The Dartmouth Homecoming Special Issue 2021 by The Dartmouth Newspaper

SOPHIE BAILEY/THE DARTMOUTH SENIOR STAFF

FRIDAY OCTOBER 8, 2021

THE DARTMOUTH HOMECOMING ISSUE

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Table of Contents

EDITORS’ NOTE

Q&A: first woman Editor-in-Chief of The Dartmouth Anne Bagamery ’78 2

As one of the three “big weekends,” homecoming always makes campus bustle. However, the typical celebratory weekend means just a little bit more this fall. Not only are alumni welcomed back to campus for the first time in years, but both the Classes of 2024 and 2025 are experiencing their first glimpse of the College’s ‘regular’ traditions. This November marks 50 years since Dartmouth’s Board of Trustees voted to implement coeducation at Dartmouth, forever changing the makeup of the College. Today, our small college looks very different than it did five decades ago — and it looks even more different than it did at its inception over two centuries ago. For our community — which students and alumni see as family and are eager to return ‘home’ to — to reach this place, it had to go through a lot of changes. In this issue, we look back at the “revolutions” that have made Dartmouth the more inclusive, albeit imperfect, community it is now — and we consider which ones still must happen to make our school a more welcoming and equitable home. As Dartmouth gathers this weekend, we encourage you to consider the change Dartmouth has undergone in the past and the change you — and we — hope to see in the future.

A history of the housing crisis at Dartmouth

LGBTQ+ alumni, students reflect on history of activism

College temporarily closes Alumni Gym after non-compliance

College welcomes alumni and students to Homecoming

Newport and Claremont experience spike in COVID-19 cases

Alleged 2018 Dartmouth shooter’s trial will likely be delayed

(Cartoon) Mobley: More Day Drinking!

Verbum Ultimum: Left on Read

Allen: Is Dartmouth a Welcome Home?

Arabian: Bring Us Back to the World

(Cartoon) Modisett: Welcome to the Woods

Reflection: A Voice Crying “I Don’t Know” In The Wilderness

Photo Essay: Movements Large and Small

Sincerely, Caitlin and Katherine

Q&A: Anne Bagamery ’78, the first woman Editorin-Chief of The Dartmouth BY LAUREN ADLER The Dartmouth Staff

AnneBagamery ’78 currently serves as the Paris-based correspondent for Law.com International. She began her journalistic career at The Dartmouth, where she served as the paper’s first female Editor-in-Chief starting in 1977. The Dartmouth sat down with Bagamery to discuss her time at the College, her important role in The Dartmouth’s own history and her experience as a journalist. You are a member of one of the first-ever official classes of female g raduates from Dartmouth who entered as freshmen. W hat was the College’s attitude towards coeducation like at that time? Did the attitude towards female students shift at all while you were still attending? AB: I would have to say that in my four years, the attitudes did not shift significantly. And I’m not sure I or too many of my fellow female classmates knew what those attitudes were until we got to campus. I mean, we knew the place had just gone co-ed a couple of years earlier, we knew we were going to be, in some sense, pioneers — for a lot of us, that was the attraction of going to Dartmouth. But I didn’t really understand how early it was for Dartmouth to feel as though it was a co-educational institution. And I’m not sure how many years it really took them, but it certainly wasn’t the four years that I was there. I graduated from an all-male institution that had some women in it. Part of the reason for that was the way that co-education was instituted. The way they added women, instead of simply going to gender-blind admissions, reducing the number of men and adding women, a goal was to keep the number of men fixed at what it was, which was 3000, and add women. And that created an atmosphere on campus that’s really hard to describe to people who are there now, when in some years, women outnumber men in the freshmen class and might even outnumber men on campus. That’s just mindblowing to someone who went during my years, because the number of men was fixed at 3000 and a thousand women were added. Imagine what that looks like on campus. You want to have a dance for the freshmen class of 750 men and 250 women, automatically there’s an imbalance. Word quickly spreads among the students that it was three men to one woman in the applicant pool. So does that mean that the women had to be three times

as smart, or does it mean that there were different standards for men and for women? All of these attitudes created a very, very unequal, tense atmosphere on campus between men and women. Some of the men on campus were very hostile to women. When I entered in 1974, the last all-male class was the Class of 1975. They joined an all-male institution and then the rules were changed on them with the co-education vote, so some of them resented that deeply. And since they were the seniors, they transmitted a lot of those attitudes to my class in the fraternities, the dorms, the activities and the sports teams. So there were a lot of men in my class who had never experienced an allmale Dartmouth, who didn’t apply to all-male Dartmouth and weren’t admitted to an all-male Dartmouth — they had no reason to expect an all-male Dartmouth. And yet, they had this nostalgia for an all-male Dartmouth that they never knew and were never going to know. It was very weird, and that didn’t change much in my four years there. I’m not saying that there weren’t people in the administration or faculty who didn’t try, but there’s only so much you can do to turn around that battleship.

When did you first become interested in journalism, and when did you realize that you wanted to pursue it as a career? AB: I was in ninth grade — I was 14 years old, and my English teacher at my high school outside Detroit handed me back a paper with a good grade. And she said, “This is really very good, you should consider writing fiction.” And I said, “I don’t like making things up.” And she said, “Oh, well then you should be a journalist.” And for some reason that was just a flash of light, like yes, that’s what I should do. So starting at age 14, ninth grade, I just grabbed every opportunity I could to work on my high school paper. I went to a girls school that was coordinated with the boys school, and I not only worked on the newspaper at the girls school — I also worked on the newspaper at the boys school. I mean, I wanted to do it all and I wanted to do it fast. I worked for our local paper as the high school correspondent. And then, when I chose a university, I chose Dartmouth in part because of its reputation, its location, its beauty, good language programs — but also because it had a very good student newspaper that was independent of the College, so you raised your own money and you wrote what you wanted. I thought that’d be great training.

KYLE MULLINS, Editor-in-Chief SAVANNAH ELLER & REILLY OLINGER, News Executive Editors COALTER PALMER, PALMER, Production Executive Editor

How did your time working at The Dartmouth prepare you for your subsequent career in journalism? AB: Working on a college paper, a volunteer organization where nobody really has professional chops and there’s no real grownup in the room — it doesn’t really teach you the basics of being a good journalist or being a good reporter. You need to learn that from people who have decades of experience and can transmit that to you, and you need to learn it in a professional setting where mistakes have consequences and so you don’t ever want to make them. A college paper isn’t really the real world. But what it did teach me is that I like teamwork. I liked working with a group of people to do something rather than doing something purely individual. And that’s helpful in journalism — whether you’re a reporter or an editor or you work on a TV show or something, the best of it is group work. The other thing it taught me was the amount of time and energy it takes to do it well. I’m not saying we always did it well at The Daily D, but the time and energy commitment definitely had to be there because at the end of the day, there’s a deadline. If your story isn’t in, or if it’s in badly, there are consequences for that: there’s an empty hole on the page or there’s something awful with your name on it that’s out in the world for all to read. So you better get it done, you’d better be committed to it, better put in the time. You occupy a very important place in the history of The Dartmouth. At the time, did you realize the impact that your work would have for future generations of student journalists at the College? How do you think that your tenure as editor in chief changed the paper? AB: I think at the time — just the very fact of being the first woman — people made a big deal out of it. I was just really happy to get the job, I didn’t think of it so much as something I would do with the fact that I was the first woman doing it foremost in my mind. I just wanted to get the job done. And it was very, very consuming — it’s a lot of time, it’s a lot of responsibility, and you’re managing people who used to be your peers and are now sort of working for you. That’s a challenge. And then there were some elements on campus — I recall resentful comments that I would get sometimes. But there were other elements of the campus that were

