VOL. CLXXVIII NO. 34
FRIDAY, MARCH 4, 2022
HANOVER, NEW HAMPSHIRE
Almost 40% of the total student body Directorate for 2022 Firsthas tested positive this calendar year Year Trips announced
JUSTIN KRAMER/THE DARTMOUTH SENIOR STAFF
The graph reflects a breakdown of active COVID-19 cases at Dartmouth since the beginning of term among undergraduate students, graduate and professional students and faculty and staff.
BY ANGUS YIP The Dartmouth Staff
Between Jan. 1 and Feb. 28, 2,505 students of the 6,339 enrolled in classes this term contracted COVID-19, representing 39.6% of the undergraduate and graduate student body, College spokesperson Diana Lawrence wrote in an emailed statement. This total represents a 17-point increase from the roughly 23% of the student body who had tested positive between Jan. 1 and Jan. 25. While this winter saw record high case numbers, total active cases have been trending steadily downwards in recent weeks. The same is true nationwide — the United States is down to an average of roughly 54,000 new cases per day, the lowest since July 25, 2021, according to data from The New York Times. Deaths and hospitalizations, however, remain significantly elevated. On Feb. 25, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released new COVID-19 risk assessment guidelines with reduced safety precaution recommendations for many parts of the country. According to data from
the CDC, which was most recently updated on Thursday, Grafton County is currently classified as a medium risk zone, meaning that the CDC no longer recommends indoor masking unless a person is high-risk. According to a March 2 press release from the College, the College’s COVID-19 leadership team is currently reviewing the revised CDC guidance and intends to announce updates to masking and surveillance testing policies for spring term as soon as next week. The picture was different at the beginning of the term when, despite new and continued College COVID-19 protocols, the omicron variant spread rapidly on campus, as it did in the rest of the country. “Omicron spreads so quickly that even with our surveillance testing, and even with isolation, we were not going to be able to prevent it from spreading on campus,” provost David Kotz ’86 said in a Q&A with The Dartmouth in February. He noted in the Q&A that as the winter term began, the College decided to focus on how to manage the pandemic, rather than how they could stop it. On Dec. 18, then-interim provost
Kotz and executive vice president Rick Mills announced additional COVID-19 prevention measures for the winter term, including grab-and-go dining, restrictions on indoor gatherings and a booster shot mandate. On Dec. 29, Kotz and Mills sent another email to campus committing to in-person classes, in contrast with peer institutions like Harvard University and Yale University, which delayed move-in dates and began classes remotely. According to The Dartmouth’s coverage of the pandemic, which sources data from the College’s COVID-19 dashboard, case numbers rose quickly after the term started, resulting in the highest COVID-19 positivity rate among peer schools by early February. The number of active cases peaked on Jan. 21, when there were 783 active cases among students, faculty and staff. The vast majority of cases all term were among undergraduate students. Case numbers have since fallen drastically; as of March 3, there are 53 total active COVID-19 cases. According to the College’s COVID-19 dashboard, a case is considered active while the SEE COVID-19 PAGE 2
Truckers and protesters gather in Lebanon to protest COVID-19 measures
SUNNY HIGH 30 LOW -2
BY SOLEIL GAYLORD & Arizbeth Rojas The Dartmouth Staff
NEWS
RUSSIA FSP LIKELY TO BE CANCELED DUE TO UKRAINE INVASION PAGE 2
OPINION
VERBUM ULTIMUM: BEYOND AN EMAIL PAGE 3
ARTS
HOOD’S WINTER OPENING RECEPTION PAGE 4
SPORTS
MEN’S BASKETBALL TOURNAMENT HOPES SQUASHED PAGE 5
MIRROR
REMEMBERING DARTMOUTH’S COEDS PAGE 6 FOLLOW US ON
@thedartmouth COPYRIGHT © 2022 THE DARTMOUTH, INC.
On Wednesday morning, a convoy of pickup trucks, fuel trucks and a logging truck gathered in Lebanon to protest COVID-19 restrictions, among other causes — American, Canadian and Gadsden flags in tow. The convoy is part of the American “People’s Convoy” heading toward Washington D.C., modeled after the mid-January “Freedom Convoy 2022” protest against vaccine mandates in Canada. About 50 locals from Vermont and New Hampshire gathered behind The Fort restaurant in Lebanon to collect money as well as various donated items, such as food and toilet paper, in support of the People’s Convoy. Drums, air horns and honks sounded throughout the protest, which ran from 9 a.m. to 11 a.m. Both Canada and the U.S. require truckers to be fully vaccinated to cross the border. Truckers from around the United States are expected to arrive in Washington, D.C. on Saturday, March 5. According to a Facebook group called “People’s Convoy VT,” the Northeastern route will trace the State of Vermont Northeast Route, or Interstate 91. Protest attendees aired various concerns ranging from what they described as a lack of medical freedom and alleged Constitutional violations. Jude Pizar of South Walden, Vt. said she hoped to send a message with her participation in the convoy. “My message is to the government –– that they need to quit stepping on us. They’re stepping on the Constitution,” Pizar said. “They’re taking away our rights.” A Feb. 20 press statement announcing the People’s Convoy emphasized the “rough road” of the COVID-19
