Whenever I need to leave Dartmouth, be it a weekend trip, a return home for break, or an off-term, the first few hours I spend outside of rural Hanover are always quite jarring. The sounds of airplanes, traffic, and the murmur of the population are something I am not easily accustomed to after having studied here for almost three years. And I’m not even somebody who grew up in a rural area; I have always lived just about an hour’s drive away from a major metropolitan area. I knew what I was getting into when I decided to go to Dartmouth, but I don’t think that any of us necessarily think about what we’ve gone without by choosing to attend College in a place so far from civilization.
I won’t solely extol the virtues of going to school in Hanover; I get frustrated when there are only a handful of options for where to go out to eat on a weekend night, or at the lack of any transportation without a car, or the surprisingly small number of things to do on any weekend night at the supposed “party Ivy.” All of these are sacrifices that we make when we come to Dartmouth, and the plethora of blessings that Dartmouth affords to us more than makes up for it; however, that does little to make these aspects of Dartmouth life any less grueling. The standard, Dartmouth Admissions-esque response is that Dartmouth’s isolated campus gives way to an intrinsically closer and tight-knit community. As cliche as that sounds, it is undeniably true; Dartmouth’s location, size, and undergraduate focus all necessitate such a community.
It cannot be stated with sufficient emphasis that our College wouldn’t be what it is without our isolation from the outside world. Unlike the metropolis-located campuses of our peer schools in the Ivy League (with the exception of Cornell) one can easily separate themselves from the trappings of their college community with a simple stroll off campus. Meanwhile, at Dartmouth, unless you’ve brought survival gear, a stroll isn’t getting you far. And unlike any other school in the Ivy League, Dartmouth is small enough such that this forced interaction with the community pays off. If you see someone on the Green, while you might not know them personally,you can assume with relative certainty that they are a member of the Dartmouth community. This community-oriented effect cannot be duplicated by any of Dartmouth’s peer institutions, because we are the only school with right size and location for it.
If you have read my previous articles in The Review, you will know that I have a particularly favorable view about the political atmosphere and dialogue on our campus. While much of this is attributable to the policies of President Beilock and the numerous professors who work to create a space for open dialogue, it would be remiss to not acknowledge the Dartmouth’s community’s impact on this. At any other school, if you hear somebody make a bold, controversial statement in a class, you’ve probably have never met them before, and that makes it all the more easy for students to form an opinion about them based solely on their opinions. This is not to say that productive discourse does not exist outside of Dartmouth, of course it does. The larger point is that Dartmouth is unique in the sense that our respectful atmopshere cannot escape us, because when you hear somebody speak up in your class; that is somebody who you see in Foco every week, or somebody who you get the chance to talk directly to in your seminar, or somebody that you’ll probably have a legitimately good chance of running into when out on a Friday night.
If there is one thing to take away from this piece, it is that while you are a student here, you should consider what you’re getting that you cannot get anywhere else. Yes, you’re in the wilderness, and yes, I will continue to be irked when I’m planning to go to Molly’s for the umpteenth time in a single term, but none of that can compare in meaning to the cohesive and invaluable community that is the result of such isolation. Everyone else can keep their cities and street lights; I’ll take the woods any day.
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