Short Answer
By The Dartmouth Opinion Staff, The Dartmouth Staff
Published on Friday, July 17, 2009
Campus has been made richer by the inclusion of people outside the stereotypical Dartmouth community. While there certainly exists a natural distance between sophomores and the rest of the campus visitors, programs like SEAD have proven that students can be engaged and improved by these unique Dartmouth opportunities.
—Isaiah Berg ’11
Finally, the Hanover bubble has fallen! After years of trying to woo fancy speakers and notable artists, Dartmouth has hit upon the key to exposing us to the harsh realities and intellectual curiosities of the world: high school students on summer vacation. What could be better?
—Brian Solomon ’11
We determine the extent to which the bubble is broken: if we get involved with SEAD or the sports camps, then campus changes drastically for us. If we choose to keep living our lives as usual, it’s just a different group of people we don’t know walking around campus.
—Tom Mandel ’11
Last time I went to play squash I had to beg a kids’ camp counselor to let me use a court. With such drastic cuts in all our facilities’ hours already, it’s absurd that we have to compete with non-students who don’t pay tuition.
—Spenser Mestel ’11 These programs have a positive effect on campus by opening resources to non-Dartmouth students in a variety of ways. This has the potential to create an exchange beneficial to all sides. SEAD especially has set an example for student-mentoring groups on campus.
—Cameron Nutt ’11
I haven’t really experienced or encountered anyone from these programs who has got on my nerves or made a negative impression on me, or distinguished themselves in any volatile way from the rest of humanity in general. Maybe if I were affiliated, my experience would differ, as some frat brothers are evidently up in arms about them being moochers. But as Picasso said about the moon landing, “It means nothing to me. I have no opinion about it, and I don’t care.”
—Sam Buntz ’11
The inclusion of “people beyond sophomores” on campus definitely changes the dynamic on campus. There is slight resentment against any non-sophomores for those of us who believed that campus would literally be all ours this summer. In some ways, there even seems to exist a power struggle for those who feel somewhat ‘threatened’ by the presence of any non-sophomore. But sophomore summer has become an experience that involves many things deviating from our standard Dartmouth experience: no Hop, no Home Plate, no upperclassmen, the feeling of warmth. We should not look at this as a negative part of the term, but just accept it as one of the unique aspects of our summer experience.
—Denise Hotta-Moung ’11