Retreat is Not Enough

Editor’s Note: This piece is in response to an earlier article, available here.

O Mr. Nicastro, my freedom-loving friend, you have done the classic Libertarian trick: correctly identified a problem and yet offered a solution that will only replicate the problem further. Yes, you are correct that the Dartmouth campus we are fortunate enough to inhabit suffers from debauchery and lack of purpose; however, the solution which you posit is woefully impotent in resisting these degrading trends. What you offer forward is simply the same myth that allowed for these concerning trends to fester

In my response, I will focus on two factors that complicate your argument. First, while you correctly identify the debauchery that plagues our campus, you gesture that these activities are simply a cultural problem, which students willfully opt into. On the other hand, I posit that the College encourages and outright promotes behavior that is even more degraded than what you mention. Through different measures, both implicit and explicit, the College actively promotes such activities, and these problems are not simply cultural, but also institutional. Students do not opt-in or out of the presence of these influences, but they are forced to live amongst them. Second, your belief in a community of individuals who come together out of rationally found, common principles is noble and idealistic. Still, in a college community, this project is radically unstable and alone does not promote a community that would be effective in countering a hostile culture. This retreat into one’s own community might save oneself but does nothing to stand up against a wider degradation of culture and community.

State-Enforced Decadence

First off, the state of Dartmouth’s debauchery must be discussed. You are correct in stating that Dartmouth has a drinking problem. This is nothing new; the College is notorious among its peers for this trait. If drinking alone was the problem, your argument would be convincing; however, the wantonness of the College is much greater than mere Keystone-binging. As many students know from firsthand experience, the sexual lifestyle and practices that the College promotes have far worse effects than the problem of drinking, and the College actively promotes and encourages a free sexual lifestyle, which ends up leaving many students hurt and isolated. I will give three examples to illuminate this much deeper problem that is not just cultivated by the Dartmouth community but by the College itself.

(Warning: these examples are graphic, but they are the reality of what is happening on the ground at the College.)

First off, I remember that during my freshman year—actually before the Fall term started—all the freshmen had to go through Orientation Week, where we were forced to sit through a week of sessions on how to adjust to our new college lives. Most of these were predictably forgettable, but one information session stuck with me in particular: the Sexual Education session. I learned in that class how proud Dartmouth is of promoting the sexual lives of its students. Dartmouth’s openness to sex was touted endlessly, and we were all encouraged to freely explore our sexual desires on campus. Culminating this lecture, the College’s “Sex Bar” was advertised, where we could go get whatever sexual aids we wanted, whenever we wanted. Then, condoms were thrown at around 500 college students who had not even started their first classes at the College, and we were told to go forth and be fruitful but not multiply.

Second, all students at the College were required, as they are still, to attend and pass SVPP (Sexual Violence Prevention Project) classes, which inform students how to properly engage in sexual relationships and prevent sexual violence on campus. The purposes and aims of these classes are noble yet woefully inadequate. Usually, these classes are conducted in person, but due to COVID, I had to take these classes online (similar to how a third of my Dartmouth education was conducted). These classes mostly consisted of having to watch a video and then give feedback on what was appropriate or inappropriate. I do not remember much of these classes, but I do remember one video, in particular, in which it was greatly insinuated that two individuals had intercourse on a kitchen counter next to a toaster. If I remember correctly, the purpose of the video was to show that proper communication is needed in relationships. Again a noble goal, but a video of that nature is not instructing anyone on that lesson and is more likely instructing quite a different one. 

Third, this past week, I (as I usually do) stopped by Novack Café in Berry Library to get a sandwich for lunch. After I put in my sandwich order at the café, I was subjected to listening to what I believe was a Cardi B song that went into quite graphic detail on what sexual acts she wanted to participate in. I will not try to replicate the lyrics of the song, but they were quite loud and quite explicitly named “debauched” behavior. I just wanted a sandwich for lunch, but apparently, on this campus, there is always more.

All three of these examples are directly tied to the College. The College itself is what subjected me to these experiences, and I could not opt-out of them. For the first two, there were punishable offenses if I did not attend and participate in those educational experiences, and for the third, I guess I could have just starved. I could go on and on about similar examples I have witnessed in my time about a debauched sexual culture on campus, but what I hope is clear is that this is not a cultural problem that arises from a “community” sentiment. People are not willfully opting in and out of these influences. They are College-mandated ones, and that example set by the College is what will inevitably be replicated by the community.

The Hegemony of Purposelessness

I firmly believe that the sexual culture on campus that is cultivated by the College is directly linked to the widespread hopelessness and purposelessness of the students, and I encourage students to resist these influences. However, I also recognize that students do not have the ability to rationally out-think these influences. If an entire culture is telling someone that there are no repercussions in participating in casual sex, then why would we assume students will come together and opt out of it?

While ideally, students would use their “own reasoning faculty to understand nature” to find their “set of firmly held first principles and values,” the average Dartmouth student—even though smart, perhaps brilliant, etc.—suffers from the common fate of every human, which is to accept the values that are presented to him or her. Escaping the influences of what surrounds oneself, especially the influence of the authorities of the institutions one inhabits, is an exception, not a norm. If the College promotes promiscuity, then we should expect that promiscuity will run amuck on campus; to expect any less, to hope for any more is ill-placed sentiment.

Perhaps this standard is not the norm. Perhaps what you wish for is not the masses, but an elect, who rationally comes to the conclusion to retreat from the wider culture. Let us consider the exception then: those few who realize the perniciousness of campus influence and make an effort to form the communities you want. These communities, unfortunately, will forever be in the margins, and in the margins, then, is the meaning that you seek. However, the meaning and the binds which support these communities exist partly out of firm principles but mostly out of the experience of going against the campus standard, meaning that the overwhelming amount of purpose brought to their lives is not out of principle but out of experience. Places like The Review might be what you envisioned. Even in this organization, what brings people may, yes, be the common values, but what keeps people around are the bonds that form in the kindred spirit of resisting the hegemonic campus’ attitudes and dispositions. In other words, what actually binds communities are experiences and sentiments that are not always thought out using “our reasoning faculties” but are felt and shared amongst a group.

On an individual level, if one wants to resist a campus of purposelessness, one can retreat into rationally thought-out first principles, but that project is impotent in the longer term and on a mass scale as it does not attack any of the nefarious cultural projects which cause the purposelessness originally. For the past fifty years, this retreat has been offered up on the Right, and we have merely retreated, again and again, wondering why our “set of firmly held first principles and values” are constantly under more and more extreme attacks. But no, if we do believe that the cultural project of the College is truly nefarious and promotes a culture of purposelessness that actively does harm and prevents human flourishing, then we must do more than retreat into our own communities. We must demand that the College actively come up with real solutions to these problems—a demand that I recognize as ill-fated but one that is necessary nonetheless.

Libertarians may propose that this is simply ceding more power to an institution that we have already established as hostile to ourselves and our values, but this project of purposelessness that the College has cultivated is not self-sustaining and will eventually have to collapse out of its sheer contradictions, opening up an opportunity for those with values to assert purpose on the purposeless. Perhaps Dartmouth is wealthy enough to allow these existential problems of meaninglessness and purposelessness to fester forever. Yet merely based on recent student sentiment, there is a widespread acknowledgment that there is something deeply wrong on campus, and this sentiment threatens the pristine project of this college. Those who do have clear values and firm principles must always be ready to strike if a dissolution might occur. We must always be willing to assert and, yes, sometimes impose our principles on others. For if in the future, we do not similarly assert the truth of our position, our enemies will certainly not fear to assert theirs on us, and as we have seen, their project is one of great purposelessness and despair.