Last week I made an attempt to call in my class selections for the coming Spring term, but to no avail. I remembered the College was closed for a holiday, Martin Luther King, Jr. Day.
There are two times a year when I get annoyed with the school, save when tuition bills arrive. One is Memorial Day, and the second is the King holiday.
Why? Because of the College's obscene double standard. Without a doubt the King holiday is a legitimate one. Not ony to be celebrated for Dr. King alone, it stands for the efforts of all people in this nation who have suffered discrimination to burst from their shackles and gain true equality through noble means. Because the rest of political New Hampshire shuns the day, the obligation for the College to recognize the day and set an example is doubly important.
But when Memorial Day comes around, it is business as usual at the College.
This is the part that makes the grand scheme obscene. Memorial Day, which is celebrated not only here but in Western Europe, is patently politically incorrect. It is about white men fighting in European wars and dropping large, destructive bombs on Asians.
But these white men died in the millions. Dozens of them went to Dartmouth. Just read the list near the Hop.
What did these men do? They stopped the Holocaust, the effort to exterminate entire sets of races and creeds. They stopped the man who wanted to own Europe at the expense of the lives of the European people.
Of course there were other wars, and you may not agree with them, but that is not the point. This is Memorial Day, not sanctification day. You need not agree with the wars our nation has fought, but the theme here is to remember that men and a few women, mostly our age, were asked to do something, and that they did, and that they died for it.
If the average person here at the College cared about whatever he or she happens to care about enough to face death for it, then we would all end up doing great things.
Then there are the ones who just went because they were asked to. If the rest of us could have the strength to do a dangerous task because we felt it was our duty, no matter what that task was, then we could make the world a better place in even one generation.
To add insult to injury we get off for nonsense like Winter Carnival and Green Key Weekend. The College has said that Memorial day interferes with its already contorted academic calendar. Rubbish. For a school that flouts such high moral standards, life is about principles and not calendars.
But in the end, picture yourself in a hole in the ground, alone, at dusk, 3,000 miles away from your home. You are 19, everyone around you is trying to kill you and your survival is arbitrary. Picture your death: you are scared and fighting then you feel pain for a moment. You are shipped home in a body bag and then a snazzy casket. Your mom gets a flag.
That is war, and that is what has happened to millions just like us; collectively dozens of millions of people in this century alone. Regardless of your politics, we should have a day to remember these people, reflect on what it means to die a violent death for abstract ideas or cold economics and pray that it never has to happen again.
Sure I'll take the King holiday. But there will be no class for me this May 30th, either.