OLIVIA GOMEZ, Publisher

CATIE MCCARTHY & KATHERINE ARRINGTON Issue Editors

PRODUCTION EDITORS SOPHIE BAILEY, BAILEY Design Editor

BUSINESS DIRECTORS EMILY GAO & BRIAN WANG, WANG, Advertising and Finance Directors

NAINA BHALLA, BHALLA, Photography Editor GRANT PINKSTON, PINKSTON Templating Editor

SUBMISSIONS: We welcome letters and guest columns. All submissions must include the author’s name and affiliation with Dartmouth College, and should not exceed 250 words for letters or 700 words for columns. The Dartmouth reserves the right to edit all material before publication. All material submitted becomes property of The Dartmouth. Please email submissions to editor@thedartmouth.com.

excited about me being the editor, in part because they thought they might get more attention for certain kinds of issues. Female administrators would sometimes pressure me to include their point of view or give publicity to their projects, but I never saw myself as covering things in a different way because I was a woman. There were quite a few other top editors of the paper who were women in those days, so it was a very mixed group. One of the things that was really nice about working on The D at that time was that — on a campus that was so conscious of gender issues — The D was one of the rare places on campus where if you wanted to work hard and you were talented, gender didn’t come into it. You had a role to play and people expected you to do that. It was very relaxed, friendly — I don’t know if the word “non-threatening” is correct, but we checked all of that insanity around the gender balance at the door. I think of the people I worked on the paper with as brothers and sisters, and I still do. How has the experience of being a woman in journalism changed over the course of your career? Are there any significant changes that we still need to see in the newsroom? AB: I think jour nalism and newsrooms in general — even though they are definitely co-educational environments, the overwhelming ethos is still pretty rough and tumble. You joke around a lot. People are smart and funny and they try to outdo each other. And the newsrooms I’ve worked in are really fun places to be, but if I had to give them a gender character, they’re more male than female. On the other hand, there’s a female side of it, which is that they’re very cooperative places. People really do work together to put out the final product. They’re not macho places in that sense, and I understand that they used to be very, very, very macho places. By the time I got to the International Herald Tribune in 1994, there were an awful lot of women there and the feeling was really more like The D than anything else. It didn’t matter whether you were a man or woman — what mattered was your talent. I think one element that is unfortunate is that there are not enough women in newsroom leadership. And I think that that is a problem, not just for journalism, but for many other professions. What I do now primarily is cover the law. And there’s an awful lot of talk about how many women enter the profession and that very few make it to the top. Part of that is because of the demands of the work — the time demands, especially, are not conducive to having a full family life and many women, given the choice, will not give up the family life in order to have a stellar law career. And I think that that’s often the case in journalism — the demands of the work hours are not something that lends itself to worklife balance. So more could be done there. I know that it’s easier in France

with a good social safety net, but more could be done everywhere to make it easier and better for men and women to have a work life and a family life. I mean, men long for that too. What advice do you have for current Dartmouth students, especially female students, who are considering a career in journalism? AB: First of all, you’re presented with such a wonderful smorgasbord of courses to take with the Dartmouth liberal arts experience. Eat your fill — dabble here, there and everywhere, study whatever strikes your fancy. So start there. The building blocks of journalism are not necessarily knowledge, but curiosity and the ability to learn for the rest of your life. So learn to do that. And one way to do that is to just get out there and do it, pick something that you love to study and do it well. You’ll probably do it well, and you’ll probably do it quickly, which means you have more time to work on the paper. If you want a journalism career, you have to get out there and do it, not just because Dartmouth doesn’t have a journalism program, but because the best way to learn is by doing it and learning from your peers or superiors. It might be by messing up and being corrected and doing it over and over and over and over and over again, until finally, it becomes instinctive to do things the right way. And the only way you learn that is to go out and do it. This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity and length.

THE DARTMOUTH HOMECOMING ISSUE

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 8, 2021

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A history of the housing crisis at Dartmouth BY ANDREW SASSER The Dartmouth Staff

As Dartmouth approaches the 50th anniversary of its vote for coeducation, the growth of the College’s undergraduate population since that decision has impacted student access to on-campus housing. Over the last few decades, the decision to expand the student body with coeducation — combined with the lack of new dormitory construction — has led to many students struggling to find housing, especially during the fall term. When the Board of Trustees voted in November 1971 to institute coeducation and implement the Dartmouth Plan — now known as the D-Plan — the College anticipated increasing enrollment of undergraduates. According to a report by the faculty Committee on Year-Round Operation in September 1971, the implementation of both coeducation and the D-Plan would allow the College to enroll up to 3,400 students by the 1975–76 academic year, up from about 3,000 students. In deciding to implement coeducation, the Board of Trustees opted to increase the total number of admitted students to ensure that the same number of men would be admitted as before coeducation. College archivist Peter Carini previously told The Dartmouth that the primary “selling point” of co-education paired with the D-plan was to “free up dorm space” without “displacing any male applicants.” “[We have an] earnest hope that Dartmouth would remain competitive in male numbers with Harvard, Yale and Princeton...to have a large and diverse enough body of undergraduates to staff [male] athletics teams without skewing admissions,” former Dean of the College Carroll Brewster wrote in a letter to the Board of Trustees while they were discussing coeducation in Sept. 1971. The prospect of decreasing the number of male students admitted to the College to maintain an undergraduate population of 3,200 students was relatively unpopular among both students and alumni. In a January

1969 editorial titled “The Sooner the Better,” one Dartmouth student wrote that he “generally opposed cutting the male enrollment” of Dartmouth as a “permanent solution” to make co-education possible. In a 1971 survey of alumni by the College, only 20% of alumni indicated that they would approve of decreasing the enrollment of male students by 1,000 to accommodate 1,000 more women. In contrast, some 44% of alumni supported admitting 1,000 more women, if there was “expanded use” of summer term and “expanded off campus programs” to keep the number of students in residence around the average of 3,000 at the time. With the decision to increase the size of the class, the College acknowledged that it would need to improve the “physical plant” of the College to accommodate more students. The Sept. 1971 CYRO Report noted that the College had already been facing overcrowding in Thayer Hall — now known as the Class of 1953 Commons — as well as dorm spaces. “35 students are housed in rooms which are seriously overcrowded while crowding exists in another 145 rooms,” the committee wrote at the time. “With the need to improve some existing dormitories as residential communities, a new facility that can accommodate at least 200 persons is needed.” In the years following the implementation of coeducation, some alumni voiced concerns about the potential for overcrowding. Dan Nelson ’75 wrote that during his time as a student, the solution to overcrowding was to “simply jam more students into available spaces” by converting single rooms to doubles and doubles to triples. Ellis Briggs ’21 wrote in an April 1975 issue of the Dartmouth Alumni Magazine that the decision to implement year-round education as a “panacea” created an “uproar in housing.” In response to the housing crisis, the Board of Trustees voted in April 1975 to approve the construction of a new “apartment style dormitory for 72 students” near the River Cluster

OLIVER DE JONGHE/THE DARTMOUTH STAFF

Since the vote for full coeducation at the College, Dartmouth has felt the effects of large class sizes on dorm space.

