It's funny -- after reading recent columns in
the Dartmouth I feel like I'm trapped inside a Dartmouth version of "The Matrix." I keep hearing that oracular, all-knowing voice -- that of Morpheus -- stalking me. "You don't know what it is," he tells me, "but it's there; like a splinter in your mind, driving you mad." Well, almost, except that when Morpheus said "mad" he meant it in the sense of "crazy," or "insane," or even "insane-crazy," whereas when I read these columns I feel pissed-off, and (dare I say it) intellectually shortchanged.
At the risk of overextending my metaphor, I'll examine Daniel Ng '04's take on Matrix-Dartmouth entitled "Keeping Winter Carnival Alive" (The Dartmouth, Feb. 6). He writes with a yearning for the idyllic past college that, presumably, he might have attended had he the good fortune of arriving before coeducation. In those days, the "strong undercurrent of testosterone" turned Winter Carnival into "a weekend long display of masculine achievement," Mr. Ng writes. The man-students spent "hundreds of man-hours" building manly snow sculptures, jumping off manly ski jumps and over manly kegs, hanging out in manly Greek houses and doing many other manly things.
As if he hadn't already made his point, Mr. Ng throws in a gratuitous "Men of Dartmouth" or two for good measure. He describes a Dartmouth in decay: "Students of this generation would rather not sacrifice a single hour of study time to build the snow sculpture," he states. "Much of the blame must fall on the winter carnival council," he says, because it "seem[s] to operate in a nave and isolated world." "It is probable that membership in the DOC has ... fallen over the years," he declares. "Very little can rally the entire student body" now that the student body consists of ethnically and culturally diverse women and men.
I believe it is time for Mr. Ng to take the red pill. His claims that the glory days of Dartmouth passed him by simply don't add up. Did he emerge from the basement to see the sculpture this year? Did he see the women's and men's Nordic ski teams working together to help build it two weeks before Winter Carnival started? The alumni thought it was pretty good -- they were taking pictures of their kids in front of it. The hard work that went into the sculpture should be praised, not scoffed. Or did he think that his soaring prose might inspire the next generation to take pride in their accomplishment? I'm a bit skeptical about that.
As for his claims about the Outing Club: we started carnival in 1911, built the first snow sculpture in 1931 and organized the entire event until 1961, when we decided that a separate Carnival committee ought to be formed so that the entire campus would work together to organize the weekend. DOC membership grows steadily each year as those students whom Mr. Ng derides as "com[ing] to Dartmouth not for the surrounding countryside, but for the attraction of an Ivy Leauge School," discover the amazing natural places that surround the College. Oak Hill is only three miles away -- did he try walking there to join the hundreds of other spectators watching the cross-country ski racing on Sunday? Somehow I doubt it.
Mr. Ng tries to warn us about the dangers of campus apathy, but in reality we really ought to watch out for people like him. He blames everyone and everything around him for the allegedly decrepit state of affairs, hurling invectives to cover up for his own lack of initiative. He says that Winter Carnival councils have "suffered from poor leadership," but has he tried to lead them? Small wonder that nearly every sentence he writes takes the passive voice. It's a lot easier to have things done to you than to do them yourself.
As the students of Dartmouth, we shouldn't fear taking responsibility for our life at the College -- both our traditions and our future. We certainly shouldn't listen to the voices that try to frighten off future leaders by denigrating the people who have tried taking responsibility in the past. Maybe we can control the nature of this place at will and rearrange it as we see fit. I think that will happen once we begin to believe in ourselves as an empowered body of students.
