Why I Rushed the Field

by Alston Ramsay

I donned my Al Gore mask and stirred restlessly beneath the visitors' bleachers to commence my sprint across the football field. What had lead me to risk life and limb for ten, maybe fifteen, seconds of notoriety? Rushing would "ruin my life," and "anyone with any sort of intelligence would certainly not disregard school rules," or so I had been told. But, beneath the bleachers, I found that these people were sorely mistaken. True, rushing violates one or another of the College's petty rules. In fact, it's illegal--trespassing. The College has banned field-rushing since 1986. I will be fined. I will be put on academic probation.

Would this end up on my permanent record? All the consequences were lost on me as I pondered the alternative: Imagine if no one rushed the field--yet another Dartmouth tradition senselessly stripped away.

I squeezed between the hulking Neanderthals lumped on the Harvard bench and dashed across the football field toward my goal: the Dartmouth student section, our home side. A roaring cheer rose from the students and reverberated through the alumni crowd as I neared the sideline and angled toward the opposing endzone, avoiding the barricades of police and Safety & Security officers.

The energy from the Dartmouth faithful invigorated me as I dashed into the endzone, easily evading a bumbling officer, and leapt over a deterrent rope--but the final push was not to be. A swarm of officers converged around me just a few feet short of the fence, which would have been my escape. I looked up; the Dartmouth stands had erupted in shrieking approval.

No regrets.

It was clear to me as I was led off the field, flanked by at least five officers: tradition, and what it means to us, will persevere, and there will always be some who accept the consequences, no matter how dire, in order to preserve Dartmouth's historical luster, or at least to remind people of the way it used to be.

Why is rushing the field is such a major offense? Why is it that an activity that has been performed for decades and decades is suddenly forbidden, each year the punishment made more severe? Who could frown upon such a pure display of school spirit?

We attend Dartmouth at a perilous time--at least on a collegiate scale--when the very links to the past that brought us here are being hammered away. The College's aggressive investments, the swelling endowment, afford the administration the capacity to ignore Dartmouth's loyal alumni--and to refashion the College according to their own narrow vision. The administration takes the school in the direction they want it to go for their own ideological ends, ignoring the pleas of students, parents, alumni, and other troubled well-wishers.

While change is not inherently bad, recent policies have had a direct impact on college tradition. Early in Dartmouth's history, when New Hampshire threatened the College's traditional identity--transforming it to Dartmouth University--Daniel Webster appealed to the Supreme Court that "It is a small college, and yet there are those of us who love it." His one line has become a sort of anthem for alumni who embrace Dartmouth's special character. These ties to the past distinguish Dartmouth from the great bulk of colleges nationwide.

The sense of history that pervades Dartmouth's atmosphere is one of the strongest drawing points for students, and the reason for Dartmouth alumni's uncommon attachment to the place. On matriculation, we're embraced by history, tradition, and character.

The College is small and rural, notable among universities for its undergraduate focus and rich history. But official Dartmouth envisions a large research university and a residential college system like Harvard or Yale or their less-prestigious imitators. The commodification of the College is a larger transformation, to be sure, but it's comprised of the more minute outrages the administration has perpetrated in recent years: regulation of speech, censorship of controversial art, administrative micromanagement of student social life, and, also, the ban on field-rushing. It's all indicative of a growing breach with history--and a new adversarial relationship between the administration and the students.

Today's field-rushing, admittedly, is a far cry from the original, orderly assembly of the freshmen on the football field. Eventually it may be possible to bring back the tradition as it used to be, but some aspect should be kept alive.

I take offense that The Dartmouth would insinuate that it was the chiding of others that encouraged us to rush: "The students rushed the football field after repeated calls from upper classmen and alumni..." Our motivation was far deeper than mere goading. We had prior intent; we had motive.

And so, damn the consequences, we ran and gained a few feet against those who favor change for change's sake.

A certain lure attracts one to spend four years in rural New Hampshire. It is more than the mountains, the buildings, or the curriculum. The lure is in the College itself and is that binding force which makes the College more than the sum of its parts.

I would rush the field again, just to briefly reclaim my piece of Dartmouth's past.