We've all seen them around the girls who wear handbags in frat basements, the guys who try to set up games of Beirut. They come into our social world, drink our alcohol, never say "thanks" or "sorry," and are occasionally unruly. You know who I'm talking about the Tuck Bridge kids.
Throughout the summer, the Tuck Bridge sets 266 college students and recent graduates free on the Dartmouth campus, and the results so far have not been pretty. When I think of Tuck Bridge kids, I'm reminded of a certain line from "The Great Gatsby," which originally describes the "careless and confused" Tom and Daisy Buchanan but is equally applicable: "They smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made." The bottom line is clear: somebody needs to get these kids on a leash. My problem isn't so much with the students themselves, but rather the fact that they choose to have their fun on our time and our turf.
I'm not sure who's to blame for this pockmark on our sophomore summer. The course load at Tuck Bridge is rigorous, and you'd figure that after putting down $9,300 for a four-week session, students would have enough incentive to spend their time in Hanover cloistered up in the library rather than terrorizing us. But that has clearly not been the case. The epidemic reached such proportions that party blitzes were sent out with the postscript, "No Tuck Bridge students, please."
The Tuck administration certainly doesn't condone this behavior. Tuck Bridge students are prohibited from having alcohol in their dorms, but besides using Draconian punishment, there's only so much the administration can do to prevent hundreds of students of legal age from drinking. It is inevitable that if you give a group of twentysomethings a college campus, they're going to want a glass of beer. Maybe there are a few steps that could be taken to alleviate the invasion problem.
While this complaint has been made over and over again about the Dartmouth social scene, it is still worth the mention the Tuck administration could plan more diverse events for the students so that they have other choices beyond simply studying or frat-hopping. Or, as scary as this thought is, maybe drinking could be accepted as a reality and Tuck Bridge students could be allowed to drink in their own dorms, so they won't have to resort to our social spaces.
Part of the blame certainly lies with us. By not taking the necessary proactive measures to ensure that Tuck Bridge students stay out of our parties, we can't justifiably be upset when they cause trouble. If we took the actions we know are right if we actually checked IDs at the door when we have parties, then we wouldn't have this problem at all. Nobody wants to be the one who kicks other people out of parties. Our laziness is taking its toll on us in the form of unruly Tuck Bridge students.
While some of the fault for this clearly lies with the Tuck Bridge students themselves, how much can we actually blame them? They're only here for a short time in the summer and want to have the best time they can. If we were in their place, we'd probably do the same thing. They're only human, after all. It would just be nice if the Tuck Bridge kids were more cognizant of the fact that they are guests in this situation.
I'd like to stress that I don't mean this column as an attack on the institution of Tuck Bridge. I think it's a valuable program that takes advantage of good resources during a time of the year when they would otherwise not be used. It brings hundreds of bright students to Dartmouth's campus, and further promotes higher education, teaching skills that are becoming more and more important in this economic climate. It would just be nice, though, if they had their fun on their own time, and not on ours. As one Tuck Bridge session ends and another begins, hopefully a new leaf will be turned.
