Cultural Counterpoints
The first year for college students can bring massive changes to their lives, from making new friends to keeping up with the academic pressures.
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The first year for college students can bring massive changes to their lives, from making new friends to keeping up with the academic pressures.
Fresh snow covers the ground as the Dartmouth Coach pulls up in front of the Hanover Inn. I step off the bus, grab my suitcase and trek toward my dorm. It’s hard to imagine, but just six weeks ago the sun was out and the grass on the Green was visible. Now, a blanket of white covers the entire campus. Winter term has arrived.
I entered 5 Rope Ferry Road, ascended three flights of stairs and began to travel down a nondescript office hallway. Up ahead, a sign-in counter awaited me. I stopped at the desk, where a Safety and Security officer communicated with Keysi Montás, the interim director of Safety and Security. Behind this officer lay several TV monitors, each subdivided into smaller screens that displayed various locations on campus. From this regular office room at the headquarters of Safety and Security, one could monitor activity by utilizing the 150 cameras interspersed across campus. Is this feature of Dartmouth one that improves the safety of its students and faculty, or does it invade their privacy?
When you think of obsessive-compulsive disorder, what’s the first thing that pops into your mind? A year ago, I associated it with compulsive handwashing and cleanliness, just as many people do. But obsessive-compulsive disorder is a psychological disorder that is largely misunderstood by the public. The easiest way to describe it involves breaking down its name: the obsessions are fears that one’s brain latches onto, while the compulsions are mental or physical tasks that one repeats over and over to prevent those fears from coming true. The compulsions have the opposite effect than intended, however, and they make the fears stronger. Although it may seem easy to simply not perform the compulsions, from the viewpoint of a person with OCD, it just has to be done. It is important to remember that usually the obsessions don’t make sense to outsiders — the brain distorts the obsessions and intensifies the fear for OCD sufferers. For example, the most commonly portrayed obsession in the media is the fear of contamination from germs, while the most commonly portrayed compulsion for this is excessive handwashing. While there are definitely people who suffer from this form of OCD, it is by no means the only form that OCD can take, and I learned that the hard way.
At first glance, the books all appear to be vastly different from one another. One is about a foot in length, while another could fit in my back pocket. The illustrations vary wildly — in one, horrific black and white drawings paint the page, while another seems to contain abstract art. Upon closer inspection, however, I discover that they are all versions of the same novel: “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.”