I have to admit -- until a very short time ago, I hated the phrase "the Dartmouth Community." As a matter of fact, if you were to ask me what I found most annoying about the whole Student Life Initiative debate, I would have said that it was the fact that every time I turned around, someone was making a suggestions that they felt would benefit "the Dartmouth Community." For a little while, I even forgot to listen to what people were actually saying and decided that anyone who used those words wasn't on a side I could support.
The phrase used to conjure up in me these touchy-feely, let's-hold-hands-and-affirm-the-fact-that-everybody's-special vibes that just did not sit well with my sarcastic tendencies. But this weekend, I finally got it. Almost against my will, I no longer want to vomit upon hearing someone make reference to the Dartmouth Community. I'd like to say that the beautiful weekend and flocks of '04s helped me come to this conclusion, but they didn't. I'd also like to say that some enormous act of kindness helped me, but no such luck.
At around 9:30 on Friday night, my friend and I were sitting in Collis and watching television. There were not many people around, and we had asked the people who were there if it was ok if we changed to the show we wanted to watch.
Not even ten minutes into the show, a guy came up and asked if we wouldn't mind if he flipped the channel on a commercial to see something, and then change it back when our show returned. Rather than do that (which would have been fine), the guy proceeded to get the remote from the info desk and flip through all of the channels, not because he wanted to watch anything. As it turns out, he just felt like flipping through the channels. When I asked him if he wouldn't mind keeping the television on our show just for 20 minutes more, he made some snide remarks about how people with remotes have the power and how if "you snooze you lose."
Don't think my friend and I didn't consider some kind of violent act involving a large heavy item, but what would have been the point? Anything we did would have made us just as much of an idiot as he is, and there's no point in being angry at yourself in addition to another person. We traipsed around campus for a little while, in a futile attempt to find a free television, but that didn't work out either. So we were stuck without the half-hour of television we had really wanted to see.
On the all-time injustice scale, that little episode ranks somewhere slightly above rock bottom. At the time, though, it was annoyingly frustrating, and it put my friend and me into utterly foul moods, mostly because what can you actually do when someone acts like that besides get mad? We ate a miserable meal at Food Court, and spent the rest of the night surrounded in a cloud of "grr," that I'm sure was obvious to anyone who was unfortunate enough to encounter us that evening.
What if I had been a prospective? Although it was a little incident, it would have been aggravating enough for me to ditch Dartmouth in favor of a school whose students are adequately skilled in common courtesy. And while I've met my share of people with whom I've clashed, I've never really had someone be so brazenly rude directly to my face.
It's a fragile entity, this community to which I am just now learning how to belong. I used to go around thinking that someone else would take care of the whole getting along thing. I would just go about my business and not really worry too much about anything else. But I realized that it takes something as trivial as someone being insensitive during a television show to throw things off balance.
In some ways, I am glad that this happened, because I think, deep down, I have always known that one person can make a difference, but I definitely need to be reminded. It's so easy to forget that here. So many of us are involved in and lobby around causes that seem so much larger than ourselves that to suggest that one person makes a difference may seem ridiculous at times. But it's a little less ridiculous to suggest that when I think about everyone as a member of the Dartmouth Community; for a little while, each of us has the power to make waves.