pandemic, and highlighted the advent of vaccines and “workable therapeutic agents” as indicators that pandemic measures should be relaxed. Making an economic argument, the press release explained that the American worker needs to pay rent and “jumpstart the economy,” which requires the lifting of mandates and “ending the state of emergency” related to COVID-19. An attendee who identified herself only as “Barb” said that she attended to support freedom of the press and “health choice.” “Our media needs to be held responsible for misinformation and blocking the alternative view,” Barb said. She added that after contracting COVID-19, her husband was put in a designated unit where he “was belittled because he was not vaccinated.” Rosemary Lewando, a 35-year-old Vermont resident and “supporter of organic agriculture and local government,” said that her concerns about getting vaccinated stem from what she called the pharmaceutical industry’s “capture” of public health agencies. “I was an avid Bernie supporter,” Lewando said. “I volunteered because I could see that it was necessary to be wary of the pharmaceutical industry.” Lewando added that her family has sought out “like-minded people,” becoming friends with those from “across the aisle” who share her views on COVID-19 related health mandates. She said that “money, power and greed,” as well as government “disrespect,” have taken a toll on Americans. “It’s nice seeing the patriotism,” Lewando said. “I’ve always been a skeptic, but it’s good to stand for something like peace and unity.” She also expressed her concerns regarding COVID-19-related health SEE TRUCKERS PAGE 2
NAINA BHALLA/THE DARTMOUTH SENIOR STAFF
BY SHENA HAN The Dartmouth Staff
On Monday, First-Year Trips Program director Jack Kreisler ’22 and associate director Brandon Zhou ’22 announced the 20 new members of the 2022 First-Year Trips directorate in an email to the Dartmouth Outing Club. Kreisler said that the application process began at the start of the term and that one of his goals for the directorate was to make it reflective of the diverse backgrounds of the Dartmouth community. “We tried to connect with different communities and org anizations at D a r t m o u t h t o p ro m o t e t h e application,” Kreisler said. First-Year Trips staff advisor Kellen Appleton ’20, who directed the program last year, added that Kreisler and Zhou made “concerted efforts” to ensure that the messaging around the application was inclusive. In particular, Appleton said that they wanted to make it clear that directorate spots were open to anyone who wanted to make a positive impact on campus, not just people who were already involved with the DOC. “There isn’t a pipeline for getting into this,” Appleton said. “If you want Dartmouth to be a more welcoming and inclusive place and want to create positive change for incoming students and returning students, then this is a good role for you.” Kreisler said that one of his priorities for the next year is to give directorate members more freedom to make changes to the program, as well as emphasizing inclusivity. “It’s finding the balance between wo rk i n g t h ro u g h s o m e o f o u r organizational priorities, but also leaving space for people to make their own marks on Trips,” he said. Trip leader trainer Daniel Westphal ’23 said that after being a part of “Hanover Croo” — the Trips support team based on campus — last year, he was excited to become more involved in the Trips program. As a trip leader trainer, he said his job is to select trip leaders as well as to teach them the communication, risk management and health and safety skills they need to “lead a trip of people into the wilderness.” “I applied for a few positions on directorate, and as I started my application to be a trip leader trainer, I kind of realized, ‘this is where my skill set would really thrive,’” he explained. According to “Sklodj Croo” captain Madi Duhnoski ’23, who will head the team based at the the Dartmouth
Skiway lodge, the application process included writing a cover letter to the director and associate director of the program explaining what she could contribute to the program. “It’s a really personalized process,” Duhnoski said. “You just talk about what Trips means to you.” Duhnoski said that she was inspired to apply for a directorate position after having positive experiences as a member of “Sklodj Croo” this past fall. She added that beginning in the spring, she and her co-captains will be working several hours a week to prepare for Trips in the fall. “I just really want to make sure that all of the freshmen who come through the Sklodj, and the trip leaders as well, have a great time and feel very welcomed,” she said. “I also want to be a good leader for my crew and ensure that they’re having fun as well, because that’s what it’s really all about.” Duhnoski added in an emailed statement that there are four “Lodj captains” in total, two for the ski lodge and two for the Moosilauke Ravine lodge, and that all will work closely together. During trips last fall, the traditional culmination of Trips at the Moosilauke Ravine Lodge split participants between the Moosilauke Ravine Lodge and the lodge at the Dartmouth Skiway. We s t p h a l s a i d t h at a f t e r a n “awesome” first meeting with the directorate, he is looking forward to working with them over the next few terms. “Everyone there is genuinely committed towards making First-Year Trips as welcoming and inclusive to the ’26s as possible,” he said. K re i s l e r a d d e d t h at h e w a s impressed by the new members of the directorate and also excited to work with them. “I think this process has reinvigorated my love and excitement for Trips,” he said. “The people coming in to work on directorate have such wonderful visions and are going to make trips this year such a valuable experience.” Appleton said that in her years of involvement with the Trips program, she has seen it become increasingly open and friendly, and she is excited to see that trend continue with this year’s directorate. “One of the cool opportunities about Trips is that it involves so many people from across campus,” Appleton said. “If we can provide meaningful experiences for the upper level students who are leading Trips, I think that can be a really positive influence on Dartmouth culture as a whole.”
