Faces of Dartmouth
In a world where social media is often used for cyberbullying, it’s refreshing to see four ’17s use an online project to bring the Dartmouth community closer together. Sharon Cho ’17, Neil Kamath ’17, Alyssa Mahatme ’17, and Josh Renaud ’17 run the Facebook page “Faces of Dartmouth,” inspired by “Humans of New York,” a photography blog that features the portraits and words of the city’s inhabitants. Similarly, each post on the “Faces of Dartmouth” page includes a photo of and quote from a member of the Dartmouth community.
The team approaches anyone with a story to share and makes it a point to approach those the four have never spoken to before.
“On Valentine’s Day, three students who live in Little were outside building a snowman, and they were saying something nice to literally everybody who passed by,” Mahatme said. “So I decided to grab my camera and take a picture.”
“Faces of Dartmouth” has already received an incredibly positive response – although it’s only been up for a little over a week, the page has already garnered more than 870 Facebook likes.
“We also had a chance for people who liked our page to have a model shoot, and considering that it’s only been about a week since we’ve started, I feel like we’ve been having really good traffic,” Cho said. “The page is beginning to reach a lot of people.”
This fall, Cho and Renaud launched a page called “People of Dartmouth.”
“For me, it started out just as an interest in photography,” Cho said. “I know Tufts has Faces on the Hill, and I thought it would be nice to start something like that here.”
This term, after learning about Kamath and Mahatme’s page called “Snapshots of Dartmouth,” Cho and Renaud decided to join forces and create “Faces of Dartmouth.”
“Alyssa and I started our page just as a creative project,” Kamath said. “But then Sharon and Josh approached us, and it’s been great have four talented people working toward the same goal.”
The purpose of the page is to strengthen the bonds between Dartmouth students, and so far, it has been successful.
“One of the girls I took a picture of texted me and said someone came up to her the other day and said he knew her from the page,” Mahatme said. “She was blown away, and hearing that just made me really happy.”
Since it’s impossible to meet every member of the Dartmouth student body, “Faces of Dartmouth” offers students the chance to discover the interests and personalities of their peers, who may have otherwise remained unknown to them.
“These are the people who are in your community,” Cho said. “You may never have met them, or you may have seen them, but never talked to them. But they have their own stories, and we want our page to share them.”
Josh Renaud is a staff photographer for The Dartmouth.