While walking past the recent rally outside of Parkhurst Hall, I felt compelled to stop and observe. Although I wasn't sure about (or couldn't determine) much of what they were protesting, I thought I'd give them a listen, so I stood there watching with an open-mindedness hitherto unknown in these parts. However, my attitude soon soured as they began to attack something we at Dartmouth hold very dear to us: beer.
As a connoisseur of beer, I took great offense to this wonton protesting of such a precious liquid. Quickly, I ran to my room, took the beer out of my fridge and hid it in my stomach so it would not be found if the angry mob busted in with pitchforks, nooses, torches, and Louisville Sluggers in an attempt to lynch it.
I must say that I am appalled that such views exist within our community. To the misguided protesters: this is Dartmouth. You knew when you enrolled that people here drink beer. If you were that against it you should have gone to Columbia and indulged in sophisticated city discourse. We live in the woods. During the day we have lots of stuff to do because we can go play in the woods and throw ourselves down mountains.
But come nightfall, there is one pastime, and that pastime is beering. By this description, I do not mean "getting wasted." Although getting smashed may be some people's idea of drinking beer, this idea is not what drinking is all about. Drinking beer, unlike with other alcoholic drinks, is an activity in and of itself. This vocation can consist of anything from drinking four or five beers while socializing with friends, to indulging in a couple games of pong, to having a Guinness with dinner, to splitting a kind six-er with a friend while sitting around and procrastinating, to, yes, making an evening out of it and getting drunk. Beer is a beautiful thing. In fact, the Puritans (of all people) referred to it as "God's good creature." It comes down to the fact that beer gives us a valuable and highly social activity at Dartmouth, making the community happier and friendlier (I guess it might be at odds with the school's stated goal of creating a community of loners).
The impact of beer on our campus goes beyond just value, however. In fact, I would call beer Dartmouth's anti-drug. Without the beer culture that exists at Dartmouth, people would simply smoke a lot more marijuana, and real drugs, which are all but nonexistent here, would come into style. Students simply need some kind of extracurricular social activity, and unfortunately, the people creative enough to fulfill this need without either beer or drugs are few and far between. Look at the University of Vermont, a similar school in terms of its location. Look at Brown, a similar school in terms of academic reputation. It is beer that saves us from the high levels of drug use that plague these schools.
Beer also prevents, to an extent, the severe abuse of alcohol. At Dartmouth, people drink liquor rarely, which is a good thing. With liquor, it is far too easy to get alcohol poisoning because you can consume alcohol so quickly. With beer, you must make a concerted effort over the course of an entire evening to get drunk, and even then, it is nearly impossible to get alcohol poisoning. We must recognize the fact that by dominating the social scene over hard alcohol and drugs, God's good creature makes Dartmouth a safer and healthier place.
Personally, I find it humorous that Dartmouth, in its sinister plot to destroy the Greek system, sides with the beer-bashers. Although members of the administration assume that killing the Greeks and destroying the beer culture will attract more -- and brighter -- applicants, the evidence shows otherwise, as the number of applicants were down significantly from last year. Although they are perhaps correct in their assumption that most Dartmouth-caliber students are not big beer drinkers, their logic has a serious flaw: there are still enough "smart kids" who are intelligent and also enjoy beer. With Dartmouth, these kids have a clear choice of where to go to school, and because of this advantage we get many "high ability" students who would otherwise go to Harvard or Princeton.
Dartmouth fits a niche. But as it attempts to conform to the ultra-liberal attitude of the rest of the Ivies, it is losing this niche and becoming just another Ivy. This change is unfortunate because Dartmouth is better than the other Ivies. We must not let the frosty blood be sucked from Dartmouth's veins. Dartmouth drinks, therefore it is. We must not let Dartmouth cease to be. Without beer, we would lose our identity and turn into just another Brown, while the administration would gloat at how diverse Dartmouth has become, citing the white trustafarians with dreadlocks who walk around in a perpetually stoned condition and the rich white kids who are diverse because they read poetry and wear red and green striped socks up to their knees.
