Like many Dartmouth movers and shakers before me, I spent one of my off terms trying to save the world in a developing country. Please allow me the perfunctory I-learned-something-meaningful-abroad-and-can-relate-it-to-Dartmouth column, beginning right now.
I spent the 10 weeks of my sophomore Spring in Granada, Nicaragua, volunteering as a teacher for a zany second grade class and the lone "soccer" (futbol) coach for the entire school where I worked. The children there were lovable, welcoming and, at times, absolutely brutish. Not a day passed without courtyard fisticuffs between warring sects of eight-year-olds. The children were extra feisty on my last day coaching soccer, which happens to be the setting of my saccharine sermon.
Just as I was about to leave from this exhausting day, I bumped into an old man that I recognized from the surrounding neighborhood. I had seen this ancient, toothless man nearly every day; first he would walk toward the soccer field with a dozen or so of his cattle to a waterhole, and then back away from the field a few minutes later. Despite his proximity, I avoided ever speaking to him. This day, the man had other plans and came right over to talk to me.
The man spoke with only his gums and in the thickest Nicaraguan Spanish accent I had heard yet. It was nearly impossible to understand him. As I focused more carefully on each word, I began to understand that he was commenting on the children's wretched behavior. He was ashamed, he said. Their parents raised them better than that. He spoke about this one's father and that one's grandmother, and about what they would do if they knew how their children were behaving. Little did I know, as I watched this man every day, that he knew the ins and outs of this neighborhood that he had his finger on the pulse of life here better than maybe anyone. The man I would have written off as an unintelligent herder was as wise as he was old.
So what can an unintelligible, one-time conversation with an ostensibly illiterate herder teach us wicked smart Dartmouth students? It's a timely reminder of the timeless truism: "Don't judge a book by its cover." Why so timely? There's a one-word answer to that question, and it's one that's been on the tip of the campus's collective tongue (as well as its Facebook newsfeed) for a few weeks now: rush.
Ah, rush: the time of year when friendships are made, bonds are forged and dreams are crushed. It's also the time of year when the negative side effects of the Greek organizations' exclusive manner are rejuvenated. All of a sudden, new members of the Greek system have an indelible label slapped upon them, and along with it, a house's collective stereotype practically (and sometimes literally) stamped on their foreheads. The danger here is not in merely associating individuals with a particular house, which is bound to happen with our system. The real trouble is when that label becomes a roadblock to befriending or even meeting a peer. Just as I had written off that kooky-looking man as beneath me, so do many affiliated students at Dartmouth treat their peers from other, or perceived "lesser," houses. If you don't think this phenomenon exists, then you're either blissfully oblivious or willfully in denial.
Let's be clear, however. This column is not devoted to critiquing the rush process, or to decrying the exclusive nature of Greek organizations. Rather, I offer a simple rule of thumb tailored to our social scene and directed to the newest members of the Greek system: "Even if someone is a machete-wielding and toothless herder, he might actually be quite interesting and friendly." (I know that description is just absurd, but I've heard worse applied to particular Greek houses and their members before.) I urge you to adopt and adjust my recommendation however you see fit for our campus. If that means belligerently "friending" every member of campus, so be it. (I might know of a particular campus god searching for you in that case.) If you take it to mean you should spend your time forming deeper friendships with fewer people who are just in your house, that's great too.
Ultimately, don't close the door on someone before you've met him or her because they're in that creepy frat or that B-side sorority, or, because they walk cattle back and forth across a field for a living.
