Okay, Dartmouth, I think it's time we had a little chat. Things have gotten out of hand. Sure, everything looks the same as winters past: TDX has a slide, my roommate Tess is in tights and Uggs, and the sculpture is slowly melting into an indiscernible lump. But under the surface, the seamier characters of our College scene are gaining momentum and, if we let them, are threatening to ruin Dartmouth life as we know it. That's right. It's time to declare war on campus crime.
I'm not talking about the "Oh, that North Face must be mine" phenomenon. As long as College students get drunk and jackets end up in piles, someone will mistake your North Face for their own. As Laura Little '08 said, "North Faces in frats are like musical chairs -- there's always one fewer than there are people who want them." Generally, however, the mistaken North Face will find its way back to its owner with no lingering hard feelings. It's just a pain in the ass at 2 a.m.
I thought I had found my way out of the North Face dilemma -- specifically, by not wearing a North Face to frats. After all, no one would mistake my white jacket for her dark fleece, right?
Wrong. And to the person who took my jacket Saturday, spent over $20 at Topside on my card and refused to answer my angry phone calls to my own f*cking phone, let me just say, I expect better. Dartmouth felt a little bit colder the morning after you stole my Dartmouth Card Identity, and not just because I no longer have a down jacket to keep me warm. I am disappointed in you. So is my grandmother, by the way, who bought me that coat. And when you have my generous, chocolate-pie-baking, diabetic grandmother railing against you, you have reached a new low. She has a heart condition, you know.
But I digress from my own travails. Campus crime has gone beyond the common jacket thief. Two computers have been stolen from Collis in the past two weeks. TWO. And a guitar. And books off desks. As Tyler Frisbee '08 said, shaking her head, "This place is going downhill."
Who do I need to blame for this? '11s, you newbies, have you not yet been cured of sleazy pre-Dartmouth klepto tendencies? Or '09s, did you go off last term and learn bad habits from new friends abroad? That kind of behavior may fly at Oxford, but you're back in Hanover, dude.
I'm already seeing the crippling effects of this sordid trend on innocent students. The guy sitting next to me in Common Ground just got up to go grab food, hesitated, looked back at his computer, hesitated. "Hey, are you going to be here for the next bit? Can you watch this?" Sure, friend. I've got your back. Stay strong.
Crime is no fun anywhere, of course. But especially at Dartmouth it's a major slap in the face. As the still-quotable Lily Macartney '08 said, "We're here in Hanover in our warm fuzzy bubble. When someone pops that bubble with the cold reality of hard crime, it's just that much more traumatizing. This isn't Rome, people."
Precisely, Lily. When I was studying in East London, I always locked my door. I never left anything alone in the library. I made certain my purse was zipped. And I never lost sight of my coat. Why? Because it was London. And I knew what to expect.
Hanover is no London or New York. Hell, we aren't even Boston. We don't have a wide variety of night life options: no Broadway, no bars, no outside dating pool (sorry townies); there isn't a new restaurant opening up every week or a new band coming through or a new gallery debuting. We're in the middle of nowhere. We have only each other in the green abyss of Hanover.
The upshot to all this isolation is supposed to be a stronger sense of community. One hears administrators talk about the "Dartmouth family." A little cheesy, but they aren't off base: We're stuck out here, so we better learn to like each other.
And with all this familial feeling floating around, we start treating Dartmouth like, well, one big living room. At home, I can leave my computer in the dining room when I walk to the kitchen. So I can leave it out in Common Ground when I walk to FoCo, right?
As Cena Miller '08 said, "I was best friends with everyone after [freshman] trips. If a thief had needed to make a call, she could have just said something; I would have lent her my phone. Stealing it meant that she no longer valued our friendship. Was our time together on trips just a game to you, thief? May God strike thieves down before they cross the door of Moosilauke once more."
Furthermore, our most popular (and some would say only) form of night life depends upon the assumption that one can throw a jacket into the shadiest rundown corner of a fraternity or sorority and generally expect it to be there two hours later. Can you imagine what the basement would be like if we had to carry around our coats all night? How many beers would be spilled on them? How much stuffier it would be? And don't even get me started on coats during dance parties and pong...
This just can't work here, guys. If you want to play the petty theft game, take your antics to hardened Columbia, where they are prepared for crime. At Dartmouth, we're supposed to be kicking it Lockian-style -- there's an unspoken social contract against this kind of nonsense.
But if I see you wearing my coat, I'm pouncing first, asking questions later.
