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Comparing Campus COVID-19 Restrictions: How Does Dartmouth’s Reopening Plan Compare to Peer Schools?
How do Dartmouth's COVID-19 restrictions compare to those of peer institutions?
Arielle (’24) is from Bethesda, Maryland. She writes for Mirror and loves having the opportunity to report on campus culture. In addition to writing, Arielle enjoys skiing, taking late-night walks around Occom Pond and playing board games.
How do Dartmouth's COVID-19 restrictions compare to those of peer institutions?
An uncertain mix of excitement and apprehension abounds on campus.
We’ve all experienced Zoom fatigue, and many of us are fed up with the limitations of the virtual classroom. But not every class at Dartmouth is sticking to the confines of Zoom. Students in PSYC 38, “Cognitive Neuroscience,” have used virtual reality headsets to experience psychological phenomena firsthand.
Dartmouth has a reputation for its rampant alcohol consumption and partying; after all, the College’s unofficial mascot is a sentient beer keg. For decades now, Dartmouth has attempted to shed this reputation and curb the prevalence of alcohol and drugs on campus.
From Last Chances to Datamatch, it seems that many Dartmouth students are eager to find “the one.” But where did Marriage Pact — the latest in a string of matchmaking algorithms on campus — come from, and why is the idea so enticing to Dartmouth students?
Every winter, Hanover undergoes a transformation. The days get shorter, temperatures plummet and snow covers campus. However, this winter features a more dramatic shift than usual. As Dartmouth prepares to welcome students back for the winter term, signs of a more fun, social experience are appearing around campus.
Food is an inescapable part of our campus culture. We find it everywhere: in dinner picnics on the Green, as fuel for late-night work sessions in Novack and as an oddly popular topic of conversation. But not everyone’s relationship with food is straightforward. Many students with eating disorders struggle to navigate Dartmouth’s dining halls and food-dominated social scene, and their difficulties are only compounded by COVID-19 restrictions.
When Dartmouth first announced it would allow students to live on campus this fall, many ’24s were overjoyed. With some universities transitioning fully online, students were grateful that the College had granted them at least one remnant of a normal college experience.
I thought I knew exactly what to expect from my freshman fall. I had meticulously read the COVID-19 regulations, researched campus culture and tempered my idealistic visions into a pretty realistic picture of how the term would materialize. But Dartmouth has a way of throwing surprises at us. I hadn’t expected midnight CVS runs to be so crucial to my survival, nor to find such sheer joy in eating maple-flavored cotton candy.
