Welcome to 2010! While you were slaving away in the corporate world over the summer, saving Africa during your off-term or just finishing up your last year of high school, you likely missed a beat or two of the campus drama over the past year so let's get you up to speed on a few of the biggest news stories at Dartmouth in 2009.
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President Kim. Budget cuts. The swine flu. We all know there's a new Jimbo in town, we won't be getting as much free food and we can't leave our dorms without seeing signs directing us to go back to our rooms. These three events may have been the most important and most talked about events of 2009, so let's move on already.
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Big weekend failures. Unseasonably warm weather and rain led to the collapse of the 2009 Winter Carnival snow sculpture. Frantic campus-wide blitzes and last minute strategizing led to a new design of two mountain peaks with a river running through the middle. While the last minute attempt to save the sculpture was admirable, most of campus thought it just looked like a set of misshaped boobs. Still, Carnival's problems cannot compare to the epic failure known as Homecoming 2009. No one rushed the field. No one touched the fire. It wasn't really until this year that I understood the true meaning of being the actual worst class ever. Seriously, '13s, pick it up!
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Campus music scene begins to exist. Due to our remote location and distance from big cities, Hanover isn't typically on the tour schedule of most artists that students are interested in. However, 2009 saw an unusual number of artists who most of campus had actually heard of. While I didn't feel like waiting in line for the Three 6 Mafia concert in the spring, I found myself playing pong with Maino after his concert at SAE, and stalking down Wale, Mike Poser and Gym Class heroes for photos and autographs following their concert on the Gold Coast lawn. To top it off, my favorite '09 DJ's returned to campus for performances over Homecoming, the same weekend that Wiz Khalifa took the stage at Tri-Kap.
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Women's basketball goes to NCAA tourney. The 2009 women's basketball team won the Ivy League title and therefore secured a spot in college basketball's largest (and most important) tournament. While the football team made headlines after nabbing its first win this season following a 17-game losing streak, the women's basketball team has won 17 Ivy League titles since 1976. It's time we start showing more support for these women, who put up a strong effort to attract students to both men's and women's basketball games during the week-long Hoops Hype celebration this past Fall term.
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Bored @ Baker returns. Until early October, the '10s may have been the last class to even remember Bored at Baker. The site was launched at Dartmouth in Fall 2006 and became highly popular among students seeking face time or calling out campus hotties. It later disappeared and was somewhat replaced with Juicy Campus, which was also shut down. However, in Fall 2009, Bored at Baker returned in full force, at least for a few weeks, before being closed and then reopened again. Can we ever consistently maintain an anonymous gossip site?
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KD comes to campus. Kappa Delta sorority initiated its first class over sophomore summer. The introduction of another sorority is a great way to offer a new social option for women on campus, as well as a step in the right direction for helping to solve problems relating to gender inequalities in the Greek system. With the addition of KD and Zete this year, there are now eight Panhellenic sororities and 15 IFC fraternities on campus. Now that KD is here, it's essential to secure a physical plant for both KD and Alpha Phi, especially after construction on Alpha Phi's house was postponed due to budget cuts.
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Zete returns. After nearly eight years of de-recognition and a three year dark period on campus, Zeta Psi fraternity has returned to campus and held formal recruitment in the fall. Due to the terms of their re-recognition, they haven't had much of a chance to establish themselves among the rest of the frats. It will be interesting to see how recruitment for other fraternities may be affected in the future, since two years ago there were only 13 fraternities. Since their basement has not officially opened, the real question is whether or not to include them in your circuit.
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Student steals $18,615 from the College. After charges were filed last winter term and sentencing over the summer, a Dartmouth student faced fines, three years of probation and house arrest after he pleaded guilty to $18,615 of financial aid fraud, which he received in grants from the Tucker Foundation and Career Services. Apparently budget cuts didn't hurt those departments too badly!
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Post-grad unemployment. Maybe this is just the first year that many of my friends entered "the real world," but by the start of fall term it still seemed like half of the '09s were still unemployed and living at home, or living in an apartment in NYC, job hunting by day and partying by night. Unluckily for the '09s, many of their career fairs at Dartmouth were left with empty booths from employers who cut their intern and entry-level positions at the last minutes. As a senior I can only hope for a better outlook the first winter recruiting deadlines are in two days!
Looking Forward to 20101. Dartmouth graduates its Best Class Ever. 2. Hockey games.3. Getting a job.
4. Housing for Alpha Phi and KD. 5. Starving sophomore summer, will FoCo even be
open this year as budget cuts continue?6. Winter Olympics and the (former) Dartmouth
Athletes in it7. Spring, always the most scandalous formal season.8. Glee returns to TV, cast performs in Rollins
Chapel.9. '14s take over campus, iSlate in hand. iPhones
are so 2009. 10. Saints win the Superbowl! I'm from New
Orleans, just let me dream.
