At once a leading academic institution and a party school of mythical proportions, Dartmouth is truly the Animal House Ivy. Our college toes the line between the best that higher learning has to offer and the worst acts that college students can perpetrate. The soaring feeling you have when you see the Green for the first time meshes with the drunken haze of a basement and the pounding headache the day after. We juggle these two identities on a weekendly (or daily) basis in our personal lives.
However, we're often so enmeshed in our dorms, apartments, fraternities and sororities, enveloped by our own little Hanover, that one wonders how exactly the outside world sees us. Very similarly to how we see ourselves, it seems. Certainly the rest of the world (read: the United States, since our international renown is sorely lacking) is largely aware that we're the Animal House school. The media plays up that narrative whenever possible witness last year's damning Boston Globe article about the heckling at the Harvard squash match.
The Animal House reputation no doubt follows Dartmouth in the minds of prospective students as well as in the media. Ian Accomando '12 described his pre-matriculation notion of Dartmouth as "the anti-Ivy Ivy."
A close second to Dartmouth's party rep is the College's status as a top liberal arts school with the resources of an Ivy League university and the closeness of community of an intimate college. (Whether Dartmouth administrators can take credit for building such a close community, or if it's an inevitable result of our remote location is something that I still waffle back and forth about.) It's not so much the case that one reputation is true and the other is not. It's precisely the coexistence of both reputations that keeps College administrators up at night.
These competing (and not entirely inaccurate) perceptions have a definite impact on the type of student Dartmouth attracts. On one extreme we have the intellectually-driven student thrilled at the opportunity to hole up for four years in Baker-Berry. Then we have the high school all-star who's ready to hit up Webster Ave and Chill. The. F*ck. Out. (Shit, man, did you even see Animal House?!)
The tug-of-war between these two extremes is an internal conflict within many students to a varying degree. We spend much of our time here trying to reconcile in some coherent manner the two spheres of our lives (and, realistically, by the time you're a senior, you're most likely just looking to get a job and check out best of luck with that one).
But while we struggle to come to terms with our social and academic natures, it may be that Dartmouth's strong social scene is what sets us apart from (and above, according to some) other elite colleges. Accomando summarized his visits to other Ivies before his visit to Dartmouth: "I went to Harvard for an official visit. It sucked. [I went to] Yale on an official visit. It sucked."
On reflection, students are as guilty as the media in emphasizing and even relishing our ragey image, though we have some good reasons. Dartmouth seems to win over prospective students with its thriving social life, but, uniquely for a self-purported party school, it also maintains reputable intellectual standards. Come for the parties, stay for the intense debate on the basement benches. Make it last fourth in line is going to be a while.