FRIDAY, MARCH 4, 2022
PAGE 2
THE DARTMOUTH NEWS
Summer 2022 Russia FSP likely to be canceled due to Russian invasion of Ukraine
NAINA BHALLA/THE DARTMOUTH SENIOR STAFF
B Y CARLY RETTERER The Dartmouth
This article was originally published on March 3, 2022. The Russia Foreign Study Program slated for the summer of 2022 will likely be canceled due to Russia’s ongoing invasion of Ukraine, according to faculty and staff members from the Russian department, government department and the Irving Institute for Energy and Society. The FSP’s organizers are reviewing the status of the program and expect to provide an update in the coming days, Guarini Institute executive director John Tansey wrote in an emailed statement. The Russia FSP, first announced in 2019, is a collaboration between the Russian and government departments and the Irving Institute. The program, which was scheduled to run this
upcoming summer for 10 weeks, features courses with the Higher School of Economics in Moscow and St. Petersburg, according to the program’s website. Students attending the program also expected to go on excursions throughout the country and stay in sleeper cars on the TransSiberian Railway. But after Russian troops crossed into Ukraine on Feb. 24, causing thousands of military and civilian deaths and injuries and more than 800,000 refugees to flee the country as of Tuesday, the program’s future, at least for this summer, appears bleak. Government professor and the Russian FSP faculty leader Joseph Bafumi said that while no final decision has been made, he believes it “very unlikely” that the program will run given the invasion. “It would be very complicated to run it right now,” Bafumi said. “Sanctions
may not allow it, and there may be great difficulties with visas.” He added that due to financial sanctions and frozen bank accounts, it would be challenging to use credit cards and withdraw money from banks in Russia. Since the program would predominantly run in Moscow, Bafumi noted that there are safety concerns for students since “there’s always the threat that there’s going to be retaliation in Moscow.” “If there’s some kind of retaliatory bombing or something by Ukrainian nationalists or whatever it might be, we certainly would fear that.” Bafumi said. On Feb. 28, the U.S. Department of State issued a level 4 travel advisory that strongly advises against traveling to Russia due to the potential for harassment against U.S. citizens by Russian government security officials, among other reasons. Like Bafumi, Russian professor
Ainsley Morse said that while the program has yet to be officially canceled, she feels “pretty confident in saying that it’s not going to happen.” She added that the Russian, history, and government departments are talking about offering additional courses this summer to all students, including ones that would have been offered on the program and additional courses related to Ukraine. “We’ll also definitely directly address the war in Ukraine, the build-up to that war, the history behind the war,” Morse said. “We will also certainly have the opportunity to [offer] a lot more than is usually available about Ukraine, about Ukrainian culture.” According to Morse, the FSP organizing team discussed the possibility of going to Latvia in hopes to infuse the program with experience abroad. She added that this proposed plan is contingent on the evolving situation in the region. “I don’t even know how feasible that will be, obviously,” she said. “I think people in Latvia [and] in the Baltic states right now are feeling justifiably very nervous, since the insane logic behind the invasion of Ukraine could be extended to other post-Soviet states.” Irving Institute director Amanda Graham said that while the summer courses on Dartmouth campus will not provide the same kind of crosscultural immersion that the FSP would, students will be able to explore the intellectual dimensions of Russian studies. “There’s so much richness in terms of the complexity of the relationship between energy and society in the Russian context, between the modes of government that we’re familiar with here in the States and the modes of government that Russia has experienced over the last several centuries,” Graham said. Despite the cancellation of the program this year, the FSP organizing team is committed to the eventual continuation of the program, according to Graham. “I think that cross-cultural exchange is a critical, critical strategy for us to
continue to build good relations in all levels of society among our nations,” Graham said. Morse also spoke to the team’s commitment to continuing study abroad programs in Russia. “I would say that our team is very committed to Dartmouth having a study abroad program in Russia going forward,” she said. “[Even] if that means we have to redo the whole thing again and find new partners to work with.” Morse said. There is some question about future institutional cooperation between the United States and Russia and its impact on cross-cultural exchange, according to Bafumi, Morse and Graham. Bafumi said that the Massachusetts Institute of Technology has already terminated its academic partnerships in Russia. On Feb. 25, MIT ended its relationship with the Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology in Moscow, Russia. Bafumi noted that with the end of these exchange programs with Russia, cultural understanding and crosscultural education will be “much more limited and difficult.” “I think that this is going to have a very negative impact on institutional relationships between the United States and Russia,” he said. Morse also cited concerns about scholarly freedom at the Higher School of Economics in Moscow and St. Petersburg. “These are completely governmentfunded institutions and there are already indications that scholarly freedom, freedom of expression are being pressed in the context of these institutions,” Morse said. “And at this point, the kind of censorship that is going on is completely egregious.” Morse also added that if Russian President Vladmir Putin stays in power, she is unsure what the future academic institutional relationship will look like. However, she said that she is still in touch with her Russian colleagues. “We assure each other that it is very important for us to continue working together and for our intellectual efforts not to be destroyed by this political outrage,” she said.
Active cases on campus peaked on Jan. 21, but have been on a steady decline since as the omicron variant has receded nationwide FROM COVID-19 PAGE 1
individual is in isolation or is still receiving medical care for symptoms. In contrast to dedicated isolation housing in previous terms, students who tested positive isolated in their rooms this winter. Sarner Underground was converted to a meal pick-up facility for students with active COVID-19 cases. While the College committed to in-person classes, some students who tested positive reported falling behind academically as some courses did not offer remote learning or offered options that they found lacking. Many campus facilities adjusted their operations in response to the new College restrictions. FFB was closed throughout the term, and the opening of Cafe@ Baker was postponed. Both facilities are set to open when the College lifts its indoor mask mandate. In response to the ban on student gatherings, the Inter-Sorority Council conducted sorority rush virtually this term. Greek houses reported increased policing by Safety and Security, resulting in some houses being suspended, put on probation or receiving warnings from the College. Labor shortages due to the pandemic also significantly affected campus operations. Floren Varsity House was closed for the first ten days of winter term, resulting in overcrowding in Zimmerman Fitness Center, while the Sexual Violence Prevention Project canceled all planned programming for the Class of 2023. Lost work because of COVID-19 isolation and increased stress due to the campus-wide staffing shortage further exacerbated dissatisfaction
JUSTIN KRAMER/THE DARTMOUTH SENIOR STAFF
The graph reflects the total number of active COVID-19 cases at Dartmouth since the start of the term.
