Choosing my DOC Trip freshman year involved being honest with myself about my wilderness skill level. I could not ignore the unyielding fact that there are hundreds of students on this campus that have better survival instincts in their pinky fingers than I do in my entire body. Besides facing this problem, my fellow Dartmouth students and I had to take into account a different problem: the mandatory swim test. Despite my acclaimed fifth-grade title as an official "barracuda" at my community pool, the idea of having to swim in front of people on my first day of college life had me running far, far away from the water-based trips and into the comforting arms of the nature writing and painting sections. Even back then, I wondered what on Earth had prompted such an odd graduation requirement.
According to the ORC, "All undergraduate students must complete a 50-yard swim to fulfill the graduation requirements for physical education."
If you ask Dartmouth students about the test's origins, however, many attribute it to an unnamed alumnus.
"I don't know if it's true, but I heard that one of the graduates died in some body of water," Sarah Ting '14 said. "And then other people made us have swim tests as a result? Maybe?"
Barbara Kreiger, a special collections research assistant in Rauner Library, cited a different story that started in the fall of 1919.
"At their meeting on May 26, 1919, the faculty voted to require freshmen and sophomores to participate in compulsory physical education three times a week," Kreiger said. "Swimming was included in the new program as soon as the pool opened in December of 1920."
She went on to explain a 2008 article that suggested that the swim test was actually designed as a reaction to World War I.
"The U.S. as a whole, perhaps, felt a need to make sure young men were physically and mentally fit," Kreiger said. "Swimming was part of the whole package."
This "package" of compulsory physical education also included a number of other requirements, such as a physical exam, psychological tests and a nutrition program for men who were deemed to be underweight.
Although students no longer have to deal with these additional fitness requirements, the swim test has lived on despite the difficulties both big and small that it sometimes poses to Dartmouth students.
"I could see how the test could actually be potentially embarrassing for a lot of people," Laura Hechtman '15 said. "But some people on my section didn't take the swim test because they just didn't want to get their hair wet."
Seniors, now in their final term, have less time to be worried about their hair.
"I know a lot of seniors who are terrified of the swim test," Sarah Trahern '12 said. "We all just keep trying to convince them to take the P.E. class, but it's getting close. I know that there's a way to get excused from the test. Maybe they can try a phobia of water or something."
Chantal Shirley '14 prepared for the swim test like any other exam she studied.
"I grew up 10 minutes away from the ocean and had a pool, but I didn't learn to swim until the month before Trips," Shirley said. "I read about the requirement and figured I should learn while I was at home, so I took lessons that summer just so I could get it all over with."
While it has been almost 100 years since the first swim test, students remain skeptical of the practicality and necessity of the requirement.
"Fifty meters, 500 meters? I don't even remember what it is," Ting said. "I just feel like if you were dropped in the water and had to survive, such a short distance wouldn't measure whether you would survive."
Curie Kim '13 also said that the swim test serves no practical purpose for Dartmouth students.
"If you float long enough, you'll eventually pass," she said. "The current from everyone else will carry you across."
And why is this even necessary for our life in Hanover?
"Really, where in this country would you need to know how to swim?" Larry Meadows '14 said. "Not Hanover. Maybe Manhattan cause eventually that's gonna sink."
