This article is featured in the 2026 Freshman Special Issue.
Dear First Years,
I want to begin by saying something I’m sure you’re all sick of hearing already: Welcome to Dartmouth! If you’d like, take another minute to bask in it. You likely worked the entirety of your high school career to get to a place like this, and you’ve done it. As you may have noticed by now, mere acceptance to an institution like Dartmouth confers onto you special status. You are clearly very smart. You are, after all, an Ivy Leaguer.
This “specialness” is the core, incipient benefit of going to a place like Dartmouth. Upon your matriculation, you will be handed access to incredible resources and near comical latitude in your new role as one of the consecrated future leaders of our world. So, let me lay out the benefits package.
On campus, you will encounter a world of limitless possibilities. You will meet an entire cadre of faculty members, frequently at the apex of their careers, whose entire job is to be invested in your intellectual and personal growth. If you look any further than the landing page of most academic departments’ websites, you will find programs for which our institution will ask you to write mere paragraphs in exchange for thousands of dollars, all in the name of exploring an interest or passion. Through BorrowDirect, you will be given access to what is likely the most expansive and exceptional repository of knowledge in the history of humanity.
You will also encounter a parallel world where the normal rules and consequences of functioning society are suspended. You will use and abuse both legal and illegal substances to your heart’s content while your poorer counterparts across the country are sentenced to decades for the same actions. You will watch your peers continually violate the law, getting away with no more than a slap on the wrist. You will encounter organizations with unbelievable levels of social capital that enable predators and mercilessly abuse new members with near total impunity. You will receive six-figure job offers simply due to the fact that you share a Greek affiliation or favorite professor with one of our institution’s successful alumni. You will meet peers who have access to personal resources and power that you have not even conceived of.
For some of you, acceptance to Dartmouth is simply a continuation of your family’s legacy; for others, this acceptance has made you a hometown hero. For many, the world I’m describing will be familiar; for many others, entering it will be a shocking, at times profoundly alienating experience. Whether or not you like it, though, you are now a member of an extraordinarily privileged group of people, even if it’s just on a four-year pass.
How did you earn such a luxurious benefits package? Who knows, really. You made yourself statistically qualified with good test scores and a good GPA. Your essays may have really set you apart, but Dartmouth’s own admissions counselors have admitted that they could fill any given class with qualified applicants two or three times over. So what was it, really? I urge you to consider that like the grand lottery of life, a good bit of it was probably luck. An admissions counselor who might’ve been in a good mood, or noticed a common interest that stood out to them in your application.
Perhaps the most pernicious part of all of this is that no matter your background at the start, your Dartmouth experience will condition you to believe that our bizarro level of privilege is normal, earned and should even be expected.
Privilege has become a dirty word. To be associated with privilege is to be grouped in with the oligarchic purveyors of injustice that rule over our world of cartoonish inequity. However, I submit to you this: Privilege only becomes a dirty thing when it is used improperly — when great quantities of it are squandered on individuals who simply wish to enrich themselves, or insulate themselves from the great problems of our world and maintain a level of comfort to which they have become accustomed.
You will meet many of these people at Dartmouth. In fact, you might find them to be the norm. Individuals working jobs that give them great pay, even better benefits and a pedigree that would be remarkable if it wasn’t incredibly easy to earn from a place like this. I beg you to remember that this use of privilege is borne of a fundamental refusal of the collective nature of our society, and it, much like the power you’ve been given, is not normal.
For better or for worse, and probably by a good bit of chance, you have been handed one of the most exceptional opportunities of your life. It’s too late to turn back now. So what will you do with your incredible windfall? For all of our sakes, I hope and pray that you don’t throw it away.
Sincerely,
A hopeful but tired senior
Opinion articles represent the views of their author(s), which are not necessarily those of The Dartmouth.
Eli Moyse ’27 is an opinion editor and columnist for The Dartmouth. He studies government and creative writing. He publishes various personal work under a pen name on Substack (https://substack.com/@wesmercer), and you can find his other work in various publications.
