Hogwarts + Disneyland = Dartmouth.
I still have the hunter green shirt with this phrase emblazoned on it hidden in a drawer somewhere. Or maybe I've lost it. I don't know. It wasn't a very attractive T-shirt to begin with. I suppose it didn't have to be, as it was always more about the catchphrase than the design, just like those "consensual sex is hot" T-shirts. I never did wear my "consensual sex is hot" T-shirt again after an Appalachian Trail thru-hiker had me pose so he could take a picture of me wearing it outside of the post office.
And while nothing quite as traumatic happened to me while wearing my "Hogwarts + Disneyland = Dartmouth" T-shirt, I remember that I didn't like to wear it all that often. And if I wore it now, I would feel like a bona fide tool. But it's not because I don't think the phrase is clever Chris Silberman '11, you struck gold three years ago when you came up with that it's just that people took all the fun out of it.
The first warning sign emerged when the shirts were first ordered, because naturally there was a caveat: Only those who had been on Dimensions were allowed to order one. Okay fine, I understand it's a Dimensions shirt, we're celebrating that we were on Dimensions, yeah, great whatever. But nowhere on the shirt did it say anything about Dimensions. It honestly looked like a shirt you could buy from the Co-op. And it was right when the American Apparel fitted tees craze was emerging, so the Dimensions shirt quickly became a hot campus commodity.
Needless to say, people were soon buzzing. "Where did you get that shirt? It's really sweet! I want one. Where can I get one?" And then, without fail, the conversation would go (roughly) as follows:
"Oh, it's because I was on Dimensions."
"Oh. So I can't get one?"
"Well, no I think we're going to order some for the general public in the fall or something."
Only we never did. Because who in their right mind would be responsible for trying to collect money from hordes of people they didn't know just so they, too, could have the same T-shirt as you? Nobody.
So instead, "Hogwarts + Disneyland = Dartmouth" came to be associated with the cliquey, face-timey T-shirt that only a select portion of campus could wear. Which kind of went against the whole message of Dartmouth being as awesome as Hogwarts AND Disneyland combined, since not everyone could wear it.
Maybe the shirt should've said, "A Capella + Performance Groups = Dimensions" instead. Not quite as catchy, but probably more accurate. And at least then we wouldn't have been pretending to be something we weren't like, inclusive of everyone. And arguably, this has been the hardest lesson for me to learn while at college. Dartmouth is never 100 percent inclusive. Yes, Dartmouth is as much mine as it is yours, but in the end, we all have our own Dartmouth experience. The fact is, no matter how much we profess to love this school, it can never be ours entirely.
