I've heard a distinguished intellectual use the phrase "counter-haha" in serious academic discourse. I've rolled out of bed and seen shots of the Capitol building so gorgeous they look like desktop backgrounds. I've escorted Senator John McCain to his seat at a black tie affair. I've pressed my nose within six inches of the Constitution, waited half an hour in line for a Georgetown cupcake, and touched the Berlin Wall. I've observed a sidecar motorcycle pop a wheelie down three straight blocks of Pennsylvania Avenue. I've asked Julie Nixon Eisenhower just how special Checkers was anyways. I've researched, summarized, scanned, alphabetized, footnoted, spell-checked and paraphrased i.e. I've edited a book soon to be published by Oxford University Press. All of these experiences and more I owe to the College for funding my unpaid internship in Washington, D.C., last winter.
Dartmouth's financial support during off-terms is one of the most under-acknowledged benefits of being a student here. Every year, Rocky, Tucker, Dickey, Career Services and the Institute for Security Technology Studies collectively provide more than 150 students with up to $4,000 in funding each so they can work in unfamiliar cities and still afford to do their laundry, pay their utilities and eat foods other than Pop-Tarts and Easy Mac. Every year the College makes it possible for us to do incredible things we could never afford to do on our own. This is extremely important because the prevalence of unpaid internships, if not balanced by College funding, threatens to undercut economic mobility by precluding all but the most wealthy students from advancing up the career ladder.
Unpaid internships are essentially investments. Students leverage the immediate costs of food, rent, transportation and foregone potential earnings for the future benefits of additional professional experience, solid references and strong intra-industry relationships. This is fine for the affluent because they can absorb the short-run losses. But it's impossible for the less fortunate, who need to make money to help pay their tuition, cell phone bills or Greek dues. If unpaid internships really do help students find permanent jobs after graduation, then it follows that however unintended, the current system perpetuates de facto inequality by leaving the people who were better off initially with the best career options eventually. The only way to break the cycle is to make unpaid internships available to everybody.
The College's prudent administrators deserve enormous credit. It would have been very easy last spring when The Dartmouth reported that Rocky, Tucker and Dickey were facing significant declines in income to save money by reducing internship funding. But they didn't do that. They recognized how important these opportunities are to students and quietly made cuts in other areas in order to maintain internship funding levels. Pretty remarkable.
This doesn't mean, however, that the percentage of students who are granted College funding has remained constant. Unpaid internships are becoming more popular, and the number of funding applications has increased correspondingly. More people are being denied funding even though the number of people accepted has remained the same. Increases in organizational subsidies will soon be needed to compensate for the higher demand.
Most of the College's internship funding currently comes from donations made by classes that graduated too long ago eg. Dickey offers internships sponsored by The Class of 1947, The Class of 1954 and The Class of 1957 to have benefited directly from unpaid internships themselves. These classes have done more than their share, and their generous gifts are likely to soon expire. It's now up to the younger classes, the classes who gained the most from funding, to repay the favor.
A new generation of Dartmouth students is counting on them. Rocky, Tucker, et al. are strapped for cash and sacrificing, and there simply too many students who need help students who are promoting sustainable agriculture in India or advancing nuclear disarmament in Geneva or writing open-source software at a start-up in Philadelphia, etc. for us to remain complacent.
Everybody deserves a shot at doing something special. Everybody deserves a chance to explore different career options, to learn cross-culturally, to apply knowledge outside the classroom and to escape the "bubble" to pursue something he or she is passionate about. We're extremely lucky to attend a school that makes this possible regardless of our socioeconomic status. Thank you Dartmouth for the support, the funding and above all, a wonderful off-term.
