In case you were wondering, the first game of football in the U.S. was played on Nov. 6, 1869 between Rutgers University and Princeton University. A match-up like that would be unthinkable today, because of divisions or leagues or whatever. Obviously, I know a lot about football. Rutgers won, and the Rutgers students subsequently ran the Princetonians out of town, which I find amusing because Puck Frinceton. '17s, soon you too will get to see the glory of green tennis balls raining onto the ice during a Dartmouth hockey game. You get just as cold watching hockey as you do football, but hockey is at least fun to watch.
In my family, my mom is perhaps the biggest football fan. She wears light blue UNC slippers (her second pair, since our poorly behaved beagle ate the first) and shouts at the TV, which scares our better behaved Labrador and causes him to hide under the desk. My brother plays water polo and my dad, a Dartmouth alum (his composite is hanging on the second floor of Sig Ep, you can see for yourself) will check the game scores on his phone, more out of loyalty than actual interest. But it feels appropriate to mention football, because Homecoming is, ostensibly, a football weekend. I have gone to the football game every year. I have left early every year. My dad, being an alum, also goes to Homecoming and the football game every year. He will probably go next year as well. It is strange to think that my father, who graduated in 1976, will be at Homecoming 2014 and I will not.
It seems that an unusually large number of Dartmouth students are legacies. You get the, "Oh, what year is your dad/mom/sister/brother?" and on occasion whole families will end up going here. I feel slightly conflicted about being legacy. On the one hand, it definitely gave me an admissions edge, but on the other, so does being an athlete or being a one-legged trombone player from Wyoming, and you can't help being from Wyoming any more than who your parents are. Somewhere in the middle of freshman year, you realize that it does not particularly matter how or why you got in, and you stop wondering what life would be like if you had gotten into Harvard University (miserable), and you just feel thankful that you get to be here at this bizarre, idiosyncratic place in the middle of a forest that is older than the United States, and hang out with the coolest people you'll ever meet.
I'm going to wax sentimental for a moment, and repeat the old clich that Dartmouth becomes your family. You give so much to this place, so much sweat and tears and all-nighters, that you can't help but absorb a little bit of Dartmouth into you. I'm not sure if anyone actually gets granite stuck in their muscles or veins or what have you, but you do adopt a way of thinking, a unique perspective on things.
Grass from the Green (from the four months you can actually sit on the Green, when it's not covered in mud/snow/fertilizer) will stain your clothes forever. The residue of a frat will never leave your shoes. Dust from an old book that you stumble upon in the Tower Room will linger in your nose. The sound of chalk on a chalkboard will always bring you back to a giant lecture hall filled with bemused freshmen and apathetic seniors who are just realizing now that they need this class to graduate.
Dartmouth, like any institution that throws a bunch of 18 to 22-year-olds together, is not perfect. We tend toward destructive relationships, with alcohol and each other. The obsession with success, with using Dartmouth as a stepping stone to Goldman Sachs or Johns Hopkins Medical School, takes much of the joy out of learning. It can be hard to be brave enough to be different, to seek out a group of people with whom you really connect.
We can do better, and we will do better. Homecoming is about reuniting with old friends and alums, but above all, it is about welcoming the 17s. More so than Trips, Homecoming was when I really felt like a part of Dartmouth. Though we may yell and scream at you, and call you the "worst class ever," we know once you run those 17 laps (or 117), you are part of our community. You need to deserve it, and you need to earn it, and you need to leave Dartmouth a better place than you found it.
I will enjoy my last Homecoming. I will wear green and stand in a giant circle around the bonfire. I will think that this resembles some great pagan ritual, and also that it is ridiculously dangerous and that it says something (though I'm not sure what) about our school that this has been allowed to continue for so long. I will probably drink too much, and pretend not to be hungover when I grab breakfast with my parents at Lou's. They will pretend not to notice. I will even attend the football game, and try to care about what's going on. Because to hell with Harvard! Even though I think we're playing Yale.
