As another grand year kicks off here at
Dartmouth, we would be inclined to examine the broader concerns of student life, the overarching issues that touch us all. What better time to address the greater goods and evils that bless and curse our existences here at one of America's finest institutions of higher learning? With that in mind, I would like to talk about cups.
But not just any old cups. One particular brand of cup, that surely you've seen and imbibed from already this term: the new, improved, dining hall Dartmouth-logo "large-size" cup. Gone is the art deco marvel of blue and purple splotches; in its place, a white model with the Dartmouth College insignia featured in dark green. "So what?" you think. "Change is good. It feeds the meters."
As thought I, until I began to notice evidence of a terrible dark secret behind the seemingly innocuous cup switch.
Was this new cup smaller?
I would not be alone in this suspicion. First one person, then another, and then still more confided their misgivings to me -- they, too, had observed a decrease in the size of the cup. Was "large-size," in fact, merely a jest to the administration, a subjective measurement that they deemed fit to be meddled with at will? Were my ideas about height, width, and length to be permanently altered? Was nothing sacred?
But that was not the end to the horror. The full extent of our cup dilemma became apparent when I traveled between Food Court and the Hop's Courtyard Caf, examining how the plastic lids for the dining hall cups were organized. In the Courtyard Caf, the lids marked "large" fit the new white-and-green cup. However, in Food Court the "large" lids would not join harmoniously with the new cup. They were too large. Mark this, friends: in Food Court, it is in fact the "medium" lids that fit the retooled large-size cups. The same cup, "large" in one world and "medium" in another -- how can this be? Can standards be so easily perverted?
So I got wondering, as happens frequently in my hopped-up crisscrossed brain. How else have our ideas of measurement been toyed with by the administration/DDS/ORL/Big Brother/the Man? For example, take the posters that assert that the average Dartmouth student has such-and-such amount of drinks per week. Are those drinks measured in Food Court "large" or Hop "large"? What size plastic lid would fit on the drinks consumed by the average Dartmouth student in a given week? If a train leaves Chicago at 3:30 pm traveling at 85 miles per hour, and another train leaves Boston at 4:15 pm traveling at 90 miles per hour, at what time (to the closest second) will the two trains be taken over by Dartmouth and melted down into a new sculpture for the Hop lobby?
There might be some '05s who are wondering, "How does this affect me?" Well, that is an excellent question. You are the segment of the Dartmouth population that must be the most on guard for these attacks on your perceptions of reality. You've come to this college wide-eyed and open-headed, malleable to influences from all sides. And that's why you have to be cautious. What you are told is not law, and anything here at this great school can be changed not just by the guys with starched suits and big bankrolls, but by you as well. Cups are never just cups, and "large" is relevant. You will always know this new white-and-green cup as the standard for large, but remember -- once there were greater cups, and the world was just a little more innocent.
As for those of us who are battle-hardened '02s, entering our final skirmish equipped only with trepidation and something less than enlightenment, we also must be wary of this symbolic shrinking of our liberties. Not too long from now, we'll go out into the world beyond Dartmouth and, most likely, be subjected to the same gradual erosion of everything we hold dear. Try to go to McDonald's and order a "small" beverage. You can't do it: there's now only medium, large, and super-size. Bigger all around? Nope -- medium used to be small, large used to be medium, and our friend super-size is merely large in masquerade. If Mickey D's is a representation of the global id, as some might postulate, then all our heads must be filled with popular lies.
So the next time you grab one of those new white-and-green cups, take a moment of silence to remember when large truly was large. Your memory has to be the guardian of those bygone days, or else someday your grandchildren will be drinking "mega-size" beverages smaller than Dixie cups. And they will be smiling as they drink, because the corporations who own their minds tell them to.
