I was wasting time recently by doing one of my favorite things -- reading about anything that comes to mind on Wikipedia, a wonderful little (and by little I mean absolutely huge) free, open-source encyclopedia on the web. Surprisingly (or not), I soon found myself at the "Dartmouth College" page. I read through with interest, and was taken aback by a few of the remarks posted in the "comments" section. I am not, of course, talking about the one by a community member saying he, despite being much older than the typical college students, can still get into fraternity basements on a whim.
I am, however, talking about a discussion that was ongoing as to whether or not describe Dartmouth in the encyclopedia article as "conservative." My eyes bulged a bit. "Hanover? Dartmouth? Conservative?" I asked myself. "Surely they can't be serious!"
But sure as the sun shines on the Green for those three prized days out of our otherwise winter-filled year, there was an honest discussion ongoing about how to characterize our school. Our school, which had exactly ONE person under its employ listed as donating to the Bush campaign last election (and he was an OB-GYN in Nashua and had nothing to do with our prized undergraduate system). I recognize that faculty/employee donations are not the be-all/end-all description, but I really feel that if this were truly a "conservative" campus that there would have been people besides Dr. Erickson writing a check for 500 smackers.
I read on in disbelief as a person seemingly familiar with the student body here explained to the Wikipedia regulars that this school is actually just left of center. We only, according to him, get a bad name because of being associated with The Dartmouth Review and Dinesh D'Souza.
First, allow me to disregard the latter part. Our affiliation with the Review or D'Souza as members of the Dartmouth Community is not something to loathe. Last I checked, I love Dartmouth as much as the next guy, yet there's maybe 10 percent of the community here who would even consider my political beliefs valid. I stand as proof that you can be proud of Dartmouth as a whole without feeling you are misrepresented by the characteristics of others. Politics is a funny thing; if there were clear answers, there would be a consensus and there probably would not even be a page in which this column could be published.
But more importantly -- our campus is "slightly left of center?" Slightly? Center? This community, for whatever reasons, is exactly like most other college communities and is absolutely, stark-raving-mad liberal. To cite the example above, employees of our distinguished institution donated $30,500 to the Kerry campaign. We have an active Green Party on campus. Dartmouth is not a thriving bastion of conservatism. It is a thriving bastion of big-city liberalism and lifestyle in a small-town, fairly conservative region. I hail from Manch Vegas (yes, the locals refer to Manchester as that) and I can tell you that Hanover is viewed as a kind of anomaly by the rest of the state.
This obsession that Dartmouth and everyone else in the radical edges of this country's political spectrum has with being seen as near the "center" is ridiculous. Liberalism is many things to many people, and I'm not going to make judgments on it in this particular column, but I see the tendency of liberals on this campus to label themselves "moderate" as similar to the tendency for the wealthy in this country to label themselves "middle class." Everyone's "middle class." If you're liberal, and the institution you go to is liberal, then, mother of God -- say so. Don't hide behind a veil of centrism. Be radical and proud. Don't say there should be a Marxist revolution and then mark "moderate" on facebook. Hiding behind ambiguous phrases only does one thing: collude the debate.