and also opted to use the Hanover Inn Motor Lodge — now The Lodge, a South House housing community dorm — for fall, winter and spring student housing. However, in spite of new dormitory construction and renovations, the housing crisis in Hanover has persisted through the decades. In 1994, some 180 students were left without housing for the fall term when a record 3845 students enrolled for the term. To deal with the problem, the College at the time used dormitory lounges and faculty apartments to house some students, and offered reduced rent rates and higher dorm and class priorities to students willing to take an off-term. Facing a similar crisis in 2001 due to an unexpectedly high admissions yield for the Class of 2005, the College opted to create six “Tree Houses” on the lawn in front of the River Cluster to accomodate students on the housing waitlist. The houses, which were regarded as some of the “worst housing on campus,” were ultimately torn down in the fall of 2006. In 2014,

the large number of housing requests for fall term, due “largely” to the size of the Class of 2018, caused some common rooms to be converted into living spaces, and some students were placed into “accommodations they did not request.” More recently, the COVID-19 pandemic has caused demand for fall on-campus housing to rise after a year of remote learning has left students eager to access campus. Coupled with a limited number of study abroad programs running this term, the housing crisis is plaguing the College yet again. As a result, the College offered $5,000 to up to 200 students who were willing to give up their on-campus housing — and once again, certain common spaces were converted into living spaces and larger singles and doubles became doubles and triples. With a lack of housing options on campus, students have looked to Hanover and the surrounding Upper Valley area to find housing — which students described as “nearly impossible” to find on such short-

notice. The high rent prices in the area causes problems for the undergraduate and graduate populations alike, with graduate students caught between high on-campus housing prices, a lack of available off-campus housing due to the increased number of undergraduates living off-campus and the large enrollment of this year’s incoming Tuck School of Business class. Last August, the Casque and Gauntlet building — used by the senior society of the same name — was leased to Tuck to be used for graduate student housing. While there have been proposals to create more housing in Hanover, there has been little progress. A plan proposed by parents to create modular housing was rejected by the College this summer, parents told The Dartmouth. A similar proposal to build a dorm complex at the site currently occupied by House Center A — commonly known as “The Onion” — and several tennis courts was put on hold by the pandemic. Though fall is now in full swing, Dartmouth’s housing problems will likely not be over soon.

LGBTQ+ alumni, students reflect on history of activism BY DANIEL MODESTO The Dartmouth Staff

When Mike Lowenthal ’90 was an undergraduate, the campus culture was so unwelcoming to queer students that he questioned his decision to attend Dartmouth, wondering whether he should have gone to somewhere like Oberlin College, which was known for its “famously liberal” climate, instead. “It was really a mixed bag full of conflicting feelings,” Lowenthal said. “On the one hand, it was a pretty tough place to be gay in the late ‘80s — there were very few queer students, or openly out students on campus. There was really only one out faculty member, there were no LGBT studies [or] courses, there was no affinity housing [and] there was a sort of overwhelmingly conservative atmosphere.” Lowenthal recalled arriving on campus sometime after The Dartmouth Review had published details of a Gay Student Association meeting in 1984, which he said made being a queer student more “challenging.” In the publication, the Review outed several members by revealing personal information, including the names of two club officers.

In the years since the GSA incident and as the U.S. has become more accepting of LGBTQ+ identities in general, Dartmouth has expanded resources for LGBTQ+ students in an effort to create a more inclusive campus. The College boasts the Office of Pluralism and Leadership, which, in addition to offering advising services and leadership development programs, provides queer students with resources and programming for Pride month. Fall of 2014 also saw Triangle House, a living learning community and LGBTQ+ affinity house, open to students. In 2021, Campus Pride, a non-profit LGBTQ advocacy group, gave Dartmouth a 4.5 star rating for LGBTQ+ inclusivity, good for the friendliest college in New Hampshire. While Dartmouth has only created a support system for LGBTQ+ students in the last few decades, a queer movement on campus existed prior to these institutional efforts — one that relied heavily on student activism in order to accomplish its goals. Often times, homophobic incidents or attacks on the queer community spurred activism that created change. Alec Scott ’89, who worked at The Dartmouth during his time as a student, recalled that the “mainstream

of campus” didn’t have any spaces for LGBTQ+ students — noting that students who attended GSA meetings did so secretly, in light of the conservative campus climate. According to Scott, the hostility LGBTQ+ students faced when he was on campus was not directly from the administration, but rather from the Review and the fraternity system. Scott recalled an incident where a gay friend of his rushed the now derecognized Beta Theta Pi, which was then widely considered “the football house.” According to Scott, upon seeing his face in a slideshow of those who had rushed, many of the fraternity brothers catcalled him. Many queer students challenged the homophobic environment of campus, pushing the administration to make changes and using the outlets available to them to achieve their goals. Lowenthal recalled that in the years after the GSA incident, he and other students founded a queer newspaper called “In Your Face,” which he said was intended to give readers “a little sense of our spirit.” He said that in addition topushing back against homophobic incidents, the group’s goals also included lobbying the College to expand its non-discrimination clause to include discrimination against sexual

Walk & Talk at Occom

President Hanlon invites any member of the Dartmouth community to join him on Wednesday mornings for a walk around Occom Pond throughout Fall term, weather and travel permitting. Departing from the President’s House every Wednesday at 9:00 am Don’t miss this opportunity to enjoy the beauty of the outdoors while discussing anything that’s on your mind with President Hanlon. He’s eager to get to know you and hear about your Dartmouth experience.

orientation. “The CIA and the Defense Department were allowed to recruit on campus and back then — before the don’t ask, don’t tell [policy], those institutions were explicitly homophobic and anti-gay in their hiring,” Lowenthal said. “So we were arguing [that] you can’t say that you’re for non-discrimination and then invite these discriminatory agencies and employers on the campus.” Eventually, Lowenthal said the College issued a “strong” public letter to the Secretary of Defense asking the government to reconsider the policy. John Brett ’00’s time at Dartmouth, as he describes it, was marked by a transition period, where students were looking for “social spaces on campus that we might claim as safer.” Through alumni donations and involvement — in addition to student activism — students gained resources at the College, including an LGBTQ+ contact and a resource room in Collis. He said that the changes in campus environment were largely reflective of the societal changes occuring in the United States at the time. “The Dartmouth campus isn’t immune to broader social shifts and broader social change,” Brett said. “Within wider society, beyond campus, more and more people were coming out in the late 90’s, early 2000s, and that impacted who showed up on campus and the confidence that we had. The internet, of course, also played a significant role in people being able to affirm their identities — prior to arrival on campus or even on campus — [and] being able to find each other through a variety of queer platforms.” Though Dartmouth began increasing the number of LGBTQ+ resources for students, incidents of homophobia continued to be reported. In one incident in 2011, homophobic graffiti was found on the ground floor of Fahey-McLane Residence Hall, according to Guillermo Rojas Fernandez ’13. Following the incident, Rojas Fernandez noted a lack of action by the College in addressing the hateful messages. According to Fernandez, these events occurred at a time when it was still “really hard to be queer and trans at Dartmouth.” He recalled being in conversations with then-LGBTQ+ advisor Pam Meisner and then-Dean of the College Charlotte Johnson about creating an LGBTQ+ affinity house, which was promised every year, but still had not materialized by his senior year. As he prepared for graduation, Rojas Fernandez said many queer

and marginalized students’ frustration with the lack of administrative action reached a “boiling point” in the spring of 2013. He and other students staged a protest at the annual Dimensions show for prospective students that he said represented a “realistic picture of what it’s like to come to Dartmouth when you’re [a] marginalized [student].” The protest garnered significant national attention, and its effects were noted not only in a drop in the yield rate for the incoming Class of 2017 but also in the number of applicants for the Class of 2018 — which decreased by 14% the following year. Rojas Fernandez noted that soon after the Dimensions protest, the Board of Trustees approved the construction of Triangle House in September 2013. Among current students, many say that the campus climate is welcoming towards queer folks. Justin Herrera ’24 said that he has found most of the Dartmouth community to be accepting, noting that there is a “bonding” that occurs between queer students which creates a sense of community. Ana Noriega ’24 said that she did not anticipate “how supportive [the Dartmouth community] was going to be,” adding that the College “[was] really good” at helping her during the early stages of her transition. Though new to the College, Emma Tsosie ’25 said that the Dartmouth community has been accepting so far — noting that the sharing of one’s pronouns was normalized and “pretty common.” However, all three students argued that intersectionality plays an important role in their experiences, and noted that it is difficult to be a queer person of color at the College. “There are some instances at Dartmouth where queer resources, queer classes [and] queer education will be centered around whiteness and the white gaze and white perspective — [which] makes it uncomfortable as a queer person of color to navigate,” Herrera said. As a queer, Native student at Dartmouth, Tsosie recognizes how both identites have “a lot of history and weight behind them.” However, she believes that the experiences of queer students of color should be discussed more frequently. “I think intersectionality is so important to talk about and not spoken about enough,” Tsosie said. “It’s a huge topic that I think a lot of people aren’t very educated on or don’t really know much about — the experience of being a person of color and queer… and the sort of baggage that comes with [it].”

