Suddenly, horrifyingly, "The Matrix Reloaded" replaces your favorite "Laguna Beach" half-wit and Gramps disappears, followed by the television. Salvation! You were eyeing that La-Z-Boy, and Neo was making you nauseous.
Then again, Granny's clicking footsteps on the tile floor sound curiously like crunching gravel, and the couch -- suddenly ice-cold -- smells a lot like the sewage drain near Novack (Trust me, you just know.) A Safety and Security officer emerges from the kitchen, and that tubby Siamese cat you've been caressing? It's a Keystone can.
What do you do?! The cat dander has already irritated your now-bloodshot eyes, the can is frozen to your palm, and you didn't even TiVo the bro-limination!
If you've already experienced a variation of this sweat-and-tears-inducing nightmare, you're not alone. Andrew Wells '10 has had his fair share of scares.
"I once had a nightmare that S&S was arresting me [for] not running all 110 laps around the bonfire," Wells said. "I also had a dream that I got Good Sammed for falling asleep in class because my professor thought I was drunk."
Wells is a member of The Dartmouth Staff.
For better or worse, such a fear of the Good Sam policy seems to command our campus subconscious.
"Don't Good Sam me unless I'm passed out or completely unconscious," an anonymous male '12, who has yet to be Good Sammed, insisted.
"If someone's Good Samming me when I'm awake and able to walk around, then, seriously, I'm bolting for the door," he added. "I guess it's not really my rule, it's just what's gonna happen."
A fellow '12 agreed. Recently, a Hanover Police officer, who found him boisterously stumbling into snow banks near his dorm, arrested him. He blew a BAC of 0.31 and remembers nothing but what his friends told him of that night.
"I suppose I was making a scene, but they don't stop every kid who was a little loud," he said. "They just picked on me, and it's kind of unfair. It should be S&S's jurisdiction on College property, and H-Po intervened."
"Now I definitely don't want to be Good Sammed. I literally have to be on the ground dying for my friends to Good Sam me, because just vomiting or something -- screw it. I'll just sleep it off ... I already have the strike one, and two strikes, you're out."
He cited his new knowledge of the policy, in which blowing above a 0.30 BAC merits a hospital transfer, where the police automatically become involved.
"I'm a lot less likely to Good Sam other friends of mine, because I don't want to make them pay 400 bucks for the [mandatory Hanover Police Department's Alcohol Diversions Program]," he added. "The program's initial form literally asks, 'Are you a Dartmouth student?'"
Abella Rutahindurwa '12 and Richard Stephenson '12 cited this fear as the pressing need for policy change at the College.
"The Good Sam policy is very beneficial to students in theory, but in practice many consequences [initially] unrealized by students discourage them from taking advantage of the policy," Rutahindurwa said.
Stephenson echoed Rutahindurwa's sentiment.
"People could possibly die just because they don't want to get their friends in trouble, and that shouldn't be an issue," he said. "A student shouldn't have to compare a friend's life to his reputation or her [criminal] record just because of a policy."
Some disagree, however, including a freshman varsity athlete who was Good Sammed twice last term, and wished to remain anonymous.
"The policy is great ... now that it's happened to me I really understand how useful and not-the-end-of-the-world it is," he said.
"S&S are, for the most part, good dudes, just trying to make that cash money and support their families," Wells noted.
Who knew S&S inspired such understanding?
"I would characterize the typical S&S officer as a disciplinarian mother: always on the lookout in case you're in trouble, like asphyxiating on your boot or something, but never afraid to lovingly hit you with a wooden spoon," the anonymous athlete said.
Despite mixed opinions surrounding S&S and the Good Sam policy, students still dogmatically live by the "S&S good, H-Po bad" creed.
"I was having pleasantly drunken conversation with some friends [outside KDE], when H-Po pulled up," the '12 athlete said. "Like a voracious shark, the officer rolled down his window and glared at us, waiting for a lethal mistake, like suddenly falling or whipping out a beer or something."
So S&S wins the popularity contest. Who cares, right? Wrong. Whoever told you back in seventh grade that such contests were unimportant was blinded by your obsession with 18th century naval warfare -- and maybe literally by your metallic headgear.
"S&S all the way. The best piece of advice I've ever gotten at Dartmouth was from my trip leader: if you're walking down the street and you're drunk and you see S&S on one side, and H-Po on the other, you run -- no, you leap -- into the safe, welcoming arms of S&S, unless you're 21, at which point you laugh at S&S and just walk over to H-Po. This piece of advice was then corrected by Brian Bowden who told me that, in such a situation, you probably shouldn't run," Eli Mitchell '10 said.
Sauntering is a nice touch.