among Dartmouth Dining Services student workers, culminating in the announcement of their intent to unionize under the Student Worker Collective at Dartmouth. The College opted not to voluntarily recognize the union, and a student worker election this month will determine if the union will be officially recognized by the College. Students had mixed reactions to the College’s policies, generally approving of the decision to commit to in-person classes but expressing concern over isolation protocols. With the increasing
case numbers, some students resorted to humor to cope with the situation. Becca Wade ’22 said she started a GroupMe group chat named “Built Different” in the first week of winter term. According to Wade, students who had yet to test positive for COVID-19 were invited to join the GroupMe but would have to leave the group if they tested positive. “My roommate tested positive, and some of my friends’ roommates tested positive, but [my remaining friends and I] hadn’t, so we said that this was
crazy — we must be built different,” Wade said. “In the group, some people posted messages like, ‘Oh my god, how did we make it so far?’ But then one by one, they would say that they spoke too soon and left.” Wade said she left the group after testing positive in the third week of the term. As of March 3, there are 875 members still in the group chat. As the term progressed, many of the College’s restrictions were gradually lifted. Indoor dining at campus dining locations resumed on Jan. 10, and student
organizations were allowed to resume in-person meetings after the first two weeks of the term on Jan. 16. On Feb. 14, in response to falling case numbers, College-sponsored indoor events were once again allowed to serve food and drink. Noting the fact that the majority of Dartmouth community members will have received the booster shot by the beginning of spring term, Kotz is quoted in the March 2 press release saying that “it’s time for us to start thinking about relaxing constraints.”
After gathering in Lebanon, truckers proceeded south on I-91 FROM TRUCKERS PAGE 1
mandates. “There’s no science behind having a vaccine mandate, because it doesn’t stop transmission,” Lewando said. “We got COVID from our daughter, who is vaccinated.” According to a brief on COVID-19 vaccinations from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the
COVID-19 vaccine is “highly effective” in preventing serious hospitalization and death from COVID-19. It also cites research showing that the vaccines’ effectiveness against infection is lower, but that fully vaccinated people are still less likely to contract COVID-19 than unvaccinated people. Scott Allen, a carpenter from Bellows Falls, Vt., said that he found out about the convoy on Facebook. Allen,
who described himself as a “small government guy,” said he supported the truckers as “independent-minded people.” “A lot of truckers have already had COVID — they were probably the first to get it because they’re moving from state to state all the time, so they have natural immunity,” Allen said. “I think it’s ridiculous to mandate that they have to take a medical procedure that they
don’t want.” Allen added that he wanted all mandates “gone,” including those that require children to wear masks in schools. Allen described various government mandates as “antithetical to the American project.” Captain Timothy Cohen of the Lebanon Police Department said that law enforcement’s response was “business as usual.”
“We’ve really planned no direct involvement unless there’s a traffic issue,” Cohen said. “If a traffic issue does arise, we would respond and help just like we would help anyone else with a traffic issue.” At the protest’s end, the truckers and other supporters in cars drove away from the gathering site at Heater Road to begin their route to the nation’s capital.
FRIDAY, MARCH 4, 2022
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THE DARTMOUTH OPINION
THE DARTMOUTH EDITORIAL BOARD
SENIOR STAFF COLUMNIST: NATALIE DOKKEN ’23
Verbum Ultimum: Beyond an Email
Why This? Why Now?
The College can do more to support students and faculty affected by the invasion of Ukraine — and future crises. Last week, the world watched in horror as Russian President Vladimir Putin launched an unprovoked invasion of Ukraine. Within days, thousands of Russians and Ukrainians were dead, and Europe was, and still is, experiencing a refugee crisis of catastrophic proportions. Despite the credible threat of arrest — indeed over 6,000 have already been detained — thousands of Russians hit the streets to chant “No to war!” in opposition to their government’s actions. Inspired by such courage — that of the Ukrainians defending their homes and the Russians standing up to their government — this Editorial Board asks itself: How should the College respond in the wake of this crisis? We commend the College for its email to campus highlighting resources for those affected by the crisis. It must, in no uncertain terms, stand behind the Ukrainian students who are unsure of their return home, the Russian students who are financially or politically distressed, and any others who are affected. Two members of this Editorial Board, for example, have relatives who may be facing deployment to Eastern Europe. The College can do more than email, though. During this time, it is difficult for impacted students to focus on finals and other academic obligations. The College should explicitly offer flexibility and clearly outline the options students have available. Impacted students must feel comfortable approaching their deans and professors to ask for extensions or, if the need arises, an incomplete. Additionally, many of our classmates who normally live in Ukraine or Russia may not be able to return home for some time. The College should ensure these students have housing in the interim and priority housing in the spring, thus averting a situation similar to that of the beginning of the pandemic, when international students faced housing insecurity. A failure to implement such accommodations may further exacerbate the existing mental health crisis on our campus as students, in addition to the rigors of an Ivy League education, grapple with the horrific realities of international conflict. Students are not the only ones affected by this crisis. Dartmouth employs a large number of faculty and staff from Ukraine, Russia and elsewhere in Eastern Europe
who would also benefit from institutional support. At a rally last weekend organized by the Ukrainian Student Association, Russian department chair Victoria Somoff pleaded for moral and financial assistance for those affected by the crisis. “I am a teacher and a scholar of literature — I love complexities, a good argument and footnotes,” she said. “But there is no time for any of these things now — my country, Ukraine, a sovereign nation, is being attacked.” For those professors and staff affected by the crisis, the College must offer more leniency in grading deadlines and also ask if there are any other ways that it can be supportive during this difficult time. In the past, official communications on domestic and international crises have been lackluster at best and insulting or nonexistent at worst. Despite the hundreds of students who were impacted by the conflict between Israel and Palestine last spring, the Texas blackouts in the winter, and the wave of COVID-19 that swept over India, not a single campus-wide email was sent out by the College addressing them. The College can do better. A good email from College President Phil Hanlon was sent out about the Jan. 6 insurrection — but it was promptly followed by a now infamous message from former Dean of the College Kathryn Lively declaring that “despite everything that is happening in the world, no matter what tragedies or disappointments you may have faced, the academic term starts now.” This obvious tone-deafness is something that, as a previous Editorial Board has noted, can and should be avoided in College messages. The current crisis in Ukraine presents the administration with a valuable opportunity to correct its past errors and offer the community a better message, one of unconditional support and compassion during a difficult time. Former College President John Sloan Dickey’s memorable message to undergraduates that “The world’s troubles are your troubles ... and there is nothing wrong with the world that better human beings cannot fix” rings as true today as it did after World War II. Though Dartmouth cannot fix the world’s problems, it can help exemplify the better human beings that Dickey described. We’re a global community. Let’s act like one.
