I'm a freshman. I hide a campus map at the bottom of my backpack just in case I get lost, I consider myself lucky when I get sixths on a pong table, and I have overwhelming urges to walk with my 20 closest freshmen friends everywhere I go. I recognize that I'm habitually confused and regularly do embarrassing things without realizing it. Because of this, I know from firsthand experience how much Dartmouth loves "the call-out."
In case any readers somehow avoided their awkward-freshman stage, I'll define the call-out. The classic call-out is when a person tells an embarrassing story about someone else or confronts that person in a contentious way. But the one calling, the one getting called and the audience are either all friends, or the reason for the call-out is something so universally Dartmouth that everyone can relate and empathize. When the story ends, a member of the audience usually exclaims, "Oh, called out!" but this is optional.
If you've ever slipped walking into the ever-crowded AD basement and spilled your drink on the pretty senior girl from your linguistics class that you're too nervous to talk to, you're eligible for a call-out. Key to this activity, however, is its universally positive result. The person getting called out suffers slight embarrassment but also enjoys some good face time. The person doing the calling always has benign intentions, so the process leaves no lasting emotional or psychological scars. Your best friend relating your AD mishap to your closest floormates meets these criteria. But when that kid you barely know brings the incident up in linguistics class in a voice that's loud enough for the pretty girl to hear, it is no longer a call-out.
Sometimes, a call-out ceases to be a call-out and instead becomes similar to the instant messenger wars we fought in middle school. The caller lacks the ability to express himself in a mature way and opts to voice his frustration with someone in a way similar to temper tantrums on the elementary school playground. The infamous comic in last week's paper ("BlarFlex," April 24) is an example of this. Unable to refute by logic or provide a counter-argument, the authors of "BlarFlex" simply performed a call-out. The comic's offensive content shocked readers, but the logic behind it was just a continuation of the call-out mentality. But these call-outs aren't flawed because they hurt people's feelings. As liberal as I am, I don't expect the campus to spontaneously join hands, sit on the Green and sing Kumbaya. These call-outs are defective and irrelevant because they inappropriately deflect criticism from the real issues.
BlarFlex-esque call-outs shift the attention away from the issues, which are important, to the person behind them, who is not. When students criticize Hillary Clinton for being unlikable and robotic, the call-out mentality distracts them from meaningful debate. If Clinton's perceived idiosyncrasies translate into inadequate policies, then her personality is relevant. President Bush -- I've heard -- is charming, witty and gregarious, but these traits didn't prevent him from mismanaging a major war. So if Bush has a booger hanging from his nose the next time he meets a foreign diplomat, I hope Dick Cheney calls him out in the Oval Office later that day. But Booger Gate -- as CNN will probably label it during primetime later that night -- is not news. The incident doesn't reflect on Bush's political prowess or leadership capability. We could accomplish significantly more with dramatically less tension if we directed our energy on a problem's causes and not the actor's personalities.
To come out against call-outs would be like proclaiming myself anti-Green Key or pro-puppy-kicking. Call-outs enrich our social lives, provide us with a common bond and keep us freshmen humble. Let's be honest, the hope of a call-out is 60 percent of my motivation for going to floor meetings, and I'll be among the loudest screaming "worst class ever" next year at the clueless freshmen too scared to touch the bonfire. Call-outs are a beloved Dartmouth tradition, but they belong at fraternity meetings, in Choates common lounges and on the Green during the Homecoming festivities. When they creep into other settings they seem less like legitimate arguments and more like a blog post written by Perez Hilton.
