I am terrified about the prospect of a senior Spring without Homeplate. Terrified. Absolutely terrified.
I've had lunch after 12s at Homeplate every Monday/Wednesday/Friday since freshman Spring. I eat that lunch with basically the same group of people that I ate that lunch with three years ago. Post-12s lunch is an institution to me. So much so, in fact, that I don't even check the "2" box when I'm looking for classes each term. No way am I gonna schedule anything that'll conflict with my lunch time.
We have our little traditions and our little games. We play rock-paper-scissors after each meal. The loser has to take up all the trays in one big stack, with a perilous number of cups, plates and bowls on top of it. We finish most meals with Jewkies. These are long, long lunches.
And that institution will be taken away from me for my senior Spring. I'm not going to rail against the renovations or say that progress is bad. I'm really jealous of the '15s and how they get to enjoy the new and improved Class of '53 Commons. But that doesn't ease my fear.
Eating at that hour in any other place simply will not be the same. Transitioning to the new Homeplate layout was hard enough. Transitioning to anywhere else on campus will be downright impossible. Effectively, that institution will die for me at the end of this term.
It's really hard when institutions die. I know that Dartmouth was listed as one of the top 10 most enduring institutions of all time, but there are little institutions within this vast College that rise and fall all the time. They are what define our experience, and it's difficult to see ourselves without that lens.
I take solace in knowing that many of the institutions I love will still be around when I graduate, and will still be around in 50 years. The constituency of Alpha Delta will certainly have changed by then, and I can't say whether that's for the better or the worse. I won't recognize any of the faces. But there will still be things I recognize. The statue of the Brothers-in-Arms will no doubt still be in the Great Hall. I'll run my hand over Vic's badge and feel comfort.
This column isn't an op-ed. It doesn't have a point. I'm not saying that administrators should take better care to preserve institutions. I trust their judgment. I'm not saying that we should go completely progressive, either. Some traditions are great. And I'm not going to be the annoyingly nostalgic senior and tell you younger students to cherish everything. This isn't about you. It's about me.
Why am I writing this, then? They say you don't know what you've got till it's gone, and I have the rare opportunity here to experience the pain and fear of graduating on a smaller scale. Because that's really what we're afraid of when we graduate: losing institutions. We lose the institution of the friends we made, or the institution of the Alma Mater playing on the bells every day at 6 p.m., or the institution of pong etiquette. All of that will be gone. Or at least changed. Sure, the bells will still play the Alma Mater even when we're not here, but hearing them as an alum will never be quite the same as hearing them as an undergrad.
I'm losing one of my favorite institutions one term early. I'm curious to see how I'll adjust. Will I create a new institution to take the place of post-12s lunch at Homeplate, or will I just despair? Maybe "despair" is a strong word, but you get the point. Hopefully I can learn a thing or two about how to cope with this loss, since in five months I'll have to cope with the loss of just about every little idiosyncrasy of my current life.
THE LIGHT AT THE END OF THE TUNNEL is that continued DDS renovations will give me more fodder for inside jokes and cultural references in my columns. The joke last term was about the wall in the back of Homeplate to Pavilion a.k.a. Platform 9 . Now there's the FoCo alternate universe. Who knows what Spring will bring.
