I remember a conversation I had four years ago with one of my favorite high school teachers. She regarded my personality as being somewhat brash and my general outlook on life as being at odds with the majority of people on an Ivy League campus. In other words I was something of a loudmouthed conservative. Before I left for school she warned me that my attitudes would probably change in college. Presumably, she thought that the rapid and widespread exchange of ideas and experiences that take place at a prestigious university would make any resistance to change futile. Now that I think about it, several of my high school teachers said similar kinds of things to my classmates and me before we graduated.
Well here I am four years later, and I am no less brash than I was when I arrived. Perhaps I have learned the art of being tactful and become better at making an argument to someone who disagrees with me, but frankly these developments were more a product of my off-campus internships than they were of my interactions here at Dartmouth. A brief stint campaigning on campus for Democratic presidential candidate Bill Bradley during my freshman fall appeared to justify my teacher's suspicions, but once Gore won the nomination I was safely back in the Bush camp.
If Dartmouth changed everyone who went here besides me I would think there was something wrong, but it seems that nearly every senior I know is either the same person they were freshman year or some magnified version of their freshman selves. Freshman slackers have become major slackers as seniors. The studious freshmen have become nauseatingly studious as seniors. The people who drank heavily as freshmen are probably asleep right now.
This is something I have been thinking about for the last four years. Dartmouth College is not a melting pot of ideas and backgrounds as its advocates often claim. Rather it is a place where the seemingly continuous and uncomfortable redefinition of social identity causes people to retreat further into their natural personas. This is why many seniors are not dramatically different people now than they were four years ago. Identity is such an important aspect of many of the groups on campus. In many cases racial, sexual or ethnic identity is the defining characteristic dictating which types of people congregate together, both socially and organizationally. Without making a judgment as to whether this is a good thing, I believe it is undeniable that identity-driven social interaction goes a long way towards shaping the nature of this campus. Even Greek houses, while not officially identity-based, are distinguishable from one another based on a number of factors such as race, athletic participation or even economic background.
Most people naturally gravitate into social circles that include people like themselves. This is not necessarily a bad thing, but it is a fact of life here at Dartmouth. Most of us seem to prefer to associate with people of similar interests or ethnic background, and even those of us who do not consciously try to do so often end up making friends with people who look and think like we do. It may be as easy as going on a particular FSP during sophomore or junior years, and all of a sudden our group of closest buddies are all really into economics, politics or third world development.
Of course it is impossible to spend four years at any college without meeting people who think and act differently than you do, but I think we tend to keep these people on the periphery of our social lives. The idea of coming to a small school like Dartmouth is to get to know more people than one would at a larger school. This idea is partially defeated by the existence of Dartmouth's homogeneous social structure.
How can we expect four years at Dartmouth to change us as people when we are given so many options about who to interact with? We are never forced at Dartmouth to play with the hand we are dealt, because there is always another easily accessible person or group out there around whom we would be more comfortable. I suppose I am as guilty of this crime as anyone else is. Not having rushed a fraternity I was proud to be able to consider myself independent, yet many of my other social choices have also enabled me to stay within my realm of comfort, inevitably I suppose. In life after Dartmouth, these social options begin to disappear. We do not get to pick our bosses or the people in the cubicle next to us. Perhaps for the first time we will need to truly adapt to our surroundings, because it will be impossible for us to change our surroundings to suit us. So have I changed in the last four years? Probably not as much as I will in the next four.