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 8, 2021

THE DARTMOUTH HOMECOMING ISSUE

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NEWS OF THE WEEK

College temporarily closes Alumni Gym after non-compliance By SOPHIE LEWIS The Dartmouth

This article was originally published on October 7, 2021. In response to student noncompliance with the indoor mask mandate at Alumni Gymnasium and some noncompliance with weekly testing, the College closed the gym for general recreational activity on Wednesday and sent testing reminder emails on Monday. Despite the closure, club sports teams were still able to hold practices in the Alumni Gymnasium, and the West Gym testing center remained open. A few days earlier on Monday, students who failed to complete COVID-19 testing last week received emails from the College instructing them to get tested within 48 hours. Mask Compliance During the Sept. 29 “Community Conversations,” interim athletics director Peter Roby warned of a potential 24-hour gym closure. “If we can’t keep the mask-wearing going at a high rate, it may force us to try to get everybody’s attention about the fact that it’s a privilege, and close the facility, maybe for 24 hours — make

some people angry,” Roby said. Interim Provost David Kotz said that gym staff have struggled to promote consistent mask wearing. He added that instances of verbal abuse from gym patrons who refuse to wear masks properly forced at least one student worker to quit their job. “The goal here is to remind people that use of the recreational facilities is a privilege and that masking is required in order to use those facilities, and we hope that when they reopen that people will remember that they need to use them responsibly, and that includes treating the staff and the student workers appropriately,” Kotz said. Melissa Chau GR’22, a weekend manager at Alumni Gymnasium, said her job duties include hourly rounds to ensure compliance with masking guidelines. “Typically what happens is that you ask [gym patrons] to put on a mask, and they go and put on the mask, and then once you leave, they’ll take it off again,” she said. “It does feel unsafe, but for me and for a lot of people that work desk positions, we are typically socially distanced.” Chau said that she personally supports the gym closure. “It does tell students that the College is being serious,” she said. “There are

consequences to our actions in that we should probably be more responsible as a student body in protecting the health of others, because there are people like adults who go to the gym, who have families, who interact with the community of Hanover.” Associate athletic director for club sports and intramurals Heather Somers wrote in an email to indoor club sports members on Tuesday that the College would be announcing the 24-hour closing of West Gym, Zimmerman Fitness Center and the squash and racquetball courts later that day. The email, obtained by The Dartmouth, cited “several issues with the general student body” as the reason for closing and noted that club sports teams had largely been in compliance with the rules. “The hope is to get people’s attention so that overall compliance and respect for the College’s policy and building staff improves,” Somers wrote. While a sign was put up outside the front entrance to the gym, the rest of the general student body was not otherwise informed of the gym closure. Testing Between 4:00 p.m. and 5:00 p.m, students who had missed their

COVID-19 test the previous week received testing reminder emails, according to five of the emails obtained by The Dartmouth. These messages — the first of their kind to be sent out this term — directed students to complete their test within two days and informed them that testing hours at West Gym had been extended until 5 p.m. that day. However, due to a “communications mishap,” the testing site had closed at 3 p.m., and recipients of the reminder email were turned away at the door. Kotz described the situation as “frustrating.” “Communications mishap is a perfect description,” Kotz said. “I don’t know the details, but I do understand that there was some miscommunication that caused the center to close earlier than what it was supposed to.” Colin Kearns ’25 was one of several dozen students who was turned away from the testing site shortly before 5 p.m. Kearns said he had been getting tested weekly, until long lines at the testing facility forced him to skip a test last week. “I asked my friend who was in line how long they’d been waiting — they [were] like halfway in line, and it had been 45 minutes,” he said, noting his experience last week. “I made an

appointment expecting that they would do it at the appointment time, but didn’t expect to have to wait an hour and a half to get it.” Kotz said that the College is still working to coordinate the logistics of at-home COVID-19 testing, which he hopes will make the testing process more convenient for students. Before any requirements are relaxed, the College wants to see better compliance with weekly testing and mask wearing, according to Kotz. In addition to gym facilities, administrators are concerned about inconsistent mask wearing in the library. “We would like to see 100% of students wearing masks now so that we can continue to provide access to much-loved library spaces as well as support for your research and learning,” associate librarian Jennifer Taxman wrote in an email statement to The Dartmouth. “We look forward to the day when masks are no longer required so we can greet everyone with a smiling face.” Kotz said he can’t provide details on disciplinary actions that may be taken if students continue to disregard College COVID-19 protocol. “We obviously would rather not have to impose any consequences,” he said.

College welcomes alumni and students back to Homecoming BY PARKER O’HARA The Dartmouth

This article was originally published on October 7, 2021. After a year-long recess from the tradition, Homecoming will officially return to Hanover this weekend. Both students and alumni look forward to a weekend of festivities, community and celebration. Events are set to begin on Friday, Oct. 8 and continue through Saturday afternoon, according to the Dartmouth Alumni Homecoming page. On Friday evening festivities will begin with the freshman Homecoming parade, followed by the bonfire. On Saturday, Dartmouth Football will host Yale University at 1 p.m. at Memorial Field, with class reunions taking place outside on the Alumni Gym lawn after the football game. Matt Koff ’25 said there seems to be

a much anticipated return to a sense of normalcy. “I’m really happy to see the energy on campus,” Koff said, adding that there seems to be “just a lot of excitement, happiness, and relief.” According to an email statement from vice president of alumni relations Cheryl Bascomb, in a normal year, the College typically anticipates close to 5,000 alumni to visit for Homecoming weekend. However, she said she could not provide an expected estimate for visitors this weekend. “This year, much is unknown in terms of how people will want to gather during the time of [COVID-19] that I couldn’t tell you what numbers are likely to show up,” Bascomb wrote. According to director of alumni engagement Joe Piedrafite, though the arrival of possibly thousands of alumni from across the country may cause some concern of a COVID-19 spike, all existing safety measures will remain

in place through the weekend. These measures, according to the Dartmouth Health and Prevention website, include required indoor masking and weekly testing for students, faculty and staff. Additionally, Piedrafite noted that most of the Homecoming programming will take place outdoors, further minimizing the risk of community spread. Besides in-person events, the College will also be offering virtual opportunities to participate in Homecoming. According to Bascomb, Dean of Admissions Lee Coffin will lead a session about college admissions on Friday, followed by a “Back to School Q&A” about the Orozco Murals on Saturday, which will be hosted by art history professor Mary Coffey. Both events will take place on Zoom, according to the online Homecoming schedule. Bonfire build chair Kashan Mahmood ’24 is working both to help construct the wooden numbers that sit atop the bonfire and recruit other

students to assist in building the bonfire structure itself. This year will diverge from past years in that two classes’ wooden numbers — the Class of 2024 and the Class of 2025 — will sit atop the structure together, according to Mahmood. Because Homecoming was in an entirely virtual format last year, both classes will be experiencing their first in-person Homecoming bonfire. As a ’24, Mahood said he is especially excited for this weekend. “I’m just excited to experience the Dartmouth traditions with my friends,” Mahmood said. “I feel like I’m a college student, rather than feeling so isolated like we did last year.” Alec Stern ’25 said the bonfire is the most “uniquely Dartmouth” tradition at Homecoming, particularly for freshmen. “I’m definitely looking forward to the bonfire,” Stern said. “I’ve heard so much about it from upperclassmen, and

it’s something so special to this school.” According to Hanover fire chief Martin McMillan, in cooperation with the Hanover Fire Department, the College established a safety plan in 2018 that included a downsized version of the bonfire — designed by engineering professor Douglas Van Citters — the addition of a “collapse zone” and a limit on the number of times students were permitted to circle the bonfire. In past years, freshmen would traditionally run around the fire the number of times equivalent to their graduating year; however, beginning in 2018, the new rules allowed students to walk around the fire only once. Despite the perennial safety concerns, McMillan remains optimistic about the event. “We want this tradition to continue,” McMillan said. “We want it to happen in a safe manner and we fully support the College and the changes that they’ve made.”

