This editors’ note is featured in the 2021 Freshman special issue.
Dear Class of 2025,
We are at the start of yet another academic year at Dartmouth, and we are beyond thrilled that you all are here to experience it with us.
It’s safe to say that all of you are in for an interesting first year at Dartmouth. As a student body, we are currently battling a duality of “normals”: On the one hand, members of the Classes of 2022 and 2023 long for a return to Dartmouth’s “normal,” the way things were before March 2020. But on the other hand, there are many ways in which that “normal” is now out of reach or even undesirable. The Class of 2024 is stuck in the middle, having never known what a “normal” Dartmouth looks like and having to defend the new norms and traditions they created without the guidance of older classes. All of us are eyewitnesses and agents of change in the struggle to both return to that normal and define a new one. You, the Class of 2025, are at the heart of that change.
With that in mind, we want this special issue to both welcome you to campus and remind your older peers — the ’22s, ’23s and ’24s — what Dartmouth was, is and will be. Hence this year’s theme: “(Re)introduction.”
In the physical or virtual pages that follow, the talented writers who contributed to this issue walk you through the ins and outs of Dartmouth institutions and debunk deeply held myths about them. They summarize what life is like outside the classroom and describe in vivid detail the fun that can be had here. They offer advice to set your roots and strengthen your ties while you are here. And they do so much more.
Every person who reads this issue will take with them something different. Regardless of what among these pages impacts you most, we hope each of you finds yourself in this new year.
Welcome home, ’25s.
With love,
Lauren, Mia, Spencer and Thomas
Lauren ('23) is news executive editor for The Dartmouth. She is from Bethesda, Maryland, and plans to major in government and minor in public policy.