DOMINIQUE MOBLEY ’22: 22WEEK9 HAS ME LIKE...
The faculty vote to pause progress on the Lyme Road housing project is selectively paternalistic and selfish. This column was originally published on March 1, 2022. In a Feb. 21 press release, the College announced that faculty and administrators had voted 89-4 to delay the development of proposed undergraduate housing along Lyme Road. The reason? Faculty members expressed concern about the distance of the housing from the core of campus, arguing that it contradicted the commitments Dartmouth made in its strategic master plan and threatened the quality of the “undergraduate experience.” While the vote prompted the College to pause development on the project, College spokesperson Diana Lawrence told The Dartmouth that the College still intends to move forward with the plan to build more housing. While I am grateful that the College does not intend to use this vote to halt all progress on housing projects, I am nonetheless disappointed in the decision to pause development on the Lyme Road project. Moreover, it is ridiculous that one of the few times faculty has decided to take a stance of this magnitude in the name of the student experience, it is over a housing project, when there have been countless other matters where students would have benefited from organized faculty support. There is a desperate need for more student housing: From the fall term housing shortage that culminated in a 128 person housing waitlist and a lottery system to bribe students into living off campus and a decision to turn lounges into dorm rooms to the at-capacity on-campus housing for the upcoming spring term, it is clear that students need housing sooner rather than later. While I am sympathetic to concerns that the distant dorms will hamper the undergraduate experience, the truth of the matter is that the current lack of housing is also impeding the undergraduate experience to a far greater extent. Lack of housing on campus has significantly impacted the student experience for decades. Insufficient housing forces students to find housing in the Upper Valley that is both limited and expensive. This means that low-income students are at a disadvantage when it comes to finding housing off-campus, particularly during times of on-campus housing scarcity, as was experienced this past fall and numerous other times over the past fifty years. While wealthier students can afford to pay upwards of $1,000 per month in rent, these prices are likely too expensive for lowincome students, such as myself, who often work several on-campus jobs just to get by. Additionally, the limited amount of housing means that some students may simply be without housing until after the academic term begins. Not only would these students be at risk of missing class due to lack of housing, but students may also have the entire first half of their academic term disrupted, as they would have to move in when the academic term is well under way. Moreover, the Lyme Road project is not intended to be a one-off solution to the housing crisis, as
there are plans in the works to also build dorms closer to the heart of campus. While these dorms should be built as soon as possible and prioritized over other projects, there is no reason to panic that the College is abandoning its commitment to creating a “walkable, central campus core.” Rather, I believe a shift in perspective is necessary to understand the College’s reasoning for the Lyme Road project. Although the dorms are farther away from campus, they are a quick and inexpensive way to address the housing shortage in the short term. Additionally, the project will ensure that students will have housing as the College pursues other lengthier and more expensive projects as a supplement for the long term. Furthermore, the central core of campus will remain walkable even if there is one dorm that requires a shuttle bus to get to and from campus. Additionally, although I am certain that many faculty members who voted against further development of the Lyme Road project believe they are acting in students’ best interest — and are sympathetic to the issues some students face when looking for housing — this does not detract from the reality that they are not the ones most affected by the housing crisis. This is why it is so frustrating that one of the few times faculty have come together to speak out against the College, it is to oppose a proposal that guarantees students will have a bed to sleep in at the end of the night. It is clear from the faculty vote and the College’s subsequent decision to pause further development on the project that faculty input can, and does influence the College’s behavior. So where was the outrage when the College was sued for allegedly colluding with peer institutions to price-fix students’ financial aid? Where was it when students were crying out for more mental health support last year? Where was it when the College initially denied hundreds of students housing last fall? Altogether, the faculty vote against the Lyme Road project is selectively paternalistic. Sure, the faculty should be interested in the College’s policies and projects, but not only in instances where the policies may have auxiliary impacts on them. Students desperately need more housing, and while waiting until further progress can be made on projects closer to campus would be nice, time is not a luxury that students have. The Class of 2026 will be here in just over six months, and if history holds, the College will admit another large class. I urge faculty to reflect on their vote and consider why this project is one of very few instances where they felt the need to speak up. While many of the concerns voiced by faculty are valid, it would be great if such anxiety was expressed over other pressing issues as well. The College must resume progress on the Lyme Road project immediately, not only to ensure that every student has housing, but also to improve the undergraduate experience that faculty fear this project will so irrevocably destroy.
G QUEALY ’25: KEGGY’S SPRING BREAK
NINA SLOAN ’24: SPRING BREAK, SO SOON
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FRIDAY, MARCH 4, 2022
THE DARTMOUTH ARTS
The Hood’s winter opening reception welcomes community members into the museum By MAEVE FAIRBANKS The Dartmouth
This article was originally published on March 1, 2022. The Hood Museum of Art welcomed the Upper Valley community back into its space with two new exhibits on Thursday, Feb. 24. The event emphasized the Hood’s community connectivity, according to curator of Indigenous art Jami Powell. The Hood has been open to the general public since Jan. 1, but the winter reopening celebration helped to reintegrate Upper Valley residents back into the Dartmouth community, according to Powell. “The College has remained separate from the Upper Valley [since the beginning of the pandemic],” she said. “A lot of people didn’t know that the museum was open to the public and not just for the Dartmouth community.” The event included live music in the Russo atrium, opportunities to speak with one of the exhibiting artists, and museum curators ready to answer questions about the exhibits. Campus engagement intern Alice Crow ’22 said she hopes that the event might help people feel more connected to the museum.
