So it's the third week of freshman fall and all the kids on your floor are once again going to frat row, and you're tagging along because you like to get your dance on or you want to roll with the nightlife or maybe you just really like warm cheap beer with a mysterious bouquet of bodily fluids, and you're trying to forget about the paper that's due next week and the fact that you're paying over $10 per waking hour to be at this college. You get to the dance floor, but it's crammed with arrhythmic intoxicated government majors, so you go to the pong table, but seeing the ball roll into a puddle of beer and dog hair and Lord knows what else sets off some alarm bells from Bio 101, so you finally decide to leave and maybe try the next house down and as you pass some random guy on the sidewalk he suddenly pukes all over your shirt and then staggers back and laughs and you're standing there thinking, Um, ew.
Or maybe it's the end of your first week of classes and you're scanning back through the photos you took during Dimensions and the admissions packets you got in the mail showing lots of smiling brown faces, and looking out your window and wondering where all the colored people are hiding.
Maybe it's the time you're in the lunch line and you overhear two fellow students talking about how the freshmen are all queers and how they all suck and it scares you into covering up the pink triangle on your backpack. Maybe it's the blank look you get when you sigh about your financial aid package or the cost of your books. Maybe it's the girl two doors down who can't stop talking about how much she loves it here and you're thinking, I can't even get a haircut in this town.
You gaze across the green and it seems like a sea of Patagonia jackets and North Face backpacks and walking Abercrombie advertisements smiling and applying sunscreen and hurling frisbees at each other, and you wonder if somehow you have accidentally stumbled into some bizarre twilight zone designed by Martha Stewart, which is apparently normal to everyone else but obviously doesn't include you and probably never will, not that you would necessarily want it to.
This is how you learn the Dartmyth: the Big Green student must be blond and Anglo and fifth-generation legacy and athletic and confident and rigidly heterosexual and drive a Grand Cherokee and pound 20 beers a night. This is the mainstream. This is the norm. This is who belongs at Dartmouth. Be this, or be nothing.
It's a lie. Dartmouth is not as homogenous as its image makes it out to be, and it never has been. Back when there were no African-American students, there were international students of color. Back when there were no Muslim students, there were Jews, Catholics, Quakers and other Others at Dartmouth. Back when there were no women, there were male students who were married and supporting a family, or had disabilities, or scraped their way through on jobs and scholarships. And of course, there have always been queer students at Dartmouth, though most have had to remain closeted.
The danger of the Dartmyth is that it can make you feel like this place isn't yours -- that it doesn't belong to you, and you don't belong at it. Whether you're a woman facing taunts from alums still fuming over coeducation or a Native student confronted with an Indian-head mascot or a low-income student besieged by fees and fines and $200 of books for classes, the Dartmyth will punish you for exposing it as a lie. Don't give in. Take it as one of the many surprising lessons this school has to teach you, and know that Dartmouth belongs to you as much as it ever has to anyone else.
This is a school with incredible resources. Claim it. Make it your own. Don't throw it away like the people who take it for granted, and don't give it up because you feel like there's nothing here for you. No matter who you are, Dartmouth has a home for you. Find it in the Latino and Caribbean House, at Main Street magazine, at the Dartmouth Rainbow Alliance, in the art studios, the Education Department or Rollins Chapel. Find your base, grow strong -- and make new homes here, for yourself and others.
Gandhi said that we must be the change we wish to see in the world. This college has come a long way, but it has much further to go before everyone here can feel safe, comfortable, and welcome. Never accept the lie that you don't belong here, and never deny your right to challenge the elements of Dartmouth that alienate you. Change the Dartmyth and you will change Dartmouth. Take a stand and give Dartmouth your best shot -- it's yours for the shaping.
