I spent one morning my freshman Spring crying into my Belgian waffle at Home Plate brunch as my friend and I engaged in an intense dialogue about the hook-up culture at Dartmouth. More accurately, it was a trialogue (is that a word?) I was pouring forth all my feelings about how my hookup had hooked up with a new girl while my friend focused her attention on her BBM conversation with her boyfriend. Awkward.
I can't blame her for being rude. Like the unique hook-up culture at the College, constantly looking down at our phones checking Blitz, texting and BBMing our BBFs has become a pervasive part of Dartmouth culture. This behavior has invaded our meals, our classrooms and our conversations. It has become a mindless habit among students, and we seem to have forgotten how disrespectful it is or maybe we've just forgotten to care.
Maybe we just have issues making eye contact. I often find myself pretending to be engrossed in something mundane a text message, a street sign, my shoelaces in order to avoid looking up and smiling at an acquaintance because we're just "not on that level, ya know?" But more often than not, I just can't be bothered to acknowledge your existence. Sorry, but you caught me on a day when I'm particularly self-involved.
You'd be hard-pressed to find a student at Dartmouth who hasn't been a victim of someone else's poor manners. Shayla Mars '11 describes one such situation: "I'm leaving the Hop, and I have this big-ass box taking up all the space [in front of me]," she said. "There are two guys in front of me. They look back, they see me holding the box and they watch the door close on me."
These rude behaviors texting while talking, making a conscious effort to avoid eye contact and letting the door close on a fine lady would not fly in the "real world." But here, in our little Dartmouth bubble, there doesn't seem to be consequences for our actions.
Outside of Dartmouth, strangers don't hesitate to call you out for being rude. I've heard plenty of people say, "Watch where you're going!" or "Get out of the street!" in public areas. But in Hanover, inconsiderate habits such as jaywalking are not just habits they're lifestyles. And no one stops us.
We're self-righteous and our pride gets hurt when someone else is rude to us. But we're also terribly timid few of us dare to call people out for their bad social habits. We're image-obsessed, and our bad behavior exemplifies our shared mindset that each of us is the most important individual on this campus.
Our competitiveness helps perpetuate this mindset. We're all ambitious, but we can't win everything. As a result, we've become sore losers. It's evident in our daily interactions: When someone leaves clothes in the washing machine, we take it out and complain that they were taking too long, then get angry when someone else takes our own clothes out of the dryer. We loathe the kids who cut in the Collis pasta line, but we seize the opportunity to cut everyone else when we see our friends standing in line. Our campus is full of double standards like this.
But the absolute worst is when people get competitive about who can complain the most. We're all brilliant we don't need to compete over how stressed we are. And yet almost every day, I seem to hear another conversation about how much more work person A has than person B. It's not a contest, but our competitive natures and self-centered viewpoints make it one. Some of us act so selfishly it's absurd. We like to think of ourselves as generous, compassionate people, but we can't choose when and where to be selfless. If we want to shake these bad habits that come so naturally to us, the first step is to start treating our friends and peers with respect. Hint: Start by putting down the Blackberry.
