Osama's death brings bonfires, silly status updates

By The Dartmouth Web Staff | 5/2/11 5:20pm

The gath­er­ing, which at­tracted stu­dents and Safety and Se­cu­rity of­fi­cers with rau­cous ren­di­tions of the na­tional an­them and other pa­tri­otic songs, was re­lo­cated to in­side the fra­ter­nity as the night pro­gressed and the fes­tiv­i­ties grew row­dier. Dart­mouth stu­dent vet­er­ans spoke at the cel­e­bra­tion, while a giant Amer­i­can flag hung over Beta's front porch.

Many stu­dents up­dated their sta­tuses on Face­book to re­flect a range of sen­ti­ments re­gard­ing the an­nounce­ment, with some ex­press­ing sup­port for the war's progress and oth­ers ques­tion­ing the con­se­quences of the pub­lic an­nounce­ment. Many in­cluded var­ied ref­er­ences to "Amur­rica."

Even more peo­ple crowded the tele­vi­sions in Col­lis to wit­ness the pres­i­dent's an­nounce­ment, some stu­dents stop­ping on their way out of Late Night to watch the ad­dress, which began around 11:30 p.m. Other stu­dents only paused for a mo­ment on their way out the door to catch a glimpse of the his­toric, al­ready mega-hyped news cov­er­age.

Obama's ad­dress to the na­tion came late Sun­day night, de­tail­ing his de­ci­sion to com­mand a raid on bin Laden's lodg­ing in Pak­istan, the As­so­ci­ated Press re­ported. The fire­fight, con­ducted by U.S. forces, saw no loss of Amer­i­can lives in the fight­ing. Im­me­di­ately fol­low­ing the an­nounce­ment, the U.S. State De­part­ment de­clared an "en­hanced po­ten­tial for anti-Amer­i­can vi­o­lence given re­cent coun­tert­er­ror­ism ac­tiv­ity in Pak­istan," the AP re­ported.