Original Article: http://dartreview.com/archives/2008/05/19/the_dartmouth_we_love.php
Monday, May 19, 2008
It is rare, these days, to read editorials or reports with enough heart to praise this College we’ve all come to love. Nothing has ever been good enough for the perpetually aggrieved and Dartmouth is no exception. The denizens of Parkhurst are not at all happy with the alumni they’ve been given; “marginalized” groups beat their chests in lamentation over their, well, “marginalization”; professors sue students…and so it goes. Such flagellants are necessarily and by definition bemused by Dartmouth, and pine and whine for the Dartmouth they’re sure should be, must be—change, change, change (“change” is simply “revolution” dressed down) is their mantra, which spoken directly is a bit less zippy than it pretends to be. It’s religious, even apocalyptic in its affected zeal. Of course, change doesn’t have to be bad, but then there is nothing that says it needs to be good either. It is only the fool that wants to change a good thing, which is the case here, at Dartmouth. You’ll need to break it to fix it.
And yet, a panoramic view of these Chicken Littles exposes the soft underside of our College: the very individuals who represent our school, and should love the Dartmouth that exists as it is are the ones who want to shake it to its roots. Here, I am not speaking of the hoi polloi, but rather our embedded administrators, our student leaders, and various other vocal grumps.
If their protestations are felt and true, one can only wonder why so many of these luckless souls ended up here in the first place. Was Dartmouth their safety? Or simply the best brand-name college they felt they could get into? Certainly there were those that for reasons of their own turned away from Dartmouth’s fraternal twin, Princeton, Dartmouth’s negligent step-mom, Harvard, or Dartmouth’s flamboyant cousin, Yale, to spend the four best years of their lives on the green in Hanover, New Hampshire. But why? Well that’s the key to Dartmouth—or, apropos the moment, the Green Key.
Now that spring is here, we move closer to an answer. Green Key is the apotheosis of everything many people love about Dartmouth, and may explain the reason so many choose to be at Dartmouth, rather than some other collegiate brand-name.
Even F. Scott Fitzgerald chose to be here, if just for a weekend. F. Scott Fitzgerald: now there was a guy who understood Dartmouth. During another big weekend at the College, he so immersed himself in Dartmouth culture that he was forcibly removed from it. In his ode to youth, This Side of Paradise, he asks what fulfills the promise of spring? One of his characters responds: “I suppose heaven would, if there was one…a sort of pagan heaven.” A Dartmouth student would respond similarly, and go on to give a name to that pagan heaven: Green Key.
At Dartmouth, we may be living in Arcadia, the pagan-Greek utopia or heaven, where the god Pan rules. Arcadia is the Greek ideal, the pastoral paradise that perpetually renews the promise of life. It is spring and life everlasting, and it is therefore an impossible reality. It is not the immaterial and abstract heaven of Christianity, but the lush and materialist playground of the pagans—youth and beauty are at the fore. Such play defined Greek myth, and often led to the death of the god, goddess or hero who chased after it. The dream of eternal life is just that, after all—a dream, for most.
During this time of year, Dartmouth is this dream, always young, eternally alive, defined by play—but like all things, the clock is ticking. We know our time this spring, at Dartmouth, in life, will pass: that’s why we squeeze and hold with everything we’ve got. A professor once noted how, at Dartmouth, the Arcadian dream can come true: the pool of young (and mostly beautiful) students constantly replenishes itself. “The only one that ever gets old,” he remarked sadly, “is me.”
And for one weekend, Arcadia does come true, the dream is fully realized—and its hot bliss is ours. Here we celebrate our youth through various rituals and traditions—most notably, through alcohol dumps. And for this big weekend, slightly unique from the others, some parties leave the fraternity basement, emerge from the night, and open themselves up to the light of day. This is spring, after all, and the air is balmy, and the buds are finally out, and the birds are singing songs that only they know.
So unlike those who hate the Dartmouth we love, let’s drink-up the Dartmouth that is—here’s to a happy Green Key, here’s to our little pagan heaven, and here’s to a Dartmouth that does not need to change.