Each week, Amy examines a small group of students in order to understand the individual Dartmouth experience as part of a whole. This week, Amy chats up Alex Howe '08 about his experience as an active older.
I've been asked explicitly to stay away from a column examining my senior spring. I've complied thus far, and I honestly have no interest in writing about that yet, anyway. But that doesn't mean that I'm not interested in examining the senior spring redux.
I've been thinking of all sorts of conceptual subtitles I could give this week's column. My original idea was "I'm an '08 boy in an '09 world," which quickly degenerated into "It's deja vu all over again." On Collis porch this afternoon, however, overhearing my interview, Laura Richardson '09 trumped by succinctly joking, "Where the f*ck are all your friends?"
Whatever wins out, I can safely say that this week's interview was by far the most drawn-out process I've ever undergone for dredging up material for my little corner of The Mirror. And it's appropriate. After all, this week I talked to The Mirror's former favorite scandal inducer, Alex Howe '08.
Alex is in his second senior spring. Before speaking with him, I figured it could only be better the second time around, but he seemed uncertain. I asked him about how he fits into the Dartmouth pecking order as a super senior.
"If there's a call to play, I don't have the balls for it," he said. "What's that Jewish word? Chutzpah. I don't have the chutzpah to be Parkhursted one and a half times and act like that's a virtue."
Although he seems to portray himself as a browbeaten hermit, Alex says his experience isn't all that different from last year.
"It isn't wildly different, because I do what I always do, what everyone always does ... I cling to my own group of friends."
Still, Alex was able to find more than enough to talk about as a super senior looking back on his Dartmouth career, even though he pointedly told me, "If there's fertility to that subject, I haven't found it."
Snarkiness aside, Alex ran the gamut of Dartmouth-centric topics, especially that ever-popular subject of the Greek system.
"It's lame to talk about [Greek life] as if you care, much less that it matters, much less that it's real," Alex said to preface his comments on changes in Greek life over the last five years.
"It's just the huge seismic shift in cache primarily of [Bones Gate fraternity] but also Panarchy," Alex said. "No one's going to say it, since it makes you look like an asshole, but it's the biggest social news possible."
Alex, however, was also hesitant to spend too much time and energy talking about the Greek system, particularly after so many years had passed since he and his contemporaries went through the rush process.
"Thank God it lessens after sophomore year, after everyone's rushed, the fact that most people get ensconced in 'I hang out at these houses.'"
Although Alex both loves and hates talking about Greek life, he recognizes our campus' need to discuss it all the time. That, he said, is something that hasn't changed during his time here.
"As always, death, taxes, Greek shit -- it's the elephant sitting on people's faces all the time."
Moving on from the fraternity and sorority world, Alex and I talked about other changes he has seen in his extra year at the College.
"The cell phone thing is meaningful. I feel like a dick talking about it, but it's true," he said, referring to the recent trend in calling and texting instead of blitzing. Alex marked his freshman spring as the "beginning of the end," when cell phone service became functional on campus.
"And the impending switch from Blitz to f*cking Yahoo mail or whatever ... it's ridiculous," he said.
As a former Mirror columnist himself, Alex and I also talked about his writing. Alex said he misses his weekly column inches.
"I know I'm probably supposed to play it down and act like I don't care, but by far it was the best thing and the most fun thing I've done at Dartmouth ... I flailed my arms long enough that some people paid attention."
Continuing on the topic of writing, Alex talked about this term as being a second chance to work on his thesis in creative writing.
"Three weeks before [my thesis] was due it was fiction and creative non-fiction, and I realized it was bullshit ... Now I know my true feelings lie with poetry, so I'm taking the poetry workshop this term, and it's the only academic thing I'm into."
Alex spared his last thoughts to reflect on the '09 class in general.
"You seem less cohesive, but that's from my perspective," he said. "I'm assuming that you mean attributes, besides less attractive [than the '08 class]?"
I rose to his bait and defended my class.
"I'm not going to praise you guys!" He laughed. "Isn't the idea that you look up to the classes that come before you?"
I sighed and asked if there was anything left that he'd like to share. A sort of last gasp of "Alex Got in Trouble."
"Give me a job?" he joked.
Now that's one thing Alex seems to have in common with much of the '09 class: unemployment.
