In his column "In Search of Intellectualism," (Apr. 12, 2007), Tom Atwood '08 makes a provocative point: "I don't think Dartmouth students are particularly creative or innovative with their thinking, and, as a result, conversations become stale and intellectual apathy ensues." How is this possible in a culture of 30% valedictorians, 15% salutatorians and hundreds of other students who never drank in high school? It is not that we are not creative, but that we undergo a willful suppression of our inner geniuses, a process best exemplified by the extinction of the elusive Dartmouth dinner date. But why?
Dinner may be the meal with the greatest implications at Dartmouth -- it may even be the most loaded social interaction we have as students. But we rarely, if ever, eat it at a restaurant with someone else. In fact, the significance of the dinner dilemma offers unique insight into our epidemic self-consciousness: We are deeply ashamed of our intellectual selves and cannot bear to reveal them.
I present a personal anecdote for illustration. Last term, I asked a girl to dinner. I was tired of Food Court cuisine. I was tired of male company (never, bros, never!). I wanted good food and pleasant conversation. Days before the meal in question, several of her friends ask me about our "date." Uh-oh, I say, "date" is a scary word. I better wear cologne. And bring condoms. And have asked someone more attractive.
Why is dinner out the platonic embodiment of romance? Why is a simple Food Court rendez-vous untainted by gossip, while a meal out makes cause for public ridicule?
We are smart people, but no visiting zoologist could tell. We exhibit Neanderthal Agonism in our violently male-dominated social spaces: "Man drink first! Woman get leftover from used pong cans. Then sex with man. Then women go make run to Food Court for man." Dinner is never a legitimate concern for the coital couple.
There is a holistic purge of our intellectual selves outside of the classroom, and nowhere is this better manifested than in an avoidance of mature dinner conversation. Our universal approach is that we should save mental beauty for the classroom and physical beauty for the basements. I believe that many women here dumb themselves down for the sake of attraction. Men join them equally, if not more emphatically in this anti-intellectualism. For example, they wear hats. Stop wearing hats, unless it's sunny out. Nobody cares if you wear a hat at an angle. It's not self-expression. You look stupid.
As Ivy League students, our most attractive assets should be our minds. But anyone who mentions Nietzsche to a freshman girl will never get to assert his will to power on her.
How do a bunch of kids -- smart and socially underexposed -- assimilate into a "Lord of the Flies" world where alcohol-fueled romance abounds? How do we reconcile our mental brilliance with the lifestyle of the cool kids at State, who have enjoyed nothing but mindless drunken indulgence since junior high? We hide it to get laid. And that means dinner dates are a near impossibility.
Some people do, in fact, manage to find romance here, but they are a small minority. Jilian Gundling's article ("Students Say Yes Before Senior Year," Feb. 15) seems hilarious to the rest of us: "Here exists a segment of the Dartmouth population whose most important ring obtained in college is not for graduation but for marriage." Most readers probably thought that she was talking about a NuvaRing.
Dinner out presents the ultimate challenge to students: Have a creative discussion with someone you find attractive. And this makes any Dartmouth Dick and Jane completely vulnerable. Perhaps she'll realize there's nothing behind that stupid hat and posturing machismo, and he'll realize that there's nothing behind that low-cut dress and senseless tittering ("Omg, I like totally ate three slices of Zach's pizza without asking!").
Having sex with someone is less of a big deal than getting dinner with them at Dartmouth. Because dinner means something. Because dinner is really too big of a romantic step for people to handle. Because it means that we might actually combine mental attraction with its physical counterpart. This requires too much maturity. We'll both go straight home from dinner, realizing that we can't find love at a school that transforms the beauty of intelligence into a Jekyll of brainless hedonism. Bon appetit.
