I remember my freshman year 4,000 students packed into Leede Arena for the first home basketball game. The thundering student section felt like Cameron Indoor. The other team buckled under the stream of constant insults and boos that eventually propelled Dartmouth to the win.
If you're a '15 and wondering when our school spirit dried up in the last two years, don't worry this game never actually happened. With the potential exception of the night football game and the Homecoming game, where people go to the game just to see if the freshman class will rush the field or disappoint like the '13s, a home field advantage isn't a huge factor in Dartmouth sports.
However, this home field advantage, or the idea that there are areas where we as Dartmouth students have an edge, thrives in other areas of Dartmouth culture. You can see the most obvious example, pong, on a nightly basis in basements across campus. "House rules" combine with physical obstacles to create a home field advantage capable of lifting even the most mediocre pong player to a string of victories.
These rules are usually justified as "tradition" or "helping the games move faster," but in reality, they do little more than create a home field advantage and prevent brothers from losing in their own basement.
It's a simple principle if you come up with absurd enough rules, you're going to win if you understand them. Maybe environment is good, but median isn't. Maybe it's worth two cups if you sink on an adjacent table. Maybe you even go as far as to play line. If you're not used to the rules, even if you're actually good, you've probably lost your game by the time you adjust and figure out that there are no team saves.
Examples of home field advantages even pervade Dartmouth's dining culture. Even after three years, you sometimes feel lost when trying to find a seat in a dining facility.
However, if you're a girl wearing a sweatshirt with three letters, you'll have an easier time when looking for a seat in Kollis, your metaphorical home field. Steaky dudes gain a home field advantage by almost never having to wait in the grill line at the Hop. Overpriced food has its home field advantage at DDS, yet DDS has home field advantage in my dining options. It's not always a good thing, but you can't escape it.
Dartmouth students also carry this advantage away from school. It ranges from subtly claiming your dominion over the world's airports by only wearing Dartmouth sweatshirts to obnoxiously explaining to your home friends that your school invented real pong and not that plebeian game that they play. In the "real world," most Dartmouth students are absurdly prepared for eclectic costume parties, maintaining relationships by setting up fake lunch dates and sending cleverly worded emails that show interest but not commitment. Hopefully this advantage also extends to actual job performance and similar "real world" skills, but it probably doesn't.
Everyone finds that place where they feel the most comfortable and there, they benefit from their symbolic home field advantage. Both freshmen and indifference share a common home field advantage in Student Assembly meetings. Frisbee players seem to think they have home field advantage on the green on nice days. Overplayed jokes about frisbee players on the Green have a home field advantage in The Mirror.
I could draw out this metaphor at length, but instead I'll make an effort to relate it back to this week's theme. We all want to feel at home during our time at Dartmouth. As we feel more comfortable, we find our proverbial home fields where we thrive. nothing makes you feel at home and creates this semblance of a home field advantage quite like making someone else feel slightly less at home.