Newport and Claremont experience spike in COVID-19 cases By Andrew sasser The Dartmouth Staff

This article was originally published on October 7, 2021. While cases of COVID-19 remain low in Hanover and surrounding communitieslikeNorwichandLebanon, other towns in New Hampshire — many of which have seen higher rates of vaccine hesitancy and lack mask mandates — have recently experienced spikes in active cases. According to data from the New Hampshire Department of Health and Human Services, Newport and Claremont — two towns in northern Sullivan County — have both experienced increases in COVID-19 case counts in recent days. As of Wednesday, Newport, with a population of roughly 6,350, had 62 cases and Claremont, with a population of roughly 13,000, had 100 cases. In comparison, Hanover, with a population of roughly 1,300, has eight active cases, and Lebanon, with a population of roughly 13,800, has 17

active cases. One potential reason for the recent spike in cases in both towns, as well as Sullivan County more broadly, is low vaccination rates. Sullivan County’s vaccination rate is 56%, according to data from The New York Times, below New Hampshire’s 62% and Grafton County’s 67%. Both Newport and Claremont fall still below that. According to Newport Fire Chief Steve Yannuzi, though the vaccine is now “readily available” at free, county-operated vaccination clinics, only 47.9% of the town is fully vaccinated. Overall, Yannuzi said that turnout to recent vaccination clinics has remained “very poor.” “Lack of a vaccine is not the issue,” Yannuzi said. “I would like to see everyone get vaccinated, but it is a personal choice for people.” Yannuzi said that one potential reason for the difference in vaccination between Newport and towns like Hanover and Lebanon is the difference in demographics between the two towns. He said that unlike Hanover,

Newport is a “blue-collar working town.” Claremont city manager Ed Morris said that he has seen some vaccine hesitancy in Claremont, where only 44.6% percent of the population is fully vaccinated. He added that he thinks the increase in cases in Claremont is due to both the city’s comparatively large size and that it has a “very transient” population. “We’re quite a bit bigger than everyone else,” Morris said. “We’re a shopping hub where people come to congregate or go out to dinner, and most of the communities around us are much smaller, so many people come to us for testing.” Morris also said that while there has been a “large increase” in the number of COVID-19 cases in Claremont, there has been no corresponding increase in hospitalizations or deaths. However, he said that according to the DHHS website, Claremont and its neighboring towns in Sullivan County are currently experiencing “significant transmission,” whereas Grafton County is experiencing

“moderate transmission.” While both Claremont and Newport have experienced significant increases in their case counts, neither town has opted to implement an indoor mask mandate. According to Yannuzi, Newport is currently following state level guidance on masking policy, which only “recommends” that unvaccinated individuals wear masks. Similarly, Morris said that the city council of Claremont only voted to “strongly recommend” that residents wear masks indoors. “The only policy with masks we have is that town employees must wear masks in public spaces, like City Hall, when we are in a state of significant transmission,” Morris said. “We also ask that public employees try to wear masks when in congregate settings, and try to socially distance when possible.” However, while Claremont and Newport differ from Hanover on having an indoor mask mandate, schools in Newport currently require mask wearing for students and staff, a policy in line with the requirement for schools

in Hanover. School Administrative Unit 43 school board chair Jenna Darling said that while the SAU43 school board, which oversees four schools in Newport, voted to start the year with optional mask wearing, it has since changed its policies to require all students and staff to wear them. “The [SAU43] board amended our reopening plan so that masks were optional if there were fewer than three cases in a school building,” Darling said. “However, due to a large number of positive COVID-19 cases in the district, on Sept. 23, the board voted to implement mandatory masks.” Darling added that because of the division in Newport over mask-wearing and a “lack of guidance” from the state government, the board was put in a “difficult” position about whether or not to mandate masks. She added that the SAU43 board plans to review the mask policy again in October at the next board meeting, and that the board continues to prioritize the health and safety of students and staff on the board.

Alleged 2018 Dartmouth shooter’s trial will likely be delayed By SHENA HAN The Dartmouth

This article was originally published on October 5, 2021. The trial of Gage Young — one of two individuals accused in a 2018 driveby shooting incident near Dartmouth’s campus — was originally set to go to court this October but continues to experience delays. Young’s trial will most likely be delayed until November, according to Bruce Jasper — counsel representing Hector Correa, an alleged accomplice in the case. According to Grafton County attorney Marcie Hornick, as of what was meant to be a final pretrial hearing last Wednesday, Superior Court judge Lawrence MacLeod had yet to rule on several motions that would be integral

to the outcome of the trial. “[MacLeod] needs more time to schedule arguments about the motions that have been filed,” Hornick said. Young is accused of firing a single shot from a passing car on School Street on Nov. 2, 2018 and injuring Thomas Elliot, a Providence College student who was visiting Dartmouth at the time. Correa was allegedly driving the car that night. Elliot survived his injuries and, according to Hornick, will serve as a witness for the prosecution. According to the Valley News, many of the motions revolve around whether key pieces of evidence will be considered admissible in the trial. Until the judge makes his final rulings, both the prosecution and defense will be unable to go forward with their arguments. One essential ruling will be

on the prosecution’s motion for a consolidation of the trials of Young and Correa. Correa, then 17, was allegedly the driver of the car he and Young were in at the time of the shooting. According to Norwich criminal defense attorney George Ostler ’77, a consolidated case would allow Correa to choose not to testify or be crossexamined in court, thus benefiting the prosecution. “In a criminal trial, statements made by a defendant are admissible in a prosecutor’s case without the defendant testifying,” Ostler said. Without the ability to cross-examine Correa on statements he gave to police after his arrest, Young’s attorney, Richard Guerriero, would be limited in his ability to discredit the parts of that testimony which may implicate his client, Ostler added. Guerriero

has objected to the consolidation, according to the Valley News. Jasper said he cannot confirm his stance regarding consolidation, adding that he has not yet received any notice regarding hearings in Correa’s case. “I’m guessing that I probably will [object],” Jasper said. “But I don’t really have any other comment.” Ostler noted that in his experience, consolidations are more likely to be granted at the federal level compared to the state level. According to the Valley News, Young and Correa are facing charges of first- and second-degree assault with a firearm and reckless conduct with a deadly weapon. Correa will be tried as an adult in this case. Correa was allegedly driving the car when Young fired the shot, though Young’s attorneys have attempted to

cast doubt on that claim. Jasper noted that should Young’s attorneys argue that Correa actually fired the gun, they would be at odds. Young’s and Correa’s cases thus far have been marked by numerous sealed documents and closed-door hearings, according to the Valley News. Hornick declined to comment on the reasons that cause delays in bringing the case to trial, saying that much of the information is currently closed to the public. However, Hor nick said she is optimistic that the case would eventually reach a resolution. “The matter needs to be resolved,” she said. “The criminal justice system needs to do its job.” Yo u n g ’s c o u n s e l R i c h a r d Guerriero could not be reached for comment.

