We can't help feeling that the Green is missing something. Where, oh where, is all the snow?
Dear Dartmouth,
We can't help feeling that Winter Carnival is missing something. Where, oh where, is all the spirit?
We know it's here. The exuberant Carni Classic skiers, who speed across the golf course dressed as Big Bird or a pumpkin, tell us it's here. The students who successfully redeemed the snow sculpture ritual after toiling for weeks on the Colosseum (hey, the actual Rome wasn't built in a day, either) tell us it's here. And as they dash across the Green on plastic sleds, the flaired-out dog sled racers (literally) shout to us that some Winter Carnival spirit is still here, somewhere.
But overwhelmingly, students interviewed for this issue expressed a growing disinterest in Winter Carnival. It seems that we as an entire student body are losing sight of what makes this weekend's carnival Winter Carnival. We are forgetting that big weekends can be more than rage-tastic basement orgies, that we can enjoy the spectacular outdoors even though Jupiter has deprived us of snow.
Rome arguably history's greatest empire rose and fell like all the others. But isn't the granite of New Hampshire in our muscles and our brains stronger than men in strappy sandals? Dartmouth's Carnival tradition has risen for 100 years we cannot let it fall.
So this is our call to arms, oh venerable gladiators on the hill fight to make this Winter Carnival the best big weekend we've seen. Catch hypothermia in Occom Pond (and enjoy it!). Shell out 99 cents to zip (or somersault) down the Skiway mountain. Spread out on the Green, admire the Colosseum and revel in the unseasonable (tropical) weather. And oh yeah sink every last cup.
Because tradition and Keystone are not mutually exclusive. Thank goodness.
Emma Fidel, Jen Liu, Jon Erdman and Edie Wu
