at frats because I'm just a first-term freshman ). So here's a plan: let's blame the frats for doing nothing more than embarking upon the ominous task of giving people someplace to go and something to do! With them out of the picture, maybe we can achieve the vision we've always imagined for Dartmouth: completely and utterly boring.
I was indifferent to the Greek system when I got here, but after a short time I realized that it's really not as bad as the administration would like it to be. The houses provide a place for people to go, and, more importantly, they provide a great community for the brothers and sisters involved. People develop lifelong friendships through the Greek system that any other sort of organization could never provide; my dad's best man was a brother. They provide a supplement to other college relationships; they don't simply preclude them. They don't keep you from having non-Greek friends; they just give you a group of really good friends in addition to the ones you make elsewhere. Does the strife the campus is experiencing right now (can you detect the sarcasm? Funny that the existing strife is largely a result of the SLI) justify forcing a well-deserved bloody rebellion if the Greek system is radically altered? It appears as if the administration is just looking to stir up trouble and pointing fingers at the most convenient tangible targets. If anyone's to blame, it's Hanover; it's New Hampshire; it's generations upon generations of settlers who decided to pass on our happy little spot as the site of some great city. The Greeks deserve a pat on the back for filling the void.
If you take away the frats and put nothing in their place, I think everybody will drink just as much, if not more, for lack of anything at all to do. Crazy floor parties will ensue or they'll move off campus and the administration will have a bigger monster to deal with than it had ever imagined. We definitely need more social space; the frats aren't everybody's cup of tea and they can't handle the daunting task of providing everyone with a hangout all the time. But they are many people's cup of tea. I guess there was no point to this article. Sorry, Jorge, I have no answers. I don't think Centerbrook is the answer either; I've heard more complaints about their radical ideas than the SLI. So I guess we're back to square 1. Think, people, THINK!