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 8, 2021

THE DARTMOUTH HOMECOMING ISSUE

(OPINION) DOMINIQUE MOBLEY ’22: MORE DAY DRINKING!

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THE DARTMOUTH HOMECOMING ISSUE

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THE DARTMOUTH EDITORIAL BOARD

Verbum Ultimum: Left on Read

Dartmouth hasn’t fully addressed the issues we’ve brought up in the past, so we are reintroducing them to the conversation today.

For decades, the Verbum Ultimum — a weekly column written by members of the Editorial Board — has been a hallmark of The Dartmouth. We write the Verbum each week because, though we love our school, we also see great room for improvement. Historically, in the face of an often intransigent administration, the column has helped to lift student opinions to their ears and hold administrators accountable to their mission of making Dartmouth — our home — more inclusive, equitable and responsive to students. However, even the briefest exploration of this paper’s recent archives reveals that many student appeals for meaningful change have repeatedly fallen on deaf ears, in some cases for decades. Even as Dartmouth’s endowment and administration swell to record size, many of the most pressing issues faced by previous generations of students — including housing, fundraising, admissions and mental health — remain perennial challenges to this day. Thus, instead of writing a Verbum Ultimum on a new topic entirely, as is the norm, we offer up a look back at four editorials of Dartmouth past that the College seems to have largely ignored. These four pieces discuss issues that we deem especially integral to both the Dartmouth student body and broader community and that, until addressed, will undoubtedly continue to prevent meaningful and much-needed revolutions from occurring at this College. Ever since co-education and the 1972 introduction of the D-Plan substantially expanded the on-campus student population, one of these perennial crises has been housing. For at least the last decade and a half, the College has effectively ignored the issue, completely failing to prioritize the construction of new dormitories — no new dorm has been built since the McLaughlin Cluster in 2006 — even while it has admitted larger classes than ever in recent years. This housing crisis

came to a head this fall, when the administration took the absurd step of offering students $5,000 to give up their housing. Our Verbum from July 2, 2021, titled “‘It’s the Housing, Stupid,’” proposed the only real solution to this persistent issue: The College and the town of Hanover must “immediately prioritize the construction of more housing units.” In the months since the publication of this editorial, the administration has yet to announce the construction of new dormitories, and the residents of Hanover shut down initiatives that may have expanded housing supply at this summer’s Town Meeting. Until the College takes meaningful action, students will inevitably continue to suffer from overcrowding, poor living conditions and bizarre half-solutions like lotteries and lounge conversions. Another problem the College has failed to address is its ethically dubious approach to alumni donations. In a Verbum earlier this year entitled “Dealing with Donors,” which pointed out the troubling pasts of many of the namesakes of campus buildings, the Editorial Board called on the College to “stop selling the names of its buildings to the highest bidder,” Instead, the Verbum argued, buildings should be named for Dartmouth alumni who have made significant contributions or impacts in their fields. Again, the College ignored students’ call to action, leaving the names of deeply problematic alumni plastered on buildings around campus — including the name of financier Leon Black ’73, who famously bankrolled convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein to the tune of $150 million dollars and has recently faced accusations of sexual harrassment and abuse. As “Dealing with Donors” further notes, the name of the Irving Energy Institute — which takes after Arthur Irving, a billionaire petroleum tycoon — stands in direct contradiction with the College’s announced commitment to sustainable energy. In light of this nonsensical

STAFF COLUMNIST SPENCER ALLEN ’23

Is Dartmouth a Welcome Home? The College must do more to create a welcome campus for all students.

“Welcome home” is one of the most recited phrases first-year students at Dartmouth hear. From their acceptance and First-Year Trips to orientation and beyond, these two words contextualize a student’s transition to, and time at, Dartmouth. This phrase encourages students to take comfort in Dartmouth and to consider their peers and the broader Dartmouth community like a chosen family. The phrase has a special importance this weekend as we celebrate Homecoming — a time when all those who consider the College home converge upon Hanover to celebrate in unity. But is Dartmouth so deserving of being called home? Of course, there are many students for whom Dartmouth is unequivocally a home: a place where they feel emotionally safe, where they can return to in times of need. While no single group is a monolith, I can imagine that many of the students who identify as cisgender, heterosexual, affluent white men exist at the College with ease; after all, Dartmouth was built to support them. I can also imagine that those students whose parents attended Dartmouth — legacy students who were tied to Dartmouth before they could walk — similarly feel at home here. However, not all students fit these molds — in fact, most don’t. That’s not to say that Dartmouth cannot be a home for students who don’t strictly fit these characteristics, but the College does have to work harder to make space for students whose place here is not a given. And, far too often, it doesn’t. For example, let’s think about first-generation, low-income students. As a high-status institution, the College has a “hidden curriculum” — a term scholars use to describe the social rules like how to dress and how to talk to professors which non-FGLI students tend to know — that FGLI students must

pick up on after coming to Dartmouth. These hidden, informal regulations often lead to missteps for FGLI students when interacting with the nonFGLI students who are privy to these rules. The First Year Student Enrichment Program helps FGLI students learn Dartmouth’s hidden curriculum and navigate the social and academic spaces that exist here. Originally founded in 2009, FYSEP has provided a space of comfort for hundreds of students in the last 12 years — including me and my closest friends. The program builds such a strong community through its preorientation program for first-year students and its continued support system as students proceed through Dartmouth. However, having this community on campus can only do so much. We collectively still struggle to get our footing at Dartmouth; the cliché “fake it ‘til you make it” is ripe with truth for us as we dart between the web of social structures that impede our learning and socializing. However, a home is not a place to “fake” any part of yourself in exchange for feeling accepted. Within FYSEP, many of us feel an instant connection to someone once we learn that they too are a FYSEP student, and we feel free to be authentically ourselves with those new connections. However, those same instantaneous connections often fail to materialize when we interact with students with no connection to FYSEP. Dartmouth’s self-proclaimed sense of homeliness also evades many queer students. In relatively recent memory, Dartmouth hasn’t exactly been the most welcoming place for queer students. Arguably the most notable example of queer students being subjected to a hostile campus environment comes from 1984, when a reporter from The Dartmouth Review invaded a secret meeting of the GayStraight Alliance. Sent by none other than Fox

STAFF COLUMNIST KAMI ARABIAN ‘24

Bring Us Back to the World

In the last 70 years, Dartmouth has transformed from a small campus in New Hampshire to a community spanning continents. Today, this transformation is in danger. In the aftermath of the Second World War, as the United States led a wave of unprecedented international reforms, Dartmouth College had a revolution of its own. Witnessing the horrible failures of diplomacy that contributed to the deaths of 75 million people across the globe, John Sloan Dickey, president of the College from 1945 to 1970, vowed to foster a generation of global-minded youth. He proclaimed the immortal words, now featured in the Common Application and admissions literature: “The world’s troubles are your troubles…and there is nothing wrong with the world that better human beings cannot fix.” Dickey believed that fostering global awareness fosters global solutions. True to his cause, he committed himself to introducing students to international issues in his capacities as professor and president. He taught a course titled “Global Issues,” aimed at introducing students to the problems of the world. During his tenure as president, Dickey expanded our campus beyond the wilderness of Hanover by founding a Northern Studies program, a Russian Civilization department and multiple foreign study programs. Even in death, president Dickey continued to inspire generations of Dartmouth students through the Dickey Center for International Understanding, an institution dedicated to his memory and values. The center

offers grants for students to “travel the globe to participate in a wide range of internships and fellowships,” giving participants the opportunity to “craft their own international experience.” Over the last few decades, such programs have elevated Dartmouth to a small but significant force on the world stage. Today, however, while international issues have become no less important, the College seems to have forgotten Dickey’s noble mission. Last winter, The Dartmouth reported that the Frank J. Guarini Institute for International Education was forced to “slash funding for offcampus programs and scrap a significant number of its study abroad trips” due to budget cuts. This decision sparked outrage among students, alumni and faculty, and rightfully so. In an interview with The Dartmouth, Spanish and Portuguese department chair Isabel Lozano-Renieblas — who, along with other faculty, was not consulted prior to this decision — explained, “I think that off-campus programs are essential, it’s the core of the education at Dartmouth and many of these testimonies state that it is probably the best experience in the College.” Further, she warned that the “main ramification [of the program cuts] — and the most important — is the attack [on] our mission as educators of global citizens.” Today, the Guarini Institute is struggling to preserve the essence of its global mission by

