It’s been a really hard week. For many, the grief permeating campus is unsettling and saddenning, but feels just a little bit removed. For many others, it’s as still fresh, as raw and as unrelentingly painful as it was when our email inboxes first chimed with news of our classmates’ deaths. Feelings like these are complicated.
Our friends and classmates aren’t meant to grow old only in our memories. They’re meant to grow old in real life. Every single life cut short is a profound tragedy, and we don’t want to pretend like it’s just another week at Mirror. In all honesty, we’re short on stories this week. Some writers weren’t able to finish their assignments, and that is completely okay. It’s acceptable — even encouraged? — to drop the ball during times like these. Take a moment. Ask for an extension. Set an NRO. There are more important things, really.
And yet, the world keeps turning. Even amidst a week of grief, some of our writers tackled quintessential Dartmouth issues — from the exodus into consulting and finance to students’ smoking habits that defy their better judgment. We introduce a new group of writers and hear their hopes and plans for the fall. Mundanity is equal parts unnerving and reassuring — it feels like things can’t and shouldn’t be normal, and yet, in many ways, they are.
Come sit with us for a while, here in the in between.
Caris is a '23 from Long Beach, CA and is majoring in religion modified with art history. When not editing stories for the Mirror, you can find her playing club soccer, snowboarding at the Skiway or sipping coffee in Sherman Art Library. After college, she plans on attending graduate school in religion.
