Sometimes, the line between being unclean and being truly disgusting is a fine one. Sometimes it's very clear. Compared to the urban (or at least suburban) lives that many of us are used to, Dartmouth is a veritable wilderness camp. There are very many facts of Dartmouth life that are precipitated by this unique environment, and in some cases it becomes easy to chock up the lack of hygiene to the lack of civilization. Unfortunately, the fact that the nearest Wal-Mart is a 15-minute drive away is by no means an excuse to forsake our standards of cleanliness.
Let's take a typical morning for example. You wake up, tired from staying up late on one of those Chem 5 lab write-ups that always takes too long. Do you take a shower? Nah. Brush your teeth? Nope. You just put on a hat and roll out to Collis to grab a breakfast sandwich and a coffee before chewing some gum on the way to your 9L. Is this acceptable? Depends who you ask. In our book, the difference between unclean and disgusting is when other people start to notice your subpar level of hygiene. If you smell bad, you are disgusting. That's pretty simple.
Which brings us to our first rule of thumb: Shower regularly. I know this seems like a given, but we also understand that basic hygiene can be a pain during midterms and finals. In addition to removing the yucky sweat and bacteria from your body, daily showers will make your presence in the library much more tolerable.
The second rule of thumb: Don't dress your freshly washed body with dirty clothes! Yes, doing regular laundry is definitely more time-consuming than showering, but you don't want all your hard work to go to waste, do you? Wearing the same sweatpants three days in a row doesn't make you more efficient or clever, it's just gross. If you need to justify why you're not doing your laundry, it's time to put your clothes in the washing machine.
There are environments here that are unclean by nature. Take frat basements. You could probably argue that some are relatively clean. Relatively is the operative word here. We play pong without rinsing cups. Thus, the question you need to ask yourself is, where would a pong ball roll? Sometimes, the basement is not that bad. A given ball might roll over a floor sticky with beer, but that's about it. Other times, an unmistakable smell pervades the entire social space, and that brings us to our third rule: If you smell urine when you aren't in the bathroom, you have crossed over to the dark side of filth. Another tip: Don't make out with strangers in frats it's like playing Russian roulette with your health.
It would be easy to focus on frats as a source of unclean and often disgusting things, but we can't overlook other places that we simply take for granted. Consider the gym. It's full of lots of sweaty people that's just how gyms are. Even though the cleanliness bar is a little lower, there are still standards. Some things will always be taboo. I'm happy that you're having an awesome workout, but if you try to greet me with a hug, it's going to be pretty embarrassing when I slip away from your sweaty embrace. If you're a prolific sweater, you need to understand that the gym has resources available that you need to make use of. Do us all a favor and grab some paper towels and disinfectant to clean up after yourself. Sitting down on a sweaty machine is a little like sitting down on a warm toilet seat, except with bodily fluids.
The health questions raised by our social spaces apply to our living spaces as well. If there is one thing in this collegiate mix of nasty things that you can control, it is your room. The level of hygiene you maintain in your living space reflects your personal standards. No matter how clean you may think you are, from time to time, your dorm may start to approach an inappropriate level of dirtiness. From expired food in the fridge to decaying trash at the bottom of your garbage, your room is full of sneaky sources of grossness. It's smart to get in the habit of clearing out junk every few days so you'll be able to avoid that oh-so-dreaded mass cleaning at the end of the term. And no matter what or who you bring into your bed, occasionally washing your sheets should be a no-brainer.
Cleanliness is often about perspective, really. Or at least, uncleanliness is. If you can get away with being a little unclean, more power to you. We are in college after all. Society cuts us a little slack, so we can cut ourselves some slack too. But be wary of the compounded slack cutting in the cleanliness department. Clean yourself, clean your room and when in doubt, don't touch it!
