I hate to bring more attention to you, Johnathan James Recor, MALS '11, "Sun God," traveling muse of eccentricity. But James, and I will call you James, few have understood the symbolism of your construct on a deeper level than identifying your alien ambling and establishing you as an ever-present specter with a boombox and a mask. James, you and I know that it's more than this. For all your maddening obscurity, you represent something much more familiar to us.
For those not usually frightened at random times in different places by a masked stranger, James Recor/The Sun God wears a mask, spreads the message of love and will consummate his role as a pioneer of self-promotion during his "5k Love March" on April 12. Five thousand meters what endurance! He is inscrutable, incredibly well-known, defined by legend, the focus of scattered hatred and love and truly mysterious. The Sun God is a campus icon.
I believe the proprietary Dartmouth phrase "campus icon" first made sense to me as a sophomore, when a lady friend of mine was detailing a hook-up with an '09. When she told me his name, I said, "Who's that?" And she responded, with an air of personal injury, "You don't know who he is?" Obviously I've adulterated the name of the specific Sig Ep, but nonetheless he had established himself as an iconic Dartmouth male someone to know, associate with and, apparently, permit nightly indiscretions.
"Campus icon" is a commonplace colloquialism at our school, whether it refers to champions of student affairs like Frances Vernon '10 or endowed conquerors of the bedroom like Alex Borland '10. We need to reexamine what this title what this peculiar existence means in our little Dartmouth world. These standard-bearers of cultural significance exist within the minds of other students as symbolic leaders of organizations, the focus of widespread rumors, or as amalgams of friend-of-a-friend impressions.
Most College socializing encourages us to create dubious opinions of other people based on very little personal familiarity and buttressed by whatever hearsay we happen upon, often filtered through the lens of intoxicants or distraction or political affiliation.
Outside of socializing, student organizations with particular policy goals tend to result in similar flash judgments "anyone in SA is anti-Greek," for example, used to be a more common bromide, however spurious the claim. This kind of accusation would tend to appear in snarky sub rosa banter, leading to unfounded accusations of individuals.
Like all humans, students know each other in varying levels of intimacy we have created a network of interaction, fast-paced and impatient, that focuses on the most superficial attributes of personality and problems. The Dartmouth icons have achieved a certain status of identifiability a cult of notoriety or fame within this type of culture that makes them both desirable company and points of campus interest. The icon exists as a construct beyond personal interaction a Wikipedia page of their self, open to all editors while instead they are, in fact, fully-formed, fully-expressive individuals.
The process of quick-scanning each other is mirrored by our educational mode we are taught to understand a breadth of topics, and be able to survey human history and society in conversation. This leaves us all as experts of surface data, able to sound intelligent in a range of conversations while more poignant deductions remain untouched. We tend to perceive things by skimming, filtering and reporting back it's the only way, for example, to intelligently approach the vast dumping grounds of the Internet. I've heard employers explaining that this type of mind is what they want in new hires, and I've listened to administrators explain this New Set of valuable office skills. We are meant to become a "Rotten Tomatoes" for data, but also each other.
Through his satire of superficiality at Dartmouth, the Sun God is the first true campus iconoclast. His message of love is, in fact, a poignant mockery of the intimacy of love itself how can we adore a faceless enigma? Whether the mask is hiding beauty or monstrosity and even if the only time you take it off is when you're lost in the animal heat of midnight stupor it's time to remove it.
The Sun God is a cautionary tale for both campus icons and the Dartmouth proletariat. We need to see your face so that we may truly love.
