Okay, it's the last time you'll have your column run in a college paper. This is your exit, man. What do you write about? Do you cast tearful goodbyes at your faithful readers? Do you get in one last, useless dig at the Greek system? Do you take the opportunity to curse out those who trod on you along the way?
This quandary has been running as of late in my poor, battered head. Perhaps I should make a mlange of everything that I've done up to this point in columns, I thought. Thus it would have to be 90 percent humor and 10 percent "serious" issues, maybe composed partially of a list (those always made for churning out an easy piece), with an observation of ridiculous social behavior thrown in (usually in abundance around here), and ending on a note of carefully concealed moralizing (all too liberally rolling from my tongue).
No. Instead I choose to backtrack to 1997, when I first decided that Dartmouth would be the right place for me. My grandmother had hoped for a long time that I would set my sights here. Her interest in our family line revealed that my great-great-grandfather, Clarence Watkins Scott, graduated from these grounds in 1874. Old Clarence, like me a lover of words, had then become the chief librarian for the next four years.
So I found out in December of that year that I'd been accepted, and I accepted the acceptance, and not more than a month afterward my grandmother died of cancer. She'd been so proud and happy that I'd be going to this school; I would be the first of us in quite a while to step onto Dartmouth soil.
But, of course, things have changed a lot since old Clarence's days, and not all for the better. Dartmouth is not the blissful little haven that some of us might like to think it once was. We've turned a blind eye to the sexual assault rampant on Webster Avenue; we've made light of the discomfort that people belonging to minority groups often feel on this campus; we've embraced exclusivity as our god.
I can't count myself above this uncaring "we;" I've spent my time perfectly content to write in my own safe little burrow, to snipe without bothering to rise to any real action. And in moments such as these, I feel ashamed. I have not been a leader or a doer. It sets me to wondering whether my grandmother really would be proud of me -- and whether her radiant image of this college was just a fantasy.
However, when I think such dolorous thoughts, I'm ignoring the true power of a place like Dartmouth. This power lies not in the institution itself, which is real and therefore corruptible, but in the idea behind the institution. The idea -- that, above all, we are here to Learn and to Grow -- is what attracts so many brilliant, intellectually curious people to this seemingly desolate space in the mountains.
And these are the people who need to listen. If there's any hope for the actual institution to improve, people like you are the ones who will set this improvement in motion. Wake up. It's too late for my class, but those of you who are among the '03s, '04s, and '05s still have time to take action. Don't allow yet another woman to be attacked, don't allow yet another man to think that he has the right to do so. Don't let the ignorant continue their persecution of anyone different from them. Don't let the overprivileged maintain their stranglehold over the social life of this campus.
You, as free-thinking, conscientious individuals, are the hope for Dartmouth. Because of the many amazing individuals I've met here, I have realized that, after all, my time here has been wholly worthwhile -- and that my grandmother was right to hope I would come to this school. I believe now that wherever one ends up is not nearly as important as those one comes into contact with. And I'll never meet as many extraordinary people as I have here at Dartmouth.
So the only message I can really leave to those who'll remain here after I'm gone is to be courageous, to push this college closer to the ideals you came here to find. As for the fellow members of my class, I hope I can keep in touch with the ones who shine brightest. Unlike old Clarence, I won't be sticking around Hanover after I get my piece of paper and shake an old man's hand. I'm fairly sure already that a couple of my friends will end up in the same place I'll be, which I'm very grateful for -- but I'll also do my best to maintain contact with those who end up on an opposite coast, or flung to a distant continent, or who remain here in Never-Never-Land.
And I'm gone. In my mind, I'm already far from here. Thanks to everyone who's ever read anything I wrote in this paper, even if it rankled you. It's been an immense pleasure writing columns for "The D" these four years, and I owe the paper for much more than just free publication space and crappy photographs of myself. Maybe I'll write in from a faraway land eventually, but I think I'll need some time to practice being a grownup. That's a laugh, isn't it? And speaking of which, I'll need a suitable way to end this last column so many of the humorous ones ended with zingers. I don't know. [Insert potty joke here]
