Before Christopher Columbus died, he left instructions for his epitaph. The controversial explorer wanted his body to be buried under a stone engraved with the words "Let me not be confused forever." However, to this day, it seems that we are all pretty confused by Columbus, and confused in general for that matter -- especially here at Dartmouth.
Last Saturday, those of us who managed to leave the dry solace of our dormitories had a wealth of opportunities on our hands:we could have either walked to Thompson Arena and enjoyed the drumming and dancing of the Pow Wow. Or, we could have trudged to Collis Common Ground and eaten a sumptuous dinner of Naan and Tandoori chicken with Milan, the South Asian students association. It was as if, for just one spring day, Columbus had actually sailed west and found Indians.
I remember when my parents were dropping me off in September, our station wagon weighed down with clothes, bedding, my dog Abe and a red bike. It was my mom's first time in Hanover so I was anxious to see how she would like it. "It's very white here," she said.
Her comment confused me -- I thought Dartmouth, despite its history, was one of the best places to go to gain perspective on the world. Nevertheless, I felt like I was being accused of something. Surely it was too late for me to transfer to Howard. Plus, all my stuff was here in Hanover.
So I resigned myself to finding a way to prove my mom wrong. I remember hearing during convocation that about 30 percent of my class was not white. I immediately zoned out and started counting off groups of 10 from the crowd, tallying the brown, black, red and yellow faces on my right hand, trying to see for myself if the 30 percent was a gross exaggeration or not.
I was interrupted when it came time to bow my head for Jesus so I never really got good results. However, that's completely fine because how many of us checked the "White or Caucasian" box on the Common App is beside the point.
The way I see it, we are all a little bit confused about where we come from. I'm a Scotch-Anglo, German Jew who was born in Texas. Samson Occum, who was one of Eleazar Wheelock's first pupils, was one of the first Mohegans to become a Presbyterian minister. Even Columbus didn't really know which race to claim. Documents show that he was from Genoa. However, Columbus has been claimed by the French, Corsicans and Basques; even the Jews threw up a paddle.
I remember one night in the fall, a friend and I attended a movie at Cutter-Shabazz. Needless to say, we were the only white faces in the room, and that was perfectly fine. However we were not confused about why we were there; the free pizza was delicious and the movie, Bamboozled, was worth seeing again.
After the movie, a professor led us through a discussion of what we had seen. It evolved into talking about the oppression of modern media, the way prisons have become a substitute for slavery and the American experience.
I didn't think I had anything particularly insightful to say, so I kept quiet. Also, I'm not sure that Spike Lee had me in mind when he pictured a bunch of students sitting down to watch his film. But after about 45 minutes of talk, as glances at my watch were becoming more and more frequent, a lull in the discussion came.
"So what do you think?" the professor said, everyone's gaze shifting to my friend and me. I was really nervous for whatever reason -- I felt like I was being asked to issue a press release on behalf of the white man when all I wanted some free pizza. I was confused about why I went there that night.
It seems we're all a little confused at Dartmouth. We don't always know what's politically correct; we're not sure if there's pee in the porch-crawlers; and we don't know if we're actually supposed to touch the fire. Sometimes it seems as if the only thing we all agree on is that there shouldn't be class on the Friday before Green Key.
Over the course of his three voyages, Columbus named pretty much everything in his path after his destination, India. His islands became the West Indies and his natives became Indians. In the early 1970s, Dartmouth's Board of Trustees decided that the Indian mascot was offensive. On that day, a proverbial loogy was hocked on the grave of Columbus (wherever that is, nobody's sure). The Indian was replaced by The Big Green, which I'm sure caused a lot of confusion -- was it referring to the actual campus green? The Green Mountains? Or maybe even the loogy?
But, personally, I like all the confusion. If we weren't so damn confused all the time ,wouldn't we'd just be bored? And even worse, my mom would be right.
