A Valet-Dictory Address
(05/25/01 9:00am)
My fellow seniors, as we gather here today full of hopes and dreams for the future, I want to wish you the very best on this, our graduation.
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My fellow seniors, as we gather here today full of hopes and dreams for the future, I want to wish you the very best on this, our graduation.
As I write this it is 5 AM, and I have just finished another long night of typing away on my thesis. The sky is starting to get light, and in another half hour or so dawn should break (after seeing enough of these sunrises I have gotten the timing pretty much figured out).
As "The Zetemouth" scandal settles down, I would urge you all to take a minute to try to remember the true victims in this tragic affair: the handful of poor forgotten Dartmouth columnists like myself who, through no fault of their own, were scheduled in precisely the wrong part of the two-week columnist rotation to get a decently timed article out of the deal.
So there I was, on the front steps of Parkhurst Hall, full of youthful revolutionary spirit. Change was in the air and I was going to make it happen. I was even humming Les Miserables under my breath. Then along came Dean of the College Larimore with a bunch of Trustees in tow, and the students around me all began yelling in support of their causes.
Now that we are well underway with what is purportedly Spring term, somehow I imagined things would be a little more spring-like around here. Thus far I am a touch disappointed that the tennis courts I planned on playing on still have snow on them and the river I planned on swimming in is still frozen solid.
It seems that once again we are on one of our periodic lock-the-door kicks here at Dartmouth. Just as the noble, indefatigable salmon is driven to swim hundreds of miles to seek out its home stream in order to spawn, so too is ORL irresistibly compelled to try to lock the doors every couple of years, despite tremendous hardship such as us telling them, every time they bring it up, that we do not want the doors locked.
Dear God, please send the magical elves to set up my PCR reactions!
Monday was a test day for me, and after staying up much of the night and the morning, I decided to take my customary pre-exam nap. Thus it was that on Monday afternoon, Ma in her kerchief and I in my cap (actually just me, and no cap) had just settled our brains for a long winter's nap.
Way back in my adolescent years in scenic Brockport, NY (population 10,013, or 10,014 once Darlene has her baby, assuming the Johnson boy survives that tractor accident), I recall hunting through the video store with one of my friends and finding a movie called "Hey brother, can you spare $10,000,000?" The plot of the movie was that this investor had lost the titular sum of money, and had to panhandle or something to get it back (after gathering this much from the box, I figured I understood the movie well enough to not actually bother renting it).
I must admit that, as I begin my senior winter, I am starting to feel rather old. Back when I was a carefree little freshman (1997-8, when most of you still had zits or braces, or both!), I used to laugh when my senior friends stressed about grad schools or finding jobs. I laughed even harder when they would tell me about Dartmouth life back in the day.
If Al Gore were a man of honor, this election would be over by now. George W. Bush led after Florida's counties reported their machine totals, and his lead has widened now that overseas absentee ballots have been counted. Unfortunately, it seems we will be subjected to recounts and legal challenges that will not conclude until Gore has finagled enough votes to pull into the lead.
I am sure that you were all quite impressed to hear that, last year, our endowment grew by a whopping 46 percent to reach 2.5 billion dollars. Apparently the College invested 12 percent of the endowment in "venture funds," which returned a 500 percent profit.
Do not go gentle into that good night," wrote Dylan Thomas. "... Rage, rage against the dying of the light." While the poem certainly has nothing whatsoever to do with the future of the Homecoming bonfire, I think it nicely frames the question I have been asking myself: why are students so quiet about the fate of what is arguably one of our oldest, most universally beloved traditions?
As I start to reflect on my Dartmouth career, one of the things I often think about was the wonderful experience I had a year ago in the fall. I received a Tucker fellowship to work full-time as an Interpreter Intern for Spanish in Boston's Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center.
As the Olympic games wind down, I am once again impressed by how many of Dartmouth's star athletes go on to represent the United States at the games. Adam Nelson '97 just won the silver in shotput at Sydney, and every Winter Olympics, several people make the team.
I would like to extend my warmest welcome to all of the new members of our Dartmouth community. I say this not just because I want to help make the '04s feel at home in a strange new place, but also because the last time I wrote an article about the freshmen (in this case the '02s on my floor two years ago), they got so bent out of shape that a couple of them still bear a grudge.
In case you missed the article in the D (motto: "A smattering of world news plus all the CS4 and Phi Delt derecognition stories you can stand"), Westside is closing next fall. It's the end of an era! My world has been turned upside down!
On Saturday night, some of my fraternity brothers and I went to the dance marathon for a couple of hours. The CFSC had decided the marathon would be a nice, easy (as well as highly visible) service event, and therefore it signed all the houses up. I worry that many of the people who went, though, missed the point of the event -- the dance marathon was supposed to bring Dartmouth students together with the staff, patients, and families from CHaD, not provide easy community service for Dartmouth students.
I am sure you have seen the picture by now--the Immigration Naturalization Service officer, wearing body armor and armed with a machine gun, has burst into the Gonzlez home and finds himself face to face with a terrified, crying Elian, who is hiding in the closet with the fisherman who plucked him out of the ocean a few months ago. The picture says the proverbial thousand words -- or at least, it raises a thousand words worth of questions. Most saliently, why did it take 20 heavily armed agents to break into a house to retrieve a six-year-old boy?
I hope you are all just as excited as I am for the coming Presidential election season. Actually, I hope you are more excited, or God save the Republic. It's not that I don't feel any sense of civic duty, it's just that once again neither major party candidate is terribly interesting.