(Happy Homecoming. My Trouble story continues next Friday.)
Freshmen, I've heard that the administration is trying to meddle with the tradition of rushing the field. Something about mandating that you powerwalk or encouraging you to reduce your field-rushing carbon footprint or requiring that SAPAs run alongside you. Whatever they're doing, I know that it is wrong.
Rushing the field, like all the best of Homecoming, is a spontaneous celebration of the human spirit. Trying to regulate rushing the field is like shaving a swastika onto a puppy's back: a cute, futile celebration of fascism. And cruel, because, come on, puppies are way too young to know what Nazis are.
Class of 2011, you must ignore the administration and rush the field the same way you do everything else: frantically and in large numbers. You've been told that approving alumni will pay the fine you'll accrue (if you don't run fast enough), right? And that you'll enjoy a lifetime of bragging rights? Do it do it do it doooo it.
And touch the fire. Hanover Police and Safety and Security will act like they don't want you to, but that's only their way of testing your resolve. Just visualize: the cop staring you down is the father whose approval you never quite earned, and the fire, if you can only just reach it, is not striking out and crying in T-ball every single time. If that strategy doesn't work, know this: if you tackle an Safety and Security guy and an H-Po officer in one night, College policy stipulates that can't be punished. It's called The Rage Exception, and you will trust it. After all, I said "stipulate."
My brother is a freshman at Middlebury. He asked me for major advice, explaining that he was considering switching from Economics to English.
"Why?"
"Because I like it! I only have four years here, I should spend them in classes I enjoy."
To my horror, I began explaining the benefits of more marketable courses of study, trying to steer him back towards majoring in money. I am an English major. My friends all seem to be reveling in corporate recruiting, fat kids in a candy store of secure futures. This has produced no small amount of anxiety in me, and I was projecting it onto my still-idealistic brother.
Freshmen, I'm going to violate my personal moratorium on thinking more than six hours into the future. I need to tell you this: the Homecoming bonfire is not made of wood. The bonfire is fuelled by the cast-off selfhoods of young alumni. Those flames rage because they cannot.
You are still innocents. The only way you can seize this time, the spring of your ignorance, is by touching the fire and coming in contact with the hot mess of anomie and doubt that will accompany your approach to the precipice of real employment. Only then can you know how hard you must hang out now.
I'm kidding a little. My friend who graduated last year is literally consulting his heart out, and he's loving all of it; I think that, when thinking past Dartmouth, it's important to pre-empt nostalgia. We need only imagine and occasionally work toward a different, also-awesome future. By doing so we will have it.
Still, touching the fire is emblematic of what all of us must do this weekend. The action itself defies rationality, authority, and your own fear -- even your own mortality. As my senior friends have become fond of saying, death is imminent. True, but Homecoming is now. And Homecoming is not Green Key: Homecoming is For Reasons. On Homecoming, we make a huge fire and kick it straight traditional. On Homecoming, shit is real.
Getting real is aided by making shirts. Two helpful examples, the first from Andrew Berry '08, the second from Sean Adams '07. These slogans work best scrawled onto white t-shirts with black marker immediately before heading out.
"I don't care where the f*ck you pledged!"
"Is it Vietnam yet?"
It's too big for a shirt, but the great webcomic Achewood perfectly articulated this weekend's mission. It is ours to rise to.
"Let us drink! Let us sing! Let us for one more night spit into the face of death!"
Set goals: get banned from a frat where you don't hang out; make 50 friends; streak Home Plate Brunch on Sunday morning (no one will be capable of seeing who you are).
Happy Homecoming. It's my first big weekend back, so I'd better see you out. Hang out, Dartmouth.
