Dress as You Do in a Country House

By Ryan Gorsche | Tuesday, September 30, 2003

Hello, freshmen:

If you're anything like me, you came to Dartmouth ready for a challenge of both mind and liver. Less than two weeks into your stay, you're scrawling your Social Security number across transfer applications to Yale; your roommate's been brainwashed into a gender-bending diversity-robot.

Did they have the orientation event where a rainbow of Dartmouth students performed monologues expressing how—through their hatred of Dartmouth—they have come to love it? It was after "The Amazing Traveling Medicine Show Presents: Pink-Eye Prevention," but before "Which Math Placement for Me?"

Remember? The introductory speaker discussed "transcending traditional stereotypes," before a black kid dropped fat rhymes—replete with f-bombs—and the skinny gay kid whined about his dating options. One performer shouted a lot; the fat kid cried; and everybody uttered the phrases "gender roles," "white privilege," and "imperialist war." Yep. That event's a classic. So by now you've either learned to appreciate this delicately woven tapestry they call diversity, or you've had just about enough of this limp-wristed Kumbaya-speak.

Either way: Welcome to Dartmouth.

Freshmen, we create this issue each year to demonstrate that, contrary to all the nonsense you've seen to date, Dartmouth College has several reasonable students—mostly us, but maybe a few other chaps—and we've accrued plenty of experience, in all matters from professors' exams to pong etiquette. The current staff has over 100 years of cumulative Dartmouth experience, and with Rollo Begley back on the masthead, you can surely add another seven or eight to that.

It's no big secret that academia is on a leftward lurch, and the College is working hard to plant the postmodern seed—water liberally. But while the faculty parking lot has plenty of Saabs sporting "Evict 'Resident' Bush" stickers, generally they are a reasonable group, intent on providing you with an education. Present a cogent argument&mdassh;liberal or conservative&mdsah;in class, and you'll get gold stars. Beware the aging activists, however. In this issue we've provided our annual "Best and Worst: the Beautiful and the Damned," a catalogue of those professors who have changed young lives, and those who keep their grades in the Little Red Book.

The administration is another matter. Two articles in this issue—Stefan Beck's "War on Fun" and Scott Glabe's "Review History"—will give you sundry examples of its lunacy. If President Wright failed to mention it during matriculation, he'll soon give you a lecture on his favorite topic: white privilege.

Wright's image of whiteness correlates little with most students' experience. Sorry, but white privilege doesn't consist of stealing bottles of schnapps from the country club dinner, sneaking away with Mitzi or Buffy or Muffy after tennis lessons, getting karate-chop drunk, and—if you're lucky—scoring a peek up her dress. Rather, white privilege was father going to work at 6 a.m., Mum making sandwiches for PTA meetings and vacuuming the ceiling, and you heading to school to fill your head with integrals, decibels, and Pantagruel, to gain that precious admission letter.

And the best thing about white privilege: Anybody can have it, including your black neighbor or your Hindu cousin.

Beware the vocal minority around campus. Most of the students are just like you—they even voted for Bush. Well, probably Gore; but they think America's a sensible place, and that the villains on September 11 were the terrorists, not the stockbrokers.

The campus activists, however, can provide you with hours of entertainment, the kind of animal-like behavior I haven't seen since the Kimble County Livestock Auction and Barbecue. How can I ever forget the time Hillary Miller put her foot right through Zeta Psi's—and now our office's—front door? Or the candlelight vigil and class-halting protest held after a former student called a female student fat?

So have a good laugh, and when you're tired of it all, stop by our office for a beverage and like-minded conversation.

Dress as You Do in a Country House

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