Dartmouth is truly a wonderland; a world completely apart from reality. An enormous snow sculpture of the Cat in the Hat sits in the middle of the Green, students participate in human dog sled races, laptops sit unattended in the library and dorm room doors remain perpetually unlocked. This means that Dartmouth is a safe place, right? Wrong.
The idea that Dartmouth is a little safe-haven devoid of the crimes that occur in the real world is a nice myth that we tell ourselves, but is far from the truth. I have only been at Dartmouth for one and a half terms, and already I have been the victim of theft twice.
Last term, at a fraternity party, I placed my jacket in the designated coat room with dozens of other coats at the start of the night. When I picked up my coat to leave, my gloves were strewn on the floor and my wallet was missing from my pocket. Naively, I believed that I had left the pockets unzipped, so after combing the coat room, I waited for a nice person to return it to me. However, since my wallet contained my D Card, room key, $30, ATM card and credit card, I had to take action. When I reported the incident to Safety and Security, they warned me that even though theft is widespread across campus, few people acknowledge its presence and I should not be too hopeful about my wallet.
As time went on, I realized that Safety and Security was correct; my wallet was indeed stolen, a fact that was confirmed when my bank statement showed that someone had withdrawn money from my account. This means that someone went out of his way to rummage through my jacket pockets and pull out my wallet in the middle of a frat, clearly with hundreds of people milling about, none of whom took any action.
I became a victim of theft again last week, when I placed my jacket at the beginning of the night in the coat room of a different fraternity, though this time it was thankfully devoid of my wallet (I had already learned my lesson). When I was ready to leave, my bright red and highly noticeable jacket was gone. I hoped that someone had accidentally walked off with it in a drunken mistake, although my prior experience with theft had somewhat jaded me. My name was written on the inside of the jacket and my D Card was inside. A week later I still have not been contacted nor has my jacket been returned to the fraternity. Clearly, someone intentionally took my jacket out of the coat room of this fraternity, again with hundreds of people milling about, who did not notice.
Countless other thefts occur across campus all of the time, most of which go unnoticed. Earlier in the term, though, the theft of laptop computers from a broken-into dorm room landed itself on the cover of The Dartmouth. However, I know virtually no one who locks his door, and everyone continues on with these patterns of trust in other students. To this day, my friends laugh at me when I lock my room door and refuse to leave my laptop unattended in public places for extended periods.
To think that fraternities are so insecure that one cannot even leave a jacket or a wallet in a coat room is quite disconcerting. The fact that Dartmouth students would commit such blatant theft is an even more disturbing notion, since the Dartmouth honor code is so ingrained in Dartmouth's image that their identities are completely intertwined. We assume that the students who sit next to us in class are decent, honest people, yet if Dartmouth students are willing to steal wallets and jackets, there's clearly a high likelihood they cheat on tests as well.
The most unsettling part of my experiences here is the persistent refusal by the Dartmouth community to acknowledge the problem of theft and dishonesty that is overtly present. The attitude of unfettered trust in the safety and honesty of the Dartmouth community is extremely irksome. With so much evidence of burglary and duplicity on campus, how can the entire Dartmouth community continue to turn a blind eye to its existence and intensity?
Students, faculty, and administrators must finally accept the fact that Dartmouth is not as pristinely perfect as we would like to believe. Only when people begin to realize and come to terms with this idea can any form of change occur to alleviate this problem.
