Original Article: http://dartreview.com/archives/2002/02/04/juvenalia_and_worse_the_college_reimagines_friday_nights.php
Monday, February 4, 2002
Professional wrestling: 'Get ready for some action...Join us [?] and some professional wrestlers as we open a can of smackdown [?];' The Drag Ball: ''You're not in Kansas Anymore' This year we welcome the Chicago Kings as they grace our stage with song, dance, and general drag king antics... Last year the Drag Ball was the campus's most attended dance [sic, sic, sic], so you don't want to miss it;' Fireside Chat: 'Discover the meaning of 'The Wizard of Oz' with Prof. Steven Swayne.'
The events and descriptions of the preceding paragraph were excerpted from this year's guide to Dartmouth's Winter Carnival. The guide lists solely those events sponsored and approved by the College; you will not find in its calendar the events at which Dartmouth students will spend most of this coming weekend. Reading the guide, one could be convinced that Dartmouth students are a pleasant, bland, pleasantly bland bunch: sipping warmed cider at a capella concerts, learning all about Winter Carnival history at the Occum Pond Party (and lecture?), and maybe letting loose at the 'The Emerald Underground' on Friday night, schizophrenic home to 'Hip Hop, R&B and Salsa.'
One might conclude that Dartmouth students are so simple and insipid as to take genuine delight from professional wrestling, right here, on-campus.
Of course, one would be wrong.
Dartmouth students en masse will be in the basements of Chi Gamma Epsilon, Psi Upsilon, Sigma Phi Epsilon, and the other fraternities, swilling beer and strange concoctions, making eyes at belles and beaus, and willing away the cold of winter with warm spirit.
Men in silly costumes wrestling one another just can't compare.
So why is it that whenever those pointy-headed adults in Parkhurst and Collis try to 'reimagine' a Dartmouth student's Friday evening, they invariably envision a ten year old's dream night at the fair crossed with the studium of weekday academic life? It's telling that the College sponsors programming, not parties. That's how they come up with things like 'The Emerald Underground' and performances of traditional Samoan folk dances meant to lure students from the dark catacombs. Perhaps it's no surprise that it generally doesn't work.
For example, the College has recently created a 'Summer Carnival' to compete with Tubestock, scheduling their offering on the same date as the popular party. Students at Tubestock float on innertubes and rafts with kegs on the Connecticut River as blaring rock music pushes them from the Vermont bank towards New Hampshire. Students at the Summer Carnival...well, I don't know what they do; there weren't any. At Summer Carnival, there were rides and a Moon Bounce (some sort of inflatable kiddie playpen), and carnival booths. Hanover's children loved it, but students, otherwise occupied, stayed away.
James Judah writes in this issue about a similar College boondoggle, the annual 'Kick @$$ Party,' the advertisements for which do more to harm Dartmouth's image as a place of education than 'Animal House' ever has. The Party (may its name be forgotten) boasted 'Lazer Tag,' another Moon Bounce, generous if uninspired door prizes, and plenty of free fruit juice. No one besides the event's organizers would have planned for an expected crowd of 1,000 or more students.
Student involvement in the planning of the Party would have reduced this number and thereby reduced costs, if not eliminating them entirely by making the prudent choice and canceling the thing. If only local youths and faculty members' children had been allowed to attend, someone would have gotten to use all those toys; as it was, the College paid a lot of money to lightly amuse very few.
The College measures its success in creating 'social alternatives' quantitatively and, even then, it uses the wrong numbers. Administrative excitement about an increase in the frequency of programming drowns out that most events are as poorly attended as they are well advertised. Students are advised of their options, and their choices speak clearly: the College's programming is awful. Administrators: give up now and cut your (our?) losses.
If the College wants to contribute meaningfully to social life on campus, it ought to put its great money into institutions that genuinely serve student interests, like the Greek system. Per dollar spent, nothing else is so efficient at delighting the greatest number of students.
Professional wrestlers and all the Moon Bounces in the world don't do much for college-aged students. Whatever the draw of such devices, the College needs to grow up and learn to spend its (our) money more wisely.