“Sometimes [when] people talk about art museums they say, ‘I’d go but I don’t really get it,’ which makes me sad because it can be whatever you want it to be, you don’t need to understand it,” Crow said. “But it can be nice for people to [talk to] someone who has a little bit more background.” In addition to the labels that accompany each piece and provide context, the reception provided visitors with the opportunity to ask professionals any questions they may have. Among the new exhibits highlighted during the event was curated by Amelia Kahl ’01, curator of academic programming, to showcase artist Louise Hamlin’s work in the show “In The Moment.” Louise Hamlin, who was at the reception talking to visitors, taught in the Dartmouth studio art department from 1990 until 2019. Kahl said she and Hamlin began planning Hamlin’s exhibit in 2020 shortly after Hamlin’s retirement. During her time as a professor, Hamlin often took advantage of the museum as a resource and would bring her classes to visit four or five times a term. “I had such a lovely working relationship with [Hamlin] that I volunteered to curate that show,” said Kahl. “It was a pleasure while everything was locked down to visit Louise’s studio
and to see her work.” “In The Moment” mainly showcases paintings but also includes some prints and drawings. Hamlin spends the warmer months outside painting New England landscapes and the winter in her studio painting still lifes. Kahl was especially interested in showing off Hamlin’s still life paintings of microgreens as well as her landscape paintings of fog. “What was particularly compelling to me was these fog paintings — this play with substances and materiality,” Kahl said. “So, what is fog? How do you paint fog? How do you experience fog? We see it, it seems present, but we can’t hold it. So how do you paint something that is visibly there but also insubstantial at the same time? [Hamlin’s paintings] are as much about the experience [of being in the moment] as they are about the tradition of the New England landscape.” Alongside “In The Moment is This Land: American Engagement with the Natural World,” curated by Jami Powell, curator of Indigenous art; Morgan Freeman, former Diversifying Art Museum Leadership Initiative Native American Art Fellow; Tom Price, curatorial assistant; Bonnie MacAdam, former curator of American art; and her successor Michael Hartman, curator of American art, depicting the relationships
that Americans have with the natural world, according to Powell. The exhibit features Native American and American art, and is the first show in which the Hood museum has placed art created by Native Americans and non-Native American artists alongside one another in the same exhibit. “For a long time, Native American art was not collected as art, it was collected by Anthropologists as ethnographic, so there’s been this divide between art and craft,” Powell said. “We’re challenging in this exhibition these arbitrary distinctions and categories that frame the way we present work and elevate all of the work so that it can be presented on equal terms. Throughout the exhibition you’ll notice we’ve tried hard to place the work[s] in conversation with one another.” Powell and MacAdam began working on this show three years ago, when MacAdam approached Powell about including a few Indigenous pieces in an exhibition that looked at interpretations of the natural world. “We weren’t sure what it was going to look like, so I was pleasantly surprised by how well [American and Native American art] pair aesthetically,” Powell said. “The Georgia O’Keefe painting of the Taos Mountains is hung next to a Diné saddle blanket that’s an abstraction
of mountains; you’ll actually see that they’re depicting the same landscape.” Powell said one of their goals was to illustrate the complex history of America, addressing colonialism, racism and segregation within American art history. “[It] can also be an opportunity to think about how we want to tell these stories moving forward and the kind of narratives we can construct and the futures that artists can help us imagine if we open ourselves up to grappling with that complexity,” Powell said. Anne Wilson, a Hanover local, attended the re-opening and said she was glad to have the museum, which she missed during its closure to the community, back open. “It was like there was a dark empty space where there was once life,” Wilson said. “No other small town has this wealth of art that Hanover has.” Dan Bernstein ’87, who lives part time in Hanover and part time in New York, believes having access to the Hood is one part of what makes living in Hanover special. “The Hood is the cultural beating heart of the community,” Bernstein said. “There’s lots of culture in New York, but you’re just part of a larger crowd. This is personal — sometimes you get to meet the artist, it’s more about community.”
