Cook: We All Know a Chad
(10/04/18 6:20am)
It could happen here — it has happened here.
Use the fields below to perform an advanced search of The Dartmouth 's archives. This will return articles, images, and multimedia relevant to your query.
1000 items found for your search. If no results were found please broaden your search.
It could happen here — it has happened here.
While it hasn’t been “business as usual” in American politics, the events of the Senate Judiciary Committee’s hearing for Supreme Court nominee Judge Brett Kavanaugh this past week are even farther from the norm. Regardless of what one holds at stake here — another conservative on the bench or the very efficacy of American justice (motives at this point abound) — these judicial proceedings have drudged up levels of emotion that transcend personal perspective, motive or party delineation. In the sense that Thursday’s hearing it put unbridled, human feeling on display, America may finally have found itself presented with, at least in its essence, the apolitical.
Like many high school students, I too hated taking the ACT. Even after I was accepted into Dartmouth, I felt bummed out that my score was not in the top quartile like the scores of some of my other classmates. I assumed that this indicated I had an inherent disadvantage, destined to have a dismal college transcript follow me around after graduation. Yet two years later, I can say that this will probably not be the case. I barely think about those scores now, nor do I think that they were very telling. Indeed, some of the other college students I have talked to about this issue are in agreement that these tests are inaccurate at predicting college success.
As a brother of Bones Gate fraternity, I don’t make a habit of talking to the press, but we all make exceptions sometimes. And the rush process is one such exception. It plays a crucial role in determining which individuals on this campus will be endowed with the abilities and resources to facilitate major social spaces at Dartmouth. Granted, across campus there is a mixture of rushees who have had varying opportunities to acquaint themselves with the full body of the house they are joining. But regardless of whether they enter a house after terms of building credentials and connections or if they come with none at all, rushing a house gives every member the privileges of affiliation — and it is the scope of those privileges that I would like to address.
On the first day of senior year, the one-armed bro hugs and exclamations of “Oh my god, I haven’t seen you in forever!” punctuated the still Hanover summer. On the second day of senior year, a flood of blazers, suits and skirts marched in and out of the Top of the Hop, home of the annual career fair.
Thanks to all of those freshman year icebreakers, I can drop a few fun facts about myself at a moment’s notice: I never really learned to tell my lefts from my rights, I’m allergic to apples and bananas, and I lived with my grandparents in China for three years. One year after I was born, I flew from Boston to Shanghai, where I stayed under the care of countless relatives spread across the biggest and brightest city I’ve ever seen. Almost all of my extended family lives in China, and I love every memory I’ve made there. I have been loud and proud of my heritage for a few years, but it hasn’t always been that way. In fact, sometimes it still feels like I’m trying too hard to disassociate myself from the community that raised me.
I own a cap that was passed down to me by a sorority sister. Neatly sharpied on the inside of the brim, it says, “When you love an institution, you should consistently question its value for the sake of its own validity.” I was probably not allowed to keep this hat, but it somehow made its way with me to Washington D.C., a city that I moved to less than six months ago. With the the controversy surrounding Christine Blasey Ford’s allegations of sexual assault against Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh happening right where I call home now, and for many other reasons, I have not been able to get much sleep — nor this quote out of my head.
As potential members of Greek houses go through recruitment, or “rush,” the majority of Dartmouth’s campus has been even more preoccupied with Greek life than usual. It is very clear, though, that men and women are going through very different processes to reach very different finish lines.
Iran is “sowing death, chaos and destruction” around the world. That much President Trump made abundantly clear in his recent speech to the United Nations. At the General Assembly, the president doubled down on the Iranian threat, urging the international community to support sanctions against the regime.
How I tune out the voice in my head and all the other ones, too.
“Yo, dude, check out this pic of what happened last night. I was so wasted, haha! I can’t even remember it.”
For the linguist J. L. Austin, an utterance can be constative and/or performative. That is, it can simply make a descriptive statement or it can actually perform the articulated action. Austin would judge the performative speech act by its degree of “felicity”: an utterance should be considered “happy” if the action actually takes place and “infelicitous” if not. At Dartmouth, it is hard to make felicitous utterances –– i.e. to make something happen just by saying it. For example, many would say “let’s have a meal soon” to others, without ever having one. Similarly, when one says “I will study with my friends on FFB,” one will not necessarily study while sitting there. But on this campus, when one announces to the world that “I’m going to get wasted hard tonight,” one will almost certainly manage to look wasted hard that evening. This felicitous speech act, once uttered, guarantees students a rare kind of happiness.
I was home for a month this summer after a long eight months, so of course I had my calendar full of dentist and optometry appointments, lunch dates with old and new friends and outings with extended family members. As the weeks went by, my parents reminded me that my grandparents on each side wanted to share a meal with me before I left for school again. I, of my own moxie, half-facetiously questioned why that would be necessary, as I had seen them fairly recently during a family gathering. Plus, I added, I wouldn’t be able to have any meaningful conservation with them due to the language barrier between us. Nevertheless, two lunches were scheduled, one for each set of grandparents.
On a random weekday night when I was 10 or 11 years old, my dad called for me and my three younger siblings down to the basement. Usually, calls down to the basement meant movie nights, which the four of us always looked forward to. Giddy and excited at the prospect of watching a movie late into a school night, the four of us hopped onto the couch and bundled ourselves in blankets.
When socially awkward girl catches up with friends on the green.
Like many seniors, I find myself facing the ever-present danger of succumbing to the anxiety of my uncertain future. So, like the enterprising Dartmouth student I am, I decided last week to attend Dartmouth’s Employer Connections Fair, promoted by the Center for Professional Development for its “relaxed setting” and representation of “many industry sectors.”
Bickering between China and Hong Kong has surfaced, once again, in international news coverage. But this time, something as seemingly-innocuous as a new train link has triggered outcry from concerned Hong Kongers. However, they are justifiably angry; the train link is merely the latest attempt by China to erode the civil liberties guaranteed to Hong Kong after the British departure in 1997, and to ensure that the Special Administrative Region is chained to the mainland. It is becoming increasingly apparent that China has an overarching plan to erode the features of the “one country, two systems” model, and to unite the region with the rest of China.
This month, a study group created by the College will recommend a course of action regarding the Hovey murals. The murals, originally painted in the 1930s by Walter Beach Humphrey, a member of the Class of 1914, illustrate a drinking song written by another Dartmouth student, Richard Hovey. The murals used to decorate the walls of a faculty room in Thayer dining hall (now the basement of The Class of 1953 Commons), but are now locked out of view. Depending on the study group’s conclusions, the murals may remain where they are, be destroyed or be relocated. I hope that they will be relocated.
Finally, a rejoinder is made. On Monday, Sept. 17, the College’s Board of Trustees approved the construction of a new 350-bed dorm on the site of what is currently the Alumni Gym tennis courts and House Center A, commonly referred to by students as the Onion. The decision is a necessary step in alleviating Dartmouth’s ongoing housing crisis; executive vice president Rick Mills and his team may be lauded for their discourse and counsel throughout the process.
We were all freshmen once.
