Editor’s Note
By Caitlin Kelly, The Dartmouth Senior Staff
Published on Friday, May 9, 2008
If Robinson Hall is an apartment building, The D and the DOC are like neighbors. When they have barbeques, the smell makes our mouths water. When they have dance parties on the Robo lawn, we pretend we're too busy to join them. And when people show up naked, covered in green paint to hand in their Croo applications, we hold the door.
But the DOC has given us more than just entertainment. Besides being America's oldest and most successful collegiate outing club, we have them to thank for Winter Carnival, First-Year Trips and even selective admissions at Dartmouth -- after Fred Harris, Class of 1911 and founder of the DOC, wrote an article for National Geographic, applications to the College more than tripled the next year.
These days, however, DOC members are possibly the most stereotyped group on campus: they play four square, they dominate the couches in Collis, they don't wear shoes. But who are they anyway?
This week, we decided to find out a bit more about our downstairs neighbors. Along the way we learned the best way to tell the Doc Benton story, the truth about the hard work behind First-Year Trip Croos, the endless possibilities of Schlitz funding and how to have a good time around Hanover without mulling around in a filthy basement.
Next week is Green Key. After reading all about the cool things DOC members have done, maybe I'll take a night or two off from the frat scene so I can go earn some vertical miles. Or maybe I'll do both -- as diametrically opposed as our frat and Robo lawn scenes may seem, on closer look they're pretty compatable. I'll take my Keystone in a Nalgene, thank you.