Etiquette is relative. That point can't be overstressed. At a dinner with somebody else's parents, you're supposed to chew with your mouth shut, ask polite questions and never laugh boisterously, no matter how funny it is to see your future in-law with a piece of cheese literally three feet long hanging from her chin. At Dartmouth etiquette is a bit subtler. If you knock over the other team's cups on a throw save, it is courteous to clean up the spilled beer. By sweeping it onto the floor.
I love Dartmouth's version of etiquette. When you knock over those cups, you don't really need to refill them. There's a line where etiquette ends and supplication begins, and that's at refilling their cups. Don't be guilted into sacrificing your dignity. Stay strong.
There are so many examples of ways in which our etiquette is truly awesome. And I know that The Mirror has a tendency to focus way too much on the basement, but this really is where our etiquette shines. For example, if you take one too many steps back to hit a shot in a crowded basement, it's really not your fault if you cause somebody to spill their beer. Shouldn't have been standing so close.
Take it for what it is. Dartmouth has more inertia than a Hummer with a trunk full of gun parts, so trying to remove our most firmly entrenched habits is likely to fail (don't take this as discouragement from social activism just pick your battles). All that you can hope to do is ask for the peak of etiquette that is available within the paradigm. If you get handed a cup of beer that is 70 percent foam, you don't have to take that. Ask for a can, please. That's standing up for yourself. You go, boy/girl (see how politically correct that was?).
But really, what's not to love? Taking the time to type out, "Hey, I had a good time last night, hope your 10A wasn't too bad, see you around," is considered chivalry. That's 17 words. Remember those learn-to-type programs that were forced on us back in the day? We had a typing class that we needed to pass in order to move from 6th to 7th grade. So I know that literally every single person who graduated from the 6th grade with me is able to pump out that blitz in just 17 seconds. That means 17 seconds of chivalry, with 23 hours, 59 minutes,and 43 seconds per day to take up whatever hobbies you want. That's a lot of hobbies that we can pick up because chivalry takes up so little time.
But, for those of you who hate what you call a lack of etiquette, there is (as always) a LIGHT AT THE END OF THE TUNNEL. I actually don't have that much hope to offer you naysayers this week except to say: nothing gold can stay (that's Robert Frost, FYI). So if I go out on a limb and interpret Frost's words as I'm sure he would have wanted, we can say that the gold is the color of Keystone, so I think this is Frost's fratty way of saying that we all graduate from the basement eventually. He was a Theta Delt, after all. Will we graduate from the basement after sophomore Summer, when we graduate,or will it take until we come up for our son/daughter's sophomore Summer and realize how old we now are? Well