Review: Season Two of ‘Euphoria’ Excels with Phenomenal Acting, Cinematography and Music BY ELEANOR Schifino The Dartmouth Staff
This article was originally published on March 3, 2022. “Euphoria” seduces its viewers with an absurd portrayal of high school. There is something intoxicating about watching these characters ruin their lives, a total inability to look away as their world burns around them while you snack on the couch. Episodes fluctuate between campy teen drama and somber character explorations, each desperately trying to raise the stakes by increasing shock with explicit content. With phenomenal acting from nearly all the cast, “Euphoria” once again stuns viewers with beautiful cinematography and artful emotionality. The show is intensely provocative — often overtly so, with excessive nudity and exploitative sex scenes — with a perfect soundtrack that expertly sets the mood for each scene. However, faults arise from the unresolved plotlines and over-ambitious writing. The show’s star-studded cast excels in their acting this season. Actresses Sydney Sweeney, who plays Cassie Howard,
and Zendaya, who plays Rue Bennett, elicit fierce reactions from viewers with their raw acting, as the audience comes to simultaneously hate these characters and pity them. Episode 5, “Stand Still Like the Hummingbird,” is undeniably the most powerful episode of the season, a rare moment where time seems to slow as Rue’s drug use is revealed to her family. The episode is uncomfortable and hard to watch as the terrifying downsides of addiction are portrayed on screen. Rue breaks down doors, screams at her mother and sobs on the floor as she rapidly switches from rage to helplessness. As her character attacks those around her both physically and emotionally, Zendaya’s subtle facial expressions and slight mannerisms demonstrate how little Rue cares about those who care for her. Following this episode, Rue gets sober. Having seen her at her lowest, her sobriety is all the more meaningful. Rue is, objectively, a horrible person; her disregard for those around her is consistent and malicious, but Zendaya gives such depth to her struggles it is impossible not to empathize. Sweeney’s character, Cassie,
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undergoes a complete transformation from sweet and docile to absolutely insane and unhinged. Throughout the entire season, fans watch as Cassie tires of being sidelined as she attempts to claim her individuality at the cost of losing her friends. Her actions are shocking and irredeemable, consistently worsening as the season progresses. Audience members love to hate her, all thanks to Sweeney’s dedication to Cassie’s insanity. Degrading herself with actions, words and attitude, Sweeney’s skillful acting perfectly portrays Cassie’s disconnect from reality. Maude Apatow, a nepotism baby who is earning her fame, similarly comes into her own this season. As her character Lexi Howard fashions a play that chronicles the events of her tumultuous life — including the lives of almost every other main character — Apatow presents one of the few realistic and relatable characters. While her character does not quite achieve the same depth as others, her innocent romance with Fezco (Angus Cloud) makes clear her potential in the show. Unlike season one, season two of “Euphoria” was shot completely on 35mm film to further set the mood and tone of the show. Adding a certain texture and grittiness, I was surprised that my untrained eye could tell the difference. The switch to analog created an evolution in the show, feeling like a distant memory that incites nostalgia for an unknown time. The high contrast of the film emphasizes the intense highs and lows the characters experience, reflecting the scale of emotions in a physical form. Elevating the shots and
lighting, the switch to film is one of the few things that season two did better than its beloved predecessor. Complementing the superb acting is a great soundtrack. Singer-songwriter Labrinth added a harmonious cadence to his electronic style. Season two featured some of the iconic sounds from season one — samples of “Nate Growing Up” and “All for Us” — but built on its operatic nature with a new religious instrumentation featuring organs and choirs that expertly build tension. “I’m Tired,” a new song created for this season, was shot in a church as Rue reached the harrowing lows of her addiction in front of an imagined congregation. The score features a variety of musical artists, each of whom meshed flawlessly with the tone of the show, despite their vast differences. “Watercolor Eyes” by Lana Del Ray played over the credits as viewers ruminated on the feeling of heartbreak, “Dead of Night” by Orville Peck witnessed Cassie’s first betrayal of her best friend, Maddy Perez (Alexa Demie), and “Dirty Work” by Steely Dan provides the fitting soundtrack for Rue’s integration into a life of drugs and crime. The careful curation of the soundtracks drives the story in unexpected, yet successful ways. While season three of “Euphoria” is in the works and may further explore the characters’ inconclusive stories, the range of the show feels limited after this second season as writer and creator Sam Levinson turned to increasingly implausible scenarios. This isn’t always a bad thing, as it grants viewers some of
the best scenes from the show. A stylized, homoerotic dance number performed in gold spandex to “Holding Out for a Hero” by Bonnie Tyler isn’t probable for a high school play, but was the highlight of the season. Levinson’s attempt at maximalism has mixed results: When it succeeds, “Euphoria” earns its critical acclaim with thoughtful depth masked by exuberant displays — but when it fails, viewers are left confused and uncertain, forced to turn to TikTok for the explanation of seemingly crucial plot points. Further, there are multiple plotlines that are left completely hanging. For example, Rue’s indebted situation to Laurie (Martha Kelly), a drug dealer, is never resolved. Kat Hernandez’s (Barbie Ferreira) entire character basically disappears from the show. In attempting to outdo its acclaimed season one, season two leans too heavily on outlandish demonstrations of plot when its true power is in the intimate examination of loss, heartbreak and desperation. Season two of “Euphoria” is an experiment in opulence, a maximalist retelling of addiction, loss, heartbreak and desperation. The actors carry the show with the beautiful acting and raw emotion that characterizes the series. However, lacking resolution for a variety of plotlines, it is unclear if sloppy storytelling or just delayed explanations have hindered “Euphoria.” With slight moderation and a refocus on what made the show so special last season, the future of “Euphoria” promises a continuation of the excellence that led to its rise. Rating:
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THE DARTMOUTH SPORTS
SPORTS
Men’s basketball’s tournament hopes squashed despite 84-70 win over Penn BY JASON NORRIS
The Dartmouth Staff
On Saturday, Dartmouth’s men’s basketball team took on the University of Pennsylvania for its senior night at home in the Big Green’s penultimate game of the season. Heading into the game, Dartmouth needed to win in order to keep its hopes of an Ivy League tournament berth alive. The Big Green did just that, defeating Penn 84-70. However, Princeton University’s win over Harvard University on Sunday erased Dartmouth’s chances of making the Ivy League tournament. Against Penn, Aaryn Rai ’21 opened up scoring for the Big Green, scoring a
