My name is Alex Howe, and I am Parkhursted.
Being suspended from Dartmouth, if I may romanticize, is like being a disavowed secret agent. It's as if you never existed. The first and worst thing the administration does is bar your access to your Dartmouth e-mail address -- or, as my friend Travis put it, they "take your Blitz behind the barn and shoot it." Now that I'm separated from it, I feel like a divorced father hosed by the custody agreement: I can't even see it on weekends. Computer Services ("Mommy" to me) better be taking good care of my 20,000 messages. (Forgetting how to delete did wonders for my delusions of popularity.)
The least meaningful requirement of suspension is the bar from participating in campus activities. As much as I'll miss it, I'm confident that the Boggle Miniversity class will soldier on without me.
The final notable suspension condition is that I, the Parkhursted, am forbidden from stepping foot on campus without written permission from a dean. The administration takes pains to make clear that such permission would require compelling rationale for visiting -- more compelling, for example, than "Winter Carnival at TDX all nite!!! roflomglol, lax4lyfe, rite deanz?!" It's worth noting that this regulation is one of the most flouted at Dartmouth -- it's not uncommon to see Parkhursted pariahs chilling in dining halls, for example, during what are often brazenly lengthy stays on campus. Finding Dartmouth rules that are broken more frequently would require delving into the obvious (underage drinking is illegal), the impossible-to-enforce (football should justify their lower admissions standards by winning), or the idiosyncratic (my personal, as-yet-unwritten laws of social conduct, such as Do Not Repeat Inane Yet Fashionable Dartmouth Cliches, most notably "We're all SO AWKWARD" and "I totally peaked in high school"; we aren't, and you didn't).
Apologies. As I was saying: Parkhursted students aren't allowed on campus, but many of them hang out anyway. While these students risk being denied readmission, the conventional wisdom is accurate: How would they possibly be caught? (They wouldn't and aren't, short of streaking the Green, being picked up, or visiting their dean's office hours.) Since the administration seems shy of ankle bracelets or wanted posters in dining halls (honestly, I would love the latter), no practical method exists to enforce the restraining order.
All of that being said, I will sure as hell follow the rules. More than anything, being Parkhursted has made me appreciate the basics: a diploma, for example. Suspension does wonders for perspective. While I've certainly been guilty of it before, ridiculing residents of East Wheelock now strikes me as rather strange: They have, in the eyes of the larger student body, committed the grievous sin of prioritizing studies at one of the world's best colleges. Everyone does homework; are we so socially anxious -- is the Sweet Greek/I-Hang-Out theater so critical -- as to need to bully the kids who live in the dorm devoted to academics? Maybe I sound curmudgeonly. In the end, I just want my Blitz back.
For now, though, I'm off campus, off Blitz, and in need of gainful activity. Such an opportunity came in the form of a tossed-off email from John Beardsley '08: He was planning on spending this winter volunteering in Biloxi, Mississippi, and I was invited to visit if I had nothing to do.
Little did John know, "nothing to do" did not begin to capture my situation. Upon suspension, I suddenly had six months to fill. With that in mind, I e-mailed him back, pretending that instead of "Visit if you want," he had written "I'm lonely, stay all winter!"
And stay I will. From Sunday through the beginning of March, John and I will be living in the Hands On Gulf Coast camp in Biloxi and performing all manner of Katrina-related service. This column will document our adventures (which is news to John: Sound good, buddy?).
If you're wondering how my editors could have even considered signing on to such a column, you obviously don't know John Beardsley. Semi-Dartmouth-famous and one of the most well-loved people I know, John is the real-person equivalent of Matthew Broderick, Daniel Day-Lewis, and Jeff Goldblum: I enjoy every time I get to I see him, but there are never nearly enough.
In the next seven weeks, that will change (and, for the sake of this column, I hope conflict will ensue). Deep in the strange South and the terrible, still-dire wreckage of a hurricane, we will be very busy and, I imagine, incredibly fulfilled. Enjoy Econ 10.
