Stuff Dartmouth Kids Like: Dartmouth is Dirty
UPDATE: My coat has been found. My fracket is once again in my possession, albeit with a few new stains that I briefly wondered about and then ignored. Have I washed it yet? Nope. Will I wash it soon? Probably not until (unless?) somebody boots on it. Which brings us to this week’s question to ponder: Dartmouth is a super gross school. Why do none of us care?
Let me explain. Between my friends from high school and my roommates’ and friends’ and floormates’ friends from high school, quite a few of our peers from other colleges have visited over the years. I can’t speak for everyone, but all of my visitors are from New York City, where dogs regularly mark their territories in public and their owners see no reason to clean up after them, where the rats are as big as cats (not really, but they all have rabies) and where it’s literally impossible to have gone through your life without having eaten a dirty water hot dog/mystery halal meat over rice/questionable legumes from a NUTS 4 NUTS cart. We’re not a particularly squeamish bunch.
That being said, all of these visiting students – whether they’re from the dirty streets of New York or someplace where dirt is seen as a good and life-giving thing that people aren’t afraid of, like the Midwest – are always shocked by the same two things. One: instead of going to a bar or a dance party on the weekends, we spend the vast majority of our time playing pong, standing around watching people play pong or standing around waiting to play pong. Two: our frats are really, really dirty. And they smell bad.
The intersection of these two issues, of course, lies in the fact that pong is a disgusting game. I already addressed this a couple of years ago, but it’s a rich area. Here are just a few observations I have about Dartmouth and hygiene.
We have an unusually friendly relationship with our own (and others’) bodily fluids. Because we’re all really hot and get laid all the time. BOOM! No, but really, I don’t know why this is. Think about it – four times a year, there is a party on this campus where literally the entire point is that you throw up all over other people. Like, the more you do this, the more points you get. You don’t even get anything real if you win. The only thing that is real about the entire situation is the vomit in your hair and your shoes. And people VOLUNTARILY GO.
Or this – last weekend, my friend showed me a picture of him throwing up on his friend’s head. He dubbed this the proudest moment of his spring term last year. Dude, if that’s your highest point, I’m afraid to know what the lowest was.
Or the fact that instead of urinals, most basements have a trough that guys can stand above shoulder-to-shoulder and pee into.
Or that before GLOS, otherwise known as The Man, outlawed pre-mixed drinks, we regularly drank out of trash cans and other communal vessels. Did we serve ourselves with ladles? You must be dreaming. Hands and cups are the only way to go.
Or the story my friend told me: When he visited an eating club at Princeton, he drained his cup of Keystone (yes, they drink Keystone at other schools, though at Princeton you’re served from a gleaming tap rising out of a mahogany bar) and threw it on the ground. Because there’s no point in pretending to be classy if you’re serving what Urban Dictionary called a “can of piss,” right? Wrong. As soon as the cup hit the ground, he was confronted with gasps and shocked stares. Honestly, this last example isn’t so egregious, but it’s a pretty good illustration of our norms versus other peoples’ norms.
But all of that is pretty standard, right? Boys are just gross vile creatures. Wrong. I know plenty of girls who have partaken in all of the above activities. When it comes to tolerating filth, it seems like boys haven’t cornered the market after all.
And it’s not like everybody who comes here starts out this way. We were not born immune to the grossness. Whenever I remember my first pair of frat shoes, an ill-advised choice of moccasins that eventually became so crusted over with frat juice they were literally crunchy, I still shudder. Yet somehow I pick pong balls out of puddles without a second thought.
I am inclined to think that we are just a lot cooler than our froufrou friends at other schools with clean floors. I mean, cleaning a basement ever? Airing it out long enough to get rid of the stale beer smell? Ain’t nobody got time for that. We have Pulitzer Prizes and Rhodes scholarships to win, snow sculptures to build and different versions of World War II to memorize – yes, history profs, I’m talking about the actual war. ;)
Dear Rolling Stone: please don’t read this article.