All good things must come to an end. It’s increasingly difficult to fathom, but this is the last time I shall pen this column for The Dartmouth Review. My Editorship concludes at the end of this term, and then I’ll have just one term remaining as an undergraduate at the College. While I could easily use this editorial page to ruminate on Dartmouth’s shortcomings, I would much rather take the time to reflect on what has been one of my foremost positive experiences at the College: my tenure at The Review.
My first introduction to The Dartmouth Review was anything but typical in the annals of Review history, but it was a common factor for all of the ’24s who went on to work at the paper. During my freshman year (2020-2021), when inane COVID restrictions reigned, members of my Class were introduced to the paper largely over Zoom, before we gradually made our way into the office. (In fact, for many of us, The Review’s office was one of the first non-dormitory buildings in which we set foot at Dartmouth . . . and thankfully the office never had a mask mandate!)
Rachel Gambee, the then-Editor-in-Chief, did yeoman’s work in holding The Review together during the pandemic, and over the course of my year at the helm I have grown to appreciate her efforts more and more. Rachel relaunched The Review’s intensive publishing operations in the fall of 2021, and since then the paper has been in no uncertain terms proceeding full steam ahead.
Even from my earliest days as a Contributor, I understood that the paper is far more than just a publishing vehicle. Above all, The Review offers a haven for free thought and variegated intellectual exchange—its office is by a wide margin the single most intellectually stimulating atmosphere that I’ve encountered at Dartmouth. This is the quality that most attracted me to the paper as a freshman and that which continues to hold such profound appeal for its staffers today.
I’ve found The Review’s office to be a space in which one may converse with and debate others well versed in a wide range of topics encompassing politics, ethics, history, literature, and the arts. That’s the type of well-rounded student the paper attracts.
The office is also a space that engenders meaningful camaraderie, both as a consequence of staffers’ dialogue and owing to the fact that we learn quickly to work together towards the common end of producing our print issues. To be sure, such a feat is invariably a team effort.
I’ve made some of my best friends at The Review, and there are innumerable people whom I wish to thank for having made my tenure at the paper all the better. While I’ll have to thank most of them beyond this page, a few are as follows:
To Rachel, Devon, and Jacob—Thank you for your generous counsel. To Sunil—Thank you for your wisdom and leadership. To Josh, Lintaro, and Ian—Thank you for your steadfastness and initiative. To Lucas—Thank you for staying the course with me. To Zoe and James—Thank you for your enthusiasm, and I can’t wait to see what you do with the paper. The game is afoot!
I hope and trust that The Review will continue to be a consequential part of the Dartmouth Experience, with a commitment to shaping College discourse, and that it will remain a forceful voice both within the Dartmouth community and without.
I have long held that The Review is itself a Dartmouth institution that is well worth preserving. The paper at once embodies and advocates a grand tradition, the ethos of what I’ve long termed the Old Dartmouth. The Review is, in a sense, a fixed point in a changing age—and that’s a noble calling.
Matthew O. Skrod
Hanover, NH
March 4, 2024
Job well done.