I'm assuming, reader, that you, as a well-informed and involved student, have kept up to date on the most important aspect of your collegiate career: the politics of the Greek system and the myriad "discussions" about them on this page. If you have a midterm, paper, meeting or, frankly, anything that is not related to an open and honest discussion of the hazing and social crisis on campus, you probably should reconsider your priorities and start talking about how aggrieved you are. Surely you have been wronged by the greater Dartmouth culture, so before you worry about anything else, why don't you join in our crusade and fix this mess that is everyone's life at Dartmouth?
I'm also assuming that if you read this page, you enjoy nothing more than the discussion of the same topics over and over again. Have you had enough of Andrew Lohse '12? Good, neither have I. Did you know that he wrote a wildly embellished account of hazing at an elitist school in New Hampshire? Well, he did. It was kind of a big deal. Along the way there have also been reports of inappropriate party themes and emails that mention pornography. It's all very, very bad. But I don't need to tell you, since if you're still coming back to these columns, you either are a sucker for repetition or have no friends and are eating alone in FoCo pretending to look busy (in which case, get yourself a red cup).
Some of these statements might be slightly ridiculous. I suppose that consciousness of the social ills that need correcting here does not preclude a student from working on more important things. It only takes a few dinner conversations about resistance, after all! Most Dartmouth students remain level-headed and, if the national rankings are to be believed, rather intelligent. Yet somehow, the student population remains incapable of engaging in even the most cursory discussion of the issues plaguing the College.
Maybe I'm talking to the wrong people, but when I looked for inspiration on what to write about for this column, most people gave me pretty boring responses. Out of 20 people to whom I posed the question, "What should I write about in my opinion column concerning life at Dartmouth?" only two said it should regard the current discussions on Greek life. Much more common responses were hornets on Collis porch and "declined to answer."
What I am getting at is that there is a disconnect between the loud writers, protesters and know-it-alls on one side and the vast majority of campus on the other. Why is there such a separation between the vocal minority and everyone else? Because we're much more worried about bicycle theft, sky-high DDS prices and enjoying ourselves. This brings me to a second question if most of us shake our heads at flyers with angry slogans and respond to the terrible situation our campus faces with ambivalence, are we ignorant, normalized lemmings? Or are we what past success and intellectual acumen would suggest, which is a student body of smart, critically-thinking adults?
If we are the latter, there are two options for why we are not currently marching on Parkhurst. Perhaps we have analyzed the situation and decided, contrary to the opinions of most columns in this paper, that the system is not that bad. Sure, there are shortcomings, but they can be dealt with simply on an individual basis without reinventing Dartmouth. Otherwise, I am wrong and we are all children who have been completely brainwashed.
Here's my issue. I think that the small portion of campus ideologues, spewing arguments against frats, wealth, capitalism, etc. (some of which are justified, some of which are solipsistic nonsense), are so eager to see their carefully constructed criticisms validated that they often look past truth to see their own predetermined conclusions. I'm just trying to say that before we all jump to judge institutions and express our righteous anger, let's take a step back, cool off and really ask ourselves where our expressions of dissent are targeted. I'm sure some things are terribly wrong here you've just failed to convince me that it's time to start over.
