We were all there. Junior year of high school, the mandatory assembly in the overcrowded auditorium. The overworked, overstressed, nicotine-deprived counselor started her speech. "College, kids college is a time of great change. Not as great as when that bastard ran off to California with his secretary but it's still a lot of change. It's never too early to start."
You stopped listening, but she had a point. Going to college certainly is a time of change, Dartmouth especially. In fact, it's my belief that a first year at Dartmouth represents a more drastic changes in students' lives than such an experience at any other school in this country. It's a bold claim, no doubt, and more than a little pretentious -- my first year isn't even half over, and what knowledge can I possibly claim of other institutions?
These concerns nagged me, but then I read the description of the "Dartmouth '08" group on thefacebook.com: "You may hate us because we are young, talented, and super sweet, but we will stick together!" After briefly throwing up in my mouth, I realized that, in comparison to my "super sweet" first-year brethren, my theory is about as pretentious as the love child of Gandhi and Mother Teresa.
More importantly, I also have some evidence to back up my claim. First is an obvious but vital dichotomy. Dartmouth students are robust partiers (we are, after all, soo college), but rumor has it, we also sport an Ivy League designation. While it's true that plenty of students drank hard in high school, it seems inevitable that many other students had stereotypically Ivy-track high school careers: lots of studying, no partying. Many fresh arrivals to campus must find themselves bewildered by the insanity of our frat scene. Judging by the large percentage of regular drinkers on campus, however, most of these neophytes don't stay dry for long. It is those crazy first three terms, and the massive adjustment on a mass scale that accompany them, that interest me.
Again, let me stress my awareness of the large population of students who were already very "college" before Dartmouth College. And, indeed, many other schools are as academically elite, and plenty of schools drink as hard. It is our sum intensity in both categories that I believe is off the charts and leads to unmatched changes in the lives of first-year students. Those adjustments go beyond drinking. Take, for instance, a related activity: hooking up. As reported by a national media just shocked at what today's kids are capable of, the phenomenon is nationwide, and it is certainly alive and well in Hanover. Indeed, I am willing to bet that a vastly disproportionate number of Dartmouth students, male and female, were relatively straight-laced sexually in high school. Some time during that crucial first year, hordes of them must find themselves not only drinking, but going through the steps of that silliest of dances, the random hook up, for the first time.
So, according to my theory, Dartmouth constantly plays host to a flurry of enthusiastic, terrified, red-faced First Times at a rate greater than any school of its caliber. I would imagine that new arrivals to campus find themselves anxious about the alien debauchery. Many probably keep quiet about both their inexperience and, later, the anxiety and excitement of taking the plunge. The entire process smacks of a secret initiation which means chummy, back-slapping bonding based on the shared experience, and a strong, almost irrational attachment.
It's all part of solving the Dartmouth puzzle. People love Dartmouth. They love it a whole hell of a lot. It's hardly unfounded, but you know you've wondered at least once about the reverential praise pouring into this school from every direction. It doesn't take more than a term of introductory psychology to understand that when people go through intense experiences for entry into a group, they ask themselves why, and that answer is almost invariable: "Because this group is awesome!"
Thankfully, Dartmouth is awesome. But I maintain my claim that people's love for this school is at least partly an unconscious result of the intensity of their initiation into it , and that goes beyond drinking and hooking up. Dartmouth's vernacular is a rite of induction (blitz me, dude, we're raging tonight). The Green is not full of students with cell phones at their ears constantly. Add it all up, and it's the most life-changing first-year experience of any school in this country (even more so than West Point. Okay, not West Point). While I won't throw the word "cult" around Dartmouth is a cult. And I think that's a big part of people's love for it. We're not waiting for the mothership in matching sneakers. So it's a cult, but it's a happy cult. Put that in the brochure.
