I've only been at Dartmouth a term and a half, but already I've heard so many complaints about the lack of a dating scene on campus. Romance at the College is something like the Black Eyed Peas song "Boom Boom Pow" pretty terrible all around but definitely enjoyable when you're drunk.
I figure that there must have been some semblance of romance on campus in the past, so I set out to find out when romance died the date of the romantic apocalypse, if you will.
It turns out there never was much romance to be found in the first place. Coeducation did not usher in the era of hand-holding and stargazing as I had suspected; it just made casual hook-ups more convenient.
"A frat basement is not conducive to real communication between the sexes," Harold Ambler '87 and Bethany Rogers '87 said in the 1985 freshman issue of The Dartmouth. "Loud music, free-flowing (often spilling) beer, and an uncomfortable crush of people induce something akin to despair."
Apparently they didn't think being pinned against gyrating, rhythm-less couples sucking face was fun.
"Beer does tend to promote indiscriminate groping however, which although it may be fun for a while, tends to get a little old when all you do every weekend is lick the beer sweat off some random freshman's neck then spend the rest of the next morning hung over, trying to remember her name and wipe the cashmere off your tongue," Dan Donahue '99 wrote in a 1996 editorial in The Dartmouth.
While I'm not sure how many people are actually wearing cashmere on a night out, I think Donahue would be underwhelmed by the changes (or lack thereof) in the hook-up culture in the last 14 years.
Perhaps there hasn't been much change because Dartmouth's dating woes hearken back to the days before Donahue or any current students were born.
In 1965, a group of students created a dating organization called Sceptre to help romantically challenged Dartmouth men find women for the weekends.
"When a student desiring a date visits Sceptre, he fills out a card with information concerning the type of date he wants (drinker, dancer, etc.)," The Dartmouth reported in 1965. Students could also specify the desired height, weight and hair color of their prospective dates.
That little "etc." leaves a lot to the imagination, but I'd hazard a guess that the other categories were not "great conversationalist" and "intellectual."
Ambler and Rodgers predicted in 1985 that frats would slowly lose their dominance over the social scene and students would begin to date in a more traditional way. Oh well. It was a nice thought, guys.
Several editorials in The Dartmouth over the past 20 years have blamed a lack of communication and understanding between the sexes for the College's dating woes.
"Dinner at Murphy's, roughly translated into the Dartmouth mentality, means something like, Yes, I want to bear your children,'" Donahue wrote.
Despite our dazzling intellect, Dartmouth students seem to have difficulty in the romantic communication department. Perhaps one day we will be able to get over our fear of real dates, but for now, keep practicing your hormonal rando-avoidance tactics.
