I needed lunch. It was early September 2023, and I was one month into my new job as a professor at Dartmouth. I asked a colleague to join me. She couldn’t come, but she warned me, “The ’27s are here now, and it’s gonna be much slower getting around campus while they figure it out.”
I had to ask her who the “’27s” were.
This was when I learned that instead of calling new students “first years,” Dartmouth has its own lingo. Now, the emails I was getting from email addresses with class, a convention I have never seen before in my 15 years in academia, made sense.
Initially, I mused that the class-year email addresses were part of the College’s efforts to prepare students to be future alums, and donors, from the moment they set foot on campus. For my first two years working here, I dismissed the class-year obsession as yet another Dartmouth quirk.
Slowly, I began to see the gravity of class years being tied to each email. The class year obsession is not a harmless quirk. Instead, it’s a convention that shines a negative light on people who are “off-track” with their original plan.
Teaching during “sophomore summer” crystallized this for me. I started the term expecting to spend time with only ’27s. That was wrong. There were ’25s, ’24s, and ’23s on campus. There weare transfer students who are designated ’28s, even though they plan to graduate in 2027.
Class years in email addresses seemed to force students to have to explain to peers and authority figures if they are “off track.” This is most apparent for people who graduate “later” than their initial class year.
This is especially troublesome because Dartmouth is an email-heavy place. Students use emails to enroll in a class, to ask for recommendations, to network and apparently, for “flitzing.”
My seminar students spent this past summer discussing how cultural shifts and economic changes have left the traditional American adulthood markers out of reach. Many young people, especially in the 1960s, would move through five markers of adulthood relatively quickly and in a sequence. They would complete their education, leave home, become financially independent, get married and have children. All of these are jeopardized in today’s economy — young people today take longer to complete some of these markers, do them in different orders, or skip them entirely.
Many Dartmouth students are accustomed to having plans and doing everything they can to actualize those plans. When I float the idea of reconsidering law school, or changing majors in junior year, students return looks of anguish.
Part of adulthood, especially in contemporary times, is coming into one’s own by dealing with curveballs and making one’s own decisions. Sometimes this includes altering one’s academic timeline to deal with a changed major, a family tragedy or a health challenge. We should normalize this.
Dartmouth’s class-year email addresses do just the opposite. They make those who are “off-track” stand out. Dartmouth’s six-year graduation rate is 96%. That is higher than the average for four-year institutions, where just 64% of students graduate within six years. There is a reason colleges report six-year graduation rates, rather than four-year graduation rates: it’s not uncommon for students to need more time, according to the Hechinger Report.
It’s true that even if Dartmouth removed class year from email addresses, people might just add “Class of 2027” to their email signature. Class year distinctions are more resilient than an email address — we still have Orientation Week, and there will always be a crop of new kids on the block.
Changing an email address is a small step. But for transfer students, students who took a break or students who failed some classes, it is a meaningful step. It lets students digitally introduce themselves on their own terms. And for the “my plans generally work out” group of students, it de-emphasizes the idea that all young people can or should actualize their original plans, right on time.
Casey Stockstill is an assistant professor of sociology at Dartmouth College. Guest columns represent the views of their author(s), which are not necessarily those of The Dartmouth.