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 8, 2021

nomenclature, we again urge the administration to revisit its practice of selling the privilege of being memorialized on campus to the highest, potentially morally corrupt, bidder and consider whether its handling of donations is truly in the spirit of Dartmouth as an institution. Preferential admissions for legacy students is another practice that has troubled the College and the minds of students for years. A 2019 Verbum, succinctly titled “End Legacy Admissions,” put it bluntly, and we echo that Editorial Board’s call: “It’s time that Dartmouth abandon legacy preference in admissions, level the playing field and finally begin to value merit over money.” It was time then, and it still is. Legacy admissions preference receives a strikingly low amount of public support and reinforces financial and social disparities. The practice, which began at Dartmouth in 1922, was originally designed to reduce the number of Eastern European immigrants who were admitted to the College, and today serves to unduly provide already privileged and desirable applicants with yet another unnecessary and unfair advantage. While some have argued that ending legacy admissions may disincentivize alumni donations, data from universities who have done away with legacy preference does not support that argument. And yet, legacy status remains a factor in admissions decisions at Dartmouth. Finally, despite repeated calls for reform, the College’s approach to mental health remains woefully inadequate. Last year, three students — Beau DuBray ’24, Connor Tiffany ’24 and Lamees Kareem ’22 — died between November and April; the first two, we now know, died by suicide. Despite student pleas for meaningful action, the administration’s initial response was virtual silence. It took the death of Elizabeth Reimer ’24 by suicide in May to prompt meaningful action by the College, which soon after announced the hiring of a few new counselors and a partnership with the JED Foundation. While these measures are steps in the right direction, they were not, and still are not, enough. In a May Verbum, titled “A Cry for Help,” we argued that “Dartmouth must repair its dilapidated mental health infrastructure or risk further tragedies.”

Larger, systemic changes such as providing better long-term care options, changing medical leave policies so as to stop forced removal following mental health crises, giving students mental health days following campus-wide and national tragedies, and increasing academic leniency are additional, urgently-needed reforms that would improve the mental health of the Dartmouth community. Yet, despite repeated cries for the College to do something — anything — to improve its mental health infrastructure, despite the deaths by suicide of three students in a single academic year and the subsequent backlash from the student body, despite years of op-eds and reporting in The Dartmouth that cite the necessity of such reform, the College has repeatedly opted for one-off Band-Aid solutions rather than pursuing fundamental, lasting change. This cannot continue — as we wrote in May, the College must “implement comprehensive change before even more harm is done.” These four issues — as well as a plethora of others — have affected and are affecting the ability of Dartmouth to be a welcoming and supportive home to its students. We do not want to sound like a broken record, but the College gives us no choice. Years of Dartmouth’s intransigence have not placated the student body. We are angry. We are tired of bringing up the same issues over and over again, only to have our voices silenced or ignored. By now, students have exhausted every means available to us to urge Dartmouth to pay attention. Many of the issues we face today did not come out of nowhere; they are institutional failures that have been left to fester for decades. To the countless alumni reading this issue who have undoubtedly been impacted by these or other failures in some way: We encourage you — nay, beg you — to call upon your alma mater to enact the reforms it has long neglected. The College has time and again shown its reluctance to listen to the people who walk its sidewalks and attend its lectures — but it may listen to you.

News anchor Laura Ingraham ’85, The Review’s Editor-in-Chief at the time, The Review published transcripts from that meeting — outing closeted gay students in the process. Though the College was not itself involved in The Review’s actions, Dartmouth did not appear to take action against the paper either. We — queer people and our allies alike — would like to think that a similar situation would not play out today. It’s true that, unlike in the 1980s, there are many spaces on campus for us to feel safe in — from the Triangle House dorm to gender inclusive Greek spaces to undergraduate societies. It’s also true that many more students are out on campus — if not also in their off-campus life — than 40 years ago. And yet our safety on this campus is still not a given. Just last term, after I wrote an article encouraging students to wear masks, an anonymous Librex user posted a personal critique with what is implied to be a homophobic slur. While the user did censor themselves, the phrase, “what’s good w the f word that wrote the article in support of masks in the D,” grammatically speaking, can only mean so many things. This, however, was just a onetime incident for me that occurred anonymously: Many fellow queer students have experienced a broad gamut of discriminatory incidents, including persistent misgendering by professors and peers and, in the case of several friends, public sexual harassment. I share these facets of Dartmouth — being FGLI and being queer — because these are identities that I hold as a student here. Being poor and gay — both together and separate — complicate my ability to find a home at Dartmouth. I have found spaces at Dartmouth that I feel comfortable in, but those are defined by people who share some of my identities or who can empathize with them. Those spaces, by and large, are separate from the idea of universal homeliness the College aspires to obtain. I also recognize that these examples are not comprehensive of all the struggles Dartmouth students face. As a cisgender white man, it is still relatively easy for me to exist at Dartmouth without a second thought. Students who are BIPOC, women, transgender and/or nonbinary — as well as many

others who fit into groups I did not mention — all face their own set of struggles to fit into the strict molds that Dartmouth has set in place. There are also plenty of queer and FGLI students whose experiences at Dartmouth are, on the whole, quite positive. I commend those students for their positive experiences. But I caution that, while I do not mean to invalidate the good times queer and FGLI students have — because we all have them — those happy times should not invalidate the negatives, either. Even with the positive interactions I have had, I struggled — and still struggle — to learn how to be an Ivy League student or to recover from being called a slur. It is possible for students from marginalized backgrounds to find home on campus, but that is not because campus is a home itself. For a space to be a home, someone must be able to live there authentically, without the fear or expectation of harmful repercussions. There are many individual spaces that function as homes for different groups of students. But, at large, this campus cannot be a home when not every interaction — or even when not most interactions — with people, infrastructure or campus culture is positive. So, to answer the question that I posed earlier: No, the College does not deserve to be called a “home.” At least not right now. Dartmouth’s homeliness is not necessarily a lost cause. Right now, this weekend, there are hundreds if not thousands of alumni who have converged from all over the world to celebrate the fact that, to them, Dartmouth is home. To those alumni who have picked up this special issue, I call upon each and every one of you to reflect on what it is about this place that made you come back. In doing so, I urge you to consider what about Dartmouth makes this school more hostile to some students or alumni — including some of your classmates and peers. Reflection alone will not solve most of the problems I outlined in this piece. But, to make Dartmouth a truly welcome home for all students, every person who calls this place home must be on the same page to protect the members of our chosen family from more harm.

