In the first of a yearlong college series, Alltrue.com, an Internet website specializing in reality video, posted a virtual tour of Dartmouth last Friday that uses clips of a cross section of students to paint a picture of life at the College.
The "college reality tour," as its makers refer to it, looks to delve beneath the glossy pages of admission brochures to give a "real, in-depth look at what goes on beyond the ivied walls," Matt Heindl, Alltrue.com's marketing manager, said.
The first of 20 Northeastern schools that will to be featured in the series, Dartmouth was picked as the tour's first stop based on its "notorious" reputation and the air of mystery that surrounds it, Heindl explained.
"No one really knows where it is," he said. The College's connection to the movie "Animal House" was also a pull, he added.
The Dartmouth tour consists of a series of 11 video clips featuring aspects of student as diverse as dinner at Food Court to beer buying at Stinson's Village Store to a meeting of Campus Crusade for Christ -- a religious organization on campus.
Although students are given stereotyped labels such as "Hippie" and "Frat Boy," the makers filmed hundreds of different segments, trying to get a cross section of real students for the tour.
Since the project is about entertainment value as well as reality, however, the clips were also chosen for their shock value.
"We saw some pretty wild stuff," Heindl said, although Dartmouth only earned a B compared to the other schools featured.
What aspects of college life are the most interesting might be deemed sensational, and everything that is realistic is not necessarily interesting, Heindl said in explanation of Alltrue.com's choice of which clips were finally used.
Several of the clips, of course, deal with alcohol and Dartmouth life. One clip, "Coed House," shows several students pouring various liquors into a bucket, then singing and drinking their concoction in unison. Another, "Kegs," which takes place in Stinson's deals with one student's perception of the College's new alcohol policy toward kegs.
"While for the most part there's been a lot less keg consumption, what we've managed to do is ... buy a lot more flats of beer," the male student told the Alltrue.com camera. "It's fine if we have beer in cans, even if we have an incredibly ridiculous amount of it."
Alltrue.com represents other sides of the College as well, however. One clip is shot from the inside of a student's car as he drove around Hanover. Another featured three freshmen football players having a typical Food Court conversation over dinner.
"Did you know that mayonnaise was invented by the French to cover up rotten food?" one asks the camera.
"Sixty percent of the freshman class at this school have a STD," another added.
The tour did not shy away from more controversial segments either. One male student discussed how his fraternity provided him with a support network while he was dealing with a cocaine problem and being homosexual.
Catherine Buck '04, a member of the Subtleties who is featured singing the alma mater on the tour, said that the production staff just approached her as she was leaving the Hop after rehearsal on night.
"They were all excited that they found a student," and recruited me to take them around campus the next day, she said.
Buck, after seeing the virtual tour, said she wasn't sure what the point of it was.
"If they were trying to give a summary about what Dartmouth was, I don't think they did a very good job," she said, adding that the clips were "random."
Once filmed, students had to sign releases in order to have their clips featured on the tour. Several students, such as one who did a keg stand for the production staff, changed their minds afterwards and said they didn't want to be in the tour, Heindl said.
A new college from Alltrue.com's fall tour, which covered almost all of New England including Boston and all of the upstate New York colleges, will be posted on the site each Monday. In addition, Alltrue.com is taking the tour across the country and hopes to hit all of the big schools by this spring.
To check out Alltrue.com's virtual tour of Dartmouth visit the site at www.alltrue.com.
