Play Too Hard
Many Dartmouth students seem exceedingly proud of their "work hard, party hard" mentality. Unfortunately, the balance between the two has gotten lost somewhere between Monday Night Freeze and Wednesday night's debauchery.
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Many Dartmouth students seem exceedingly proud of their "work hard, party hard" mentality. Unfortunately, the balance between the two has gotten lost somewhere between Monday Night Freeze and Wednesday night's debauchery.
For unaffiliated girls who either missed out on fall rush or chose to drop out because of disappointing results, winter rush offered a second chance to join a sorority. For others, however, it became an opportunity to contradict the false belief that all girls dream of being part of a Greek house. By intentionally ditching winter rush, some of us were given a second chance to take a stand against the ruling social scene at Dartmouth and embrace our unaffiliated status.
I was sitting in my Government 49 class last week when Professor Baldez asked which of the present students had been part of a protest. As I watched a small handful of students raise their hands while the rest of us glanced around awkwardly, I became ashamed of our generation's passivity, and began to wonder what had happened to the burning passion and dedication of so many of our parents.
Although Dartmouth brings people of different religions, colors, languages and cultures together, we, the student body, sacrifice the potential benefits of such a diverse campus by segregating ourselves into exclusive groups.
In his article "'A' For Apathy," (Oct. 15) Jacob Batchelor '12 discusses the importance of political involvement and voter participation. He says, "We, as a generation, need to set the tone for our future in political involvement." He fails to see, however, that Americans are not alone in playing a vital part in the coming election -- the whole world is with you, including international students at Dartmouth.
As I spent my summer in Northampton, Mass.,
Come summer, international students at Dartmouth seeking internships fall victim to paradoxical expectations facing foreign students. Resume-boosting is as vital for Swedes looking to build a professional future as it is for Americans, but for us so-called F1 students, this experience comes at a price.
Come summer, international students at Dartmouth seeking internships fall victim to paradoxical expectations facing foreign students. Resume-boosting is as vital for Swedes looking to build a professional future as it is for Americans, but for us so-called F1 students, this experience comes at a price.
While many of us arrive as freshmen with an undying passion for community service and nonprofit work, we are quickly brainwashed with the Ivy elite's capitalist expectations: Our learning experience is limited to the how-to-become-successful indoctrination that takes place within the Dartmouth bubble, protecting us from real life. Regrettably, the Dartmouth environment teaches us to become selfish individualists in a world where true values of life seem to have faded into oblivion.
Our "bearers of democracy" have adopted a new strategy to expand American influence: American universities are conquering the minds of the young Middle Eastern elite as they venture abroad.
The Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. once pronounced, "Let freedom ring from the prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire" as he formulated his dream of an America free from racism. But what about Americans bringing racism abroad?
As tourists' morbid curiosity about our world's natural disasters increases, tourism itself runs the risk of becoming an additional threat to our faltering planet.
In his lecture at Dartmouth last Friday, "The War on Terror and the Terror of War: Somalia and the Horn of Africa," professor Abdi Samatar from the University of Minnesota explained why popular opposition to Somalia's martial law depicts South African President Mbeki as the Quisling of our time. Just like the Norwegian traitor who sold out his own people to the Nazis, the African Union continues to allow an American war on terror in Somalia.
Coming to Dartmouth as an international student, I experienced a huge culture shock. Surrounded by Americans, I suddenly had to adapt to an environment more similar to the scores of American high school movies I watched throughout my youth. It was unlike anything I had ever encountered before.
I was amazed by the evident contradictions in an email sent out last week concerning the fight against hunger. Students were enticed to attend a meeting about the struggle against hunger and health issues in the world by offering them free food. I was even more surprised to see that I was one of few to react to this rather ironic message. It seems to me quite pathetic that there is a need to bribe students into attending meetings concerning global issues, as our own drive to promote change is too weak of an incentive.
There are some aspects of college life that most of us cannot escape. Stress, all-nighters and irregular day schedules hit all of us at some point. Having been here for less than two months, I have already spent too many nights in Novack Cafe, desperately trying to catch up with the new intensity of my college life. As freshmen, we struggle to adapt to Dartmouth, and we are forced to deal with anxiety in new ways.
Being a confused international student with no understanding whatsoever of most American college concepts, the word homecoming does not tell me much. Even for American students the idea of such an event strikes me as rather vague. It is hard to discern the attraction of running like maniacs around a fire while being attacked with insulting comments from upperclassmen. But if being insulted leads to being accepted into the Dartmouth family, than so be it. After all, we have all been the worst class ever, and it may be the satisfaction given to upperclassmen during this ritual that will ultimately redeem us from our worthlessness as a class. Believe it or not, but we do need you guys more than ever as stress, homesickness and bad time management are beginning to get to us, and I am begging you: Give us a chance!
Being a confused international student with no understanding whatsoever of most American college concepts, the word homecoming does not tell me much. Even for American students the idea of such an event strikes me as rather vague. It is hard to discern the attraction of running like maniacs around a fire while being attacked with insulting comments from upperclassmen. But if being insulted leads to being accepted into the Dartmouth family, than so be it. After all, we have all been the worst class ever, and it may be the satisfaction given to upperclassmen during this ritual that will ultimately redeem us from our worthlessness as a class. Believe it or not, but we do need you guys more than ever as stress, homesickness and bad time management are beginning to get to us, and I am begging you: Give us a chance!
Deceived by my own naivete, I once thought of Dartmouth as the utopia that many of us craved to become part of when leaving high school. I somewhat foolishly believed that human corruption withered away as it entered the community of this idyllic Ivy League school. Dartmouth, to me, represented intellect and acceptance, and I decidedly believed it to be a little more "perfect" than the real world. I did not realize that Dartmouth, just as any other place, has its pros and cons. I had yet to learn that imperfections and defects can be distinctly different, and that it is up to us to decide what to include into our own community.