restructuring some of its programs and combining others. Having applied to Dartmouth for its emphasis on global learning, this development alarmed me. My peers and I had sought to expand our cultural knowledge and deepen our understanding of global issues — international conflict, environmental crisis, pandemics, human development — because, as the admissions department promised, “erasing boundaries leads to transformational learning, and Dartmouth students are forever changed by their study off campus and abroad.” Reality has not lived up to this promise. The loss of these foreign and language study programs illustrates the College’s general trend away from global learning. Despite this, Dartmouth students continue to prove their interest in international issues, founding advocacy groups and coordinating demonstrations across campus. Last year — with the help of some friends — I was able to put together an exhibit in protest of Turkish and Azerbaijani aggression in the south Caucasus and bring attention to it with my first-ever article in The Dartmouth. This past May, the College’s Palestine Solidarity Coalition and Vermonters for Justice in Palestine held a wellattended protest to bring attention to the eruption of violence in Israel, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. The protest integrated other social movements, such as Black Lives Matter, because, as one protestor explained, “We are telling our story through the connection of our struggle and Black and brown people’s struggle.” Such engagements are vital for success in an increasingly interconnected world full of different socio-political settings. In the days following these demonstrations,

The Dartmouth reported that the protests sparked debate across campus. Some expressed concern that it placed too much blame on Israel and neglected to acknowledge, as one student interviewed put it, the Jewish people’s “right to self-determination in their ancestral homelands.” Others condemned both sides. Regardless of how one may feel about the Israel-Palestine conflict and other issues, the fact of discussion, dissent and debate is positive in itself. Such conversations increase the intellectual depth of all who engage in them and, thus, enhance students’ preparedness to address what president Dickey called “the world’s troubles.” During the pandemic, students continued to interact with the world around them, contributing novel perspectives and informing discussion with their unique backgrounds. The College must support these interactions: The role of any selfrespecting educational institution is to satisfy the intellectual curiosity of its students. As former vice president of the U.S. and member of the Dartmouth Class of 1930 Nelson A. Rockefeller asserted, “It is essential that we enable young people to see themselves as participants in one of the most exciting eras in history and to have a sense of purpose in relation to it.” These words — which line the halls of the Nelson A. Rockefeller Center for Public Policy — aptly describe the standard we must hold Dartmouth accountable to. Students would greatly benefit from an institutional recommitment to study abroad and the creation of additional programs aimed at developing Dartmouth as a global community. After all, the world’s troubles are our troubles, and the College has it within its power to adequately prepare us for these challenges.

The editorial board consists of opinion staff columnists, the opinion editors, the executive editors and the editor-in-chief.

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 8, 2021

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A Voice Crying ‘I Don’t Know’ in the Wilderness STORY

By Meghan Powers

Like a lot of people at Dartmouth, I was a deeply “Type A”-sort of person in high school. My handraising was incessant and full of Hermione Granger-like enthusiasm. I felt so sure about so many things, like who I was, what I thought and what I wanted — and I retained much of that personality through my first few terms at Dartmouth. While something inevitably softened when I had to be accountable for “adult” things like feeding and taking care of myself, I was ultimately the fastwalking freshman with five different colors of pens lined up next to my notebooks in class. Of course, Meghan in March of 2020 wouldn’t have guessed that her personality would essentially be put through a full-service car wash — nor would she have predicted the character arc that would find her a junior with a surer though somewhat-slower step, a regular order at Tuk Tuk and only three different pens per class. Growing up and calming down, in my case, has meant making room for uncertainty. Uncertainty, as I’ve discovered, is a sometimes foe and a frequent friend. Kurt Vonnegut gave

a lecture in 2004 where he discussed “the shape of stories,” in which he demonstrated how every story from “Cinderella” to “Hamlet” will find its characters at the highest and lowest points of human emotion. The meandering shape of stories, says Vonnegut, tells us that “We don’t know what the good news is and what the bad news is.” We’re too close to our own plotlines to see ourselves in third person and recognize that, right after our stepsisters tear up our handmade gown, a fairy godmother might show up and create the first horse-drawn carriage in world history to double as a jack-o’-lantern.” My high school self would be mortified by my complete lack of a 5-year plan and all of the convictions I’ve re-opened to examination. But she also didn’t know how to fry an egg or write a cover letter, so I take the newfound uncertainty to be a sign of maturity — not regression. I unsurprisingly entered Dartmouth without any clue of what my major might be, and that particular uncertainty had a fascinating process of erosion. Choosing each term to

take classes in some departments and not others narrowed the possibilities for my future and left me with small things to mourn: little lives I imagined for myself that I now know I’ll never live. Even as a freshman, I never thought I’d go the pre-med route, but wasn’t it nice to have the option of being Dr. Powers someday? You learn a lot about yourself when you don’t take anything for granted. Anyone here might have been “most likely to” where they’re from, but it was a whole different ball game for me once I figured out that my blue ribbons didn’t necessarily denote something deep and meaningful about me as a person. Still, certain types of uncertainty are more welcome than others. Dartmouth is a place where its students are invited to play with uncertainty and to say “I don’t know” more frequently than they ever dared in high school. This is a particularly rewarding experience when you’re not worried about your housing, your meal plan or which study spaces you can go to 24/7. The best kind of personal uncertainty is fostered by a secure environment — and the

whiplash of the past year, or even the past few months, has made that particularly difficult to establish. Arielle Feuerstein ’24, a fellow Mirror writer, recently reflected on the social uncertainty that ’24s face at Dartmouth. Feuerstein and her peers confessed to feeling “in limbo” and expressed fears of being “permanently out-of-place” as a result of all of the things that happened — and the traditions that didn’t happen — for ’24s during their freshman year. The same can be said for the haziness of the College’s reinstated mask mandate. It’s not anyone’s fault that the uncertainty of the outside world has such confusing implications, and those in the Dartmouth bubble are unquestionably less exposed to that chaos than others, but that’s missing the point. No one likes to feel like people are playing fast and loose with their future — especially for a Dartmouth tuition. External uncertainties, like with your schoolwork and social life, are often more challenging than gratifying, but creative uncertainty can lead to weird and wonderful

waters — especially when you can rely on some lighthouse to consistently call you back to port. David Lynch, a film director whose work would place him squarely in the pantheon of those who truly love mystery and confusion, had the same meal at the same diner at the same time every day for seven years back in the 80s, because he reckoned that certainty in the external parts of life could “lay the groundwork for excellence” in the uncertain realms of creativity. Basically, you get to treat everything else as a question mark when you have a good idea of who you are and how much DBA you have left — and that’s what’s special about Dartmouth at its best. Leaving room for uncertainty in the classroom, in your D-Plan and in your life means being open to new viewpoints and unintentional experiences. The surest way to miss out on learning something new is to approach life like you already have the right ideas about everything, when in truth, to paraphrase Katherine Hepburn in “A Philadelphia Story,” “The time to make up your mind about most things is never.”

(OPINION) GABRIEL MODISETT ’25: WELCOME TO THE WOODS

WE ARE OPEN! W 11–5 • Th 11–8 F 11–8 • Sat 1–5 See old friends and discover new ones! Check our website for updates.

View of the exhibition Drawing Lines located in Lathrop Gallery. Photo by Rob Strong.

THE DARTMOUTH HOMECOMING ISSUE

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FRIDAY, OCTOBER 7, 2021

Movements Large and Small PHOTO

By Beam Lertbunnaphongs, Hannah Li and Emil Liden

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The Journey introduces the reader to convincing alternatives to the Big Bang, particle creation, supermassive black-hole creation, dark energy, and more. The reader tours the history of the universe, its eight levels of evolution, including two levels above humankind, ending thousands of years into the future. Wow! Ready to examine a new perspective on the universe, evolution, and human destiny? Take the Journey! www.journeyoftheuniverse.life Available Amazon $18.99

Masses Sunday 11 am and 7:30 pm Monday - Thursday 5 pm Confessions 30 minutes prior to mass Fr. Timothy Danaher, O.P., Chaplain

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