When it comes time again for Dartmouth students to pick their classes for the upcoming term, it’s not unusual to hear students searching for easy courses to fulfill their distributive requirements. These classes are known as “layups,” supposedly easy-A courses that allow students to balance their heavy schedules with less demanding coursework. It seems to me that the insatiable search for the best layup is often motivated by Dartmouth’s quickly paced quarter system and rigorous course load. However, the more I’ve interacted with campus layup culture, the more futile I’ve found the search to be.
Don’t get me wrong: I, like many students, have sought out a layup in hopes of lightening my already heavy workload in a term, and have used online databases like Layup List and Course Me to find these classes quicker. My issue with the search for layups stems not so much from students wanting to lighten their course load, but rather from the normalization in our campus culture to dismiss the material in our classes and in turn how this attitude disrupts the analytical and conversational environment of our classrooms.
First, the culture surrounding layup classes normalizes neglecting the actual content of these classes. Once focused on lightening courseloads, the conversation surrounding layups often evolves into a nonproductive conversation about how to get through the classes, and not how to learn from them. Second, this disregard for perceived layups ultimately hurts classroom culture by promoting surface-level conversations and analysis.
These unfortunate consequences of layup culture amongst students have strained the quality of my interdisciplinary studies courses. As a prospective African and African American Studies minor, I’ve been disappointed on several occasions to find that many students take these classes because they heard they were easy, thereby taking away the depth and nuance this subject requires.
I’m not alone in this perception. I recently interviewed Harmony Wilson ’28, who has noticed this attitude affects her AAAS classes as well. In one incident, while discussing “The Bluest Eye” — Toni Morrison’s first novel that depicts the influence of white beauty standards on her young protagonist Pecola — the professor asked students to analyze an interaction with a white cashier, to which a student reportedly responded that the cashier was just “confused or angry.”
Not only was this a complete misread of the text, Wilson argues, but it was also a complete oversimplification of the detrimental effects of internalizing Western beauty standards for this young Black woman. If the predominant layup attitude spreads across our campus, I worry that incidents like this will not only be recurring but also normalized. This attitude towards simplifying history and academia is plaguing our nation as well; with recent executive orders such as “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History” encouraging the downplaying of history, our willingness to engage with history has become an implicit protest against its erasure. Our campus is just one small example of how treating any class like a layup allows for us to dance around bigger political issues.
It should disturb our campus community that conversations surrounding layup classes have made it acceptable to minimize important topics. While we may not realize it at the moment, the way we approach our education is important — as we seek shortcuts around learning, we fail to acknowledge the depth that goes into each topic.
Ultimately, students should want to engage in discourse and discussion in all their classes, whether or not the class is a layup. They should not be seeking out classes because they heard they were easy, but rather because they want to learn more about a new topic. As Dartmouth students, we should evaluate why we have taken a particular class: do we seek to drift through our coursework, or engage with ideas that we find challenging and engaging?
While students consider their classes for their next term, I implore them to not to seek out layup classes as a way to slack off. Take a class that is new to you, and, if the class needs to be your layup, recognize that the subject still requires the critical thinking and respect you find in your STEM classes.
Opinion articles represent the views of their author(s), which are not necessarily those of The Dartmouth.
