Other than the iPhone, what would cause Dartmouth's apocalypse? Some may not know it, but we've come close to the end of days once before. We've been invaded, but it wasn't by zombies. It was by women. If the old boys of Dartmouth had created an ancient calendar, it would have ended in 1972.
Luckily, we recovered from the attack, assimilating the strange invaders into Dartmouth's culture and eventually accepting them. Don't worry, this is not an article about how women are still treated like aliens at Dartmouth.
What would cause the Dartmouth apocalypse now? This question seems like a setup, like I'm supposed to pick one big, terrible thing about Dartmouth and explain how it will destroy us. Well okay, that's easy. Drinking, sexual assault, the Greek system we've heard it over and over, that these things are slowly destroying us. Through constant conversation and the occasional controversial article, we can see that people do recognize Dartmouth's problems, and we talk about them often. The problem is, I'm not sure anyone is listening.
To me, the "Dartmouth experience" is like any cookie cutter set of expectations not what you expected. It comes in phases Elation, Denial, Progress or Apathy. Freshman fall, you are just excited to have no parents. The books and frats and professors and new friends are infinite, and you can dance until 4 a.m. and still get up for your 10A. This place is perfect. Maybe this lasts six months, maybe two years. It all depends on when something goes wrong, and we realize nothing was ever exactly right. Next is denial, when we ignore the hazing, drug and alcohol abuse and self-destruction in our friends, our sisters and brothers and ourselves. We enable and disable each other, refusing to bring up our concerns for others because it means acknowledging those same habits in ourselves. We don't show weakness, and when we do, we blame it on the system we take on endless commitments until we are busy enough to be stressed enough that being a mess is okay, because look at what we are accomplishing!
Certainly, everyone's experience hasn't been the same. But from my perspective, our apocalypse will come from our destructively fast-paced lifestyle and our need to present a persona that is put together, successful and just apathetic enough to make it all seem effortless. With a lifestyle like this, it makes sense that we re-realize the same problems in our culture over and over, but never seem to change them. In my experience, by the time we see the problems, we're so close to graduation that we have no motivation to fix them.
I'm not saying that we haven't made any progress towards reductions in sexual assault and binge drinking on campus. I've seen dedicated students take initiative and move forward on projects that aim to address these problems. However, most of us do not, and it takes an entire community's dedication to an issue to address it effectively. For many, it seems that by the time we realize Dartmouth's flaws and no longer strive to ignore its problems, we are so fed up, jaded or tired that we don't change a thing. We simply move on. This morning, I looked back at the "Gospel According to Matthew," a column by Matthew Ritger '10 that I read religiously (get it?) freshman year. His series of poignant, thoughtful commentaries about Dartmouth culture seemed genius three years ago, but now I see that many of these insights about our bad habits and skewed social system are realized year after year by a new aging class, but are rarely passed down to the class below. This keeps us from moving forward.
So what will cause the apocalypse? I haven't said anything decisive or come to any real conclusions. I'm part of this system too, finally seeing Dartmouth's flaws with more clarity and ideas for change, but only when I am six months from graduation and too tied up in creating my own busyness (is a religion thesis really the best thing for my stress level when I'm trying to apply for jobs, take the GREs, and not go insane?) to make a substantial contribution to our community.
I suppose that is my point Dartmouth's apocalypse will come from stagnancy and the inability to move forward. Would we ever have admitted women if it was the students' choice? Eventually, we would have, but it would have taken far too long. Threats to the way that we operate and function at Dartmouth (such as a co-ed Greek system) face the same opposition as coeducation did, even when massive changes may be the only way to address the glitches in our social system before we talk about them to a point that no one even hears what we are saying. After all, we can only have so many panels on the same issues before people stop coming. I think the scariest thing about an apocalypse is that you can't stop it. Whether it is planetary destruction or major social change, it happens, and it is often out of our control. Whether we're ready or not, we have to deal with it. Dartmouth suffered through its first apocalypse in coeducation, and I'm sure that we will handle our next catastrophe as well, despite how much we will initially oppose its coming.
