While looking through The Dartmouth's archives in preparation for this issue, I came across an interesting sentence in a Verbum Ultimum from April 1969. Discussing the overwhelming student participation in a referendum on reopening faculty discussions of the U.S. Armed Forces Reserve Officer Training Program, the Editorial Board of long ago wrote that the turnout "dispelled the common notion that has existed on this campus for as long as we can remember: that of the apathy of the Dartmouth student."
Apperently, we're always complaining about how nobody rallies anymore. Of course, the year that editorial was written, the 'apathy' of the Dartmouth student body consisted of a few sit-ins, the arrest of four students for aggressively blocking military recruiters, and a violent takeover of Parkhurst in which 90 state troopers were needed to reclaim the building from mildly peeved students (yawn). About 75 students were arrested in the aftermath. As usual, we paled in comparison to a certain school in Cambridge where over 200 students were arrested during a quad sit-in a few months earlier.
Even my mom got to walk out of class in protest, and she was in fifth grade! She admits to caring more about 80-degree weather than Ho Chi Minh at the time, but still. Our centerfold this week explores just how much we're out-apathying the Class of 1969, whether that means we're not doing anything to defend a country we love or to protest a war we hate.
Strangely enough, Mirror writers were inspired by what must be a recent crime wave in the foyers of Frat Row. We did not plan to have half of our content focus on "lost jacket" Blitzes, but as that old saying goes, write what you know.
