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Lim: Dry Blitzes

Norris: One More

Lane: Let’s Invest in Students. Drop the Medians

This column is featured in the 2022 Homecoming special issue.

Gart: Let’s Grab A Meal Sometime

This column is featured in the 2022 Homecoming special issue.

Mullins: Why is it Harder for Women to Get Into Dartmouth?

This column is featured in the 2022 Homecoming special issue.

Menning: This November, Vote at Home

Every other fall, in the months leading up to a general election, student political activism at Dartmouth reaches its peak. From tabling by Novack Cafe to pro-voting sidewalk chalk outside Foco to official housing community emails reminding students about local voter registration, election cycles at Dartmouth bring the same message: Students should vote, and they should consider voting in Hanover. 

Anand: The Future of Crypto

For the last several years, the market for cryptocurrencies maintained a polarizing yet prominent presence in the eyes of governments, businesses and the public. Following its enormous crash in May of 2022, however, the crypto market has largely vanished from the public eye. Despite the recent trend in market valuation and public sentiment, cryptocurrencies — though flawed in their current state — provide undeniable benefits, such as greater financial inclusion and enhanced security. Government regulation and broader public acceptance will allow cryptocurrencies to cement their rightful place in our economy’s future.

Knospe: Talking Greek

Despite comprising 64% of eligible students, Greek life at Dartmouth has a peculiar knack for wiggling its way out of campus discourse. To be sure, there is no shortage of surface-level conversation; we fill in friends on where we went over the weekend and we discuss the latest fraternity scandal, but we rarely talk seriously about more foundational aspects of Greek life. Students eagerly interrogate institutions for their sexist and exclusionary pasts in Canvas posts and midterm papers, but seldom acknowledge just how strange it is that our primary social spaces are gender-segregated. And for all our academic talk of “power dynamics,” it’s remarkable how little “pledge term” is recognized as a paradigm case.

Peters: Things to Do This Fall

Verbum Ultimum: Indigenous Exclusion — Once Again

This past Monday marked Indigenous Peoples’ Day in the United States. Twenty states plus the District of Columbia and countless cities across the country officially recognized the holiday this year in an effort to acknowledge the historical mistreatment of Native American, Alaska Native and Native Hawaiian people throughout the history of the United States. In the places that celebrate Indigenous Peoples’ Day, the holiday replaces or coincides with Columbus Day, which was first designated a national holiday in 1934 but ultimately ignores over 500 years of Indigenous hardship and suffering at the hands of European colonizers.

Bryant: Towards A Centripetal Economy

At risk of stating the obvious, the COVID-19 pandemic wreaked havoc on the global economy. Trade volumes plunged in spring 2020, only to recover at a breakneck pace in the following months. Though the direct effects of the pandemic were short-lived, COVID-19 has played a supporting role in a tectonic shift of the global economy that began with the Great Recession. After the decades of “hyperglobalization” that followed the Second World War, the 2008 financial crisis sparked a reaction against the ever-globalizing world. In the West, economic nationalism gained a new popularity, especially in right-leaning political parties. In the U.S., we saw this trend in the 2012 Tea Party movement and more recently with Trump’s high-tariff presidency. The developing world was similarly disaffected by the Great Recession through the loss of foreign aid and private investment. This growing skepticism of globalization was only confirmed by the pandemic: The global economy can collapse with little warning, leaving its benefactors high and dry.

Verbum Ultimum: Fall Back — to Winter Term

Dartmouth’s “Greek Life Social Responsibility and First Year Student Policy” — more commonly known as the “frat ban” — is regularly in effect for the majority of the fall term. The policy, which was implemented in 2013 at the request of student leaders in Greek life, is meant to promote safety and community and decrease risks among first-year students as they transition into the College’s social scene. The frat ban forbids first-year students from attending events at Greek houses where alcohol is served until “noon on the Monday after Homecoming weekend, or the seventh Monday of the term, whichever is later,” according to the Greek Life website. It also hands out lofty punishments to students and Greek organizations where infractions occur — including preventing individuals from joining a Greek organization until after their sophomore year. According to an email sent to students on Friday, Sep. 16, this year’s frat ban will end on Monday, Oct. 31.

Gart: In Defense of TikTok

Like most adults across the world, my dad isn’t necessarily a tech whiz. He’s called me up before in efforts to figure out how to turn on the TV, install a new iPhone app or create a Spotify playlist. Of course, I happily oblige (although I couldn’t help being a little frustrated when he somehow managed to turn his phone’s default language to Croatian). Yet there is one element of his relationship with technology that drives me up a wall. For someone who spends hours of their daily routine on their phone, he’s intensely critical of me, and my other siblings, for the time we spend on our devices. 

Farquharson: Maintaining a Diverse Dartmouth

On Oct. 31, the Supreme Court is slated to hear two groundbreaking cases concerning the practice of race-conscious admissions at Harvard University and the University of North Carolina. Students For Fair Admissions, the organization challenging both universities, claims that affirmative action policies are discriminatory against Asian American students and are inconsistent with federal law. In its 1978 University of California v. Bakke decision, SCOTUS ruled in favor of affirmative action as one factor in admissions decision making. This set the precedent that race-conscious admissions aimed at improving diversity does not infringe upon equal protection under the law insofar as no racial quotas are used. However, today’s SCOTUS, with a 6-3 conservative majority, is arguably the most conservative in over a century and could endeavor to overturn liberal policies and past decisions, doubtlessly affecting affirmative action.

Dunleavy: Fueling Our Downfall

As climate change increases the frequency and magnitude of extreme temperatures, the need for climate adaptation places growing pressure on infrastructure. In the past few years, several power outages have occurred throughout the United States as city residents turned up the air conditioning or heating. Fossil fuel supporters blame renewable energy for the blackouts and propose increased use of fossil fuels to reliably meet higher energy demands. However, relying more on fossil fuels as a temporary solution will only exacerbate climate conditions causing blackouts.

Verbum Ultimum: Fatal Mismanagement

Dartmouth, to put it very mildly, is going through a rough patch. Last Monday, the Department of Safety and Security sent a campus-wide email alerting to the assault of a graduate student on Main Street. On Tuesday, The Dartmouth reported that the assault was being investigated as a hate crime by the Hanover Police Department. On Wednesday morning, interim Dean of the College Scott  Brown sent a campus-wide email announcing the death of Joshua Watson ’22, who died in his hometown of Indianapolis on Aug. 27 while on leave from the College. At 6:19 p.m, the Office of the President at the College followed up by expressing “outrage” over the graduate student attack. Just two hours later, at 8:21 p.m., we learned of the death of a second classmate, Sam Gawel ’23, who died by suicide in Hanover on Wednesday. And just yesterday, College President Phil Hanlon announced that Luke Veenhuis, a Thayer researcher, died over the weekend. 

Peters: Off Term: How It's Going

Modisett: Rush Events: Improved

Quealy: W.W. Epsilon

Milan: ‘Sorry, already gone’

When foreign graduate students arrive in Hanover for the first time, they don’t just contend with the culture of a new country. They must untangle Dartmouth’s housing bureaucracy — and it’s hard to say which is more confusing. Stories abound of international students that have been charged exorbitant rates for Upper Valley apartments — some of them little better than slums — while getting no help from Dartmouth’s Real Estate Office. And the College’s entire housing policy is oriented toward undergraduate housing.