layup and sinking a 3-pointer in backto-back possessions to put the Big Green up 5-2. After the two teams traded leads throughout the first nine minutes of the game, Brendan Barry ’20 GR assisted Dame Adelekun ’23 on a layup to give the Big Green a lead that never disappeared. Rai’s 10 points in the first half led the Big Green to a 38-35 lead at the break. To start the second half, Rai continued his hot streak with his second 3-pointer of the night. Rai then scored two more buckets for the Big Green to extend Dartmouth’s lead. Throughout the second half, Dartmouth continued to rely on its 3-point shooting, with Barry, Garrison Wade ’22, Taurus Samuels ’22
and Wes Slajchert ’22 all nailing clutch attempts to extend the lead. “We really played tough and took care of the basketball,” head coach David McLaughlin said. “Beyond that, I thought we executed at a high level in terms of our decision making and paying attention to the details. That execution when you’re playing tough is gonna get you wins.” Slajchert’s younger brother, Clark, led Penn in scoring with 18 points in the absence of Jordan Dingle, who leads the league in scoring. Despite the younger Slajchert’s efforts, Dartmouth managed to close out the second half — something the team has struggled with all season — and win 84-70 against a
Courtesy of Brendan Barry
top-three team in the Ivy League. “It’s not like we’ve never been in any of these games against good teams,” Rai said. “It was just good to pull it out against a good team — especially at the end of the year, when we’ve learned from all the mistakes we made in the games earlier in the season.” Rai ended the game with a careerhigh 27 points, which included a season-high three 3-pointers and a double-double with 11 rebounds. Samuels, Barry, Adelekun and Wade also recorded double-digit performances for Dartmouth. The win made senior night extra memorable for the Big Green. “At the end of the game when all five [seniors] were on the court and knowing that would be the last time walking off of Leede with four of my best friends, that’s when it set in for me,” Barry said. “It was just a cool moment and something I’ll remember for the rest of my life.” After the win, Dartmouth was still in contention to make it to the Ivy League tournament, but after Princeton beat Harvard by one point on Sunday, the team’s chances were eliminated. Despite this, Coach McLaughlin still views the game against Harvard this weekend as a big opportunity for the program. The last time the teams went head-to-head, Dartmouth lost by just one point off of a missed buzzer-beater from Rai. “We’re preparing to win this game, and if things break the right way, we can finish tied for fourth in the league, which is a big accomplishment as we continue to build this program,” McLaughlin said. After a season plagued by close losses for the Big Green, the team is looking to end it on a high note against Harvard. In Dartmouth’s last six losses, five of them have been within a five-point margin, with the sixth being a 45-point loss to
Princeton. For Barry, who came back to Dartmouth to finish out his eligibility after playing a year at Temple University, the season was disappointing. “I thought we had the talent to be top four, and I still think that, and it’s just possessions early in the Ivy season that we didn’t capitalize on,” Barry said. “The whole point of me coming back was to at least be in the top four and have a shot to make the NCAA tournament so I’d say my sentiment is just disappointed. Unfortunately that’s just how basketball works sometimes. It can be evil like that. I can’t say we didn’t have our chance and that’s just something I’ve gotta live with.” Despite the disappointment of the season, Barry still managed to make his way into Dartmouth’s 1,000 point club and is currently tied for second on Dartmouth’s all-time 3-pointers made list with 240 — just two behind Jim Barton ’89’s record with one game left in the season. After finishing out his six-year college basketball career, Barry plans to continue playing professionally overseas. Rai, who is a fifth-year, also plans to play professionally next year. With the team losing five seniors at the end of this season, McLaughlin is preparing for an important offseason. Despite losing a lot of experience and leadership with its seniors, the Big Green has nine young players who played in their first college season this year returning, led by Izaiah Robinson ’24 and Ryan Cornish ’25. “We have a really talented core of returning players so this has to be the best spring off season we’ve had since I’ve been here,” McLaughlin said. “That means paying attention to detail and executing on and off the court and taking that collective love of the game the guys have and collectively improving.”
Men’s hockey drops final two regular season games to RPI and Union BY HEATH MONSMA The Dartmouth Staff
This article was originally published on February 28, 2022. The men’s hockey team capped off their regular season this weekend with a road trip to New York to face off against Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and Union College. Dartmouth was unable to skate away with a victory in either matchup, losing a third period lead to RPI and falling in overtime to Union. On Friday, Dartmouth went into Houston Field House looking to exact revenge for the 2-0 defeat they suffered at home against RPI at the beginning of February. The Big Green struck within the first five minutes when defenseman Jack Cameron ’23 fired a shot from the blue line to beat the sliding Engineers goalie. RPI found the equalizer a couple minutes later, but then Steven Townley ’25 re-extended the lead thanks to a textbook give and go with Braiden Dorfman ’25. After the flurry of scoring through the first ten minutes, the game settled down as RPI started to hit and control the pace of play. “RPI is a little bigger and slower, so they like to shift things down a bit,” Dorfman said. Early in the second period though, RPI’s play style came back to bite them as the Engineers picked up an interference penalty trying to slow down a Dartmouth breakout. A minute and a half into the
man advantage, a wrist shot up at the point from Ian Pierce ’25 ricocheted off the outstretched stick of Mark Gallant ’23 for his team leading 10th goal of the year. Now up 3-1, the Big Green proved the old adage that “a two-goal lead is the most dangerous lead in hockey” — only 45 seconds later, RPI batted a rebound out of mid-air, off the back of Tanner Palocsik ’23, and into the net cutting the deficit to 3-2. In the third period, Dartmouth was haunted by penalties, as an interference led to the game-tying goal with 13 minutes remaining and a hook led to the go-ahead goal four minutes later. With three minutes left in the game, head coach Reid Cashman opted to pull Clay Stevenson ’24 for the extra man, but the gamble did not pay off as RPI scored two empty net goals, giving the final score of 6-3 a much more lopsided appearance. The next day, Dartmouth traveled to Schenectady, New York to face Union as they looked to find their second victory in the last 12 matchups with the Dutchmen. Both teams came out shooting in the first period as Union stretched the ice, playing a much faster style than RPI. Stevenson hung tough in net for the Big Green, making 15 saves and getting a little help from the post on a ice-gliding shot that the Dutchmen thought made it home. The scoring did not open up until the second, as Dartmouth got sucked into the offensive zone on their power play, allowing a Rensselaer forward to sneak behind the defense and get a clean
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breakaway. The shorthanded goal put Union up 1-0. In the rest of the second, the Big Green struggled breaking the puck out of their zone as they only put two shots on goal, surviving their way to
the locker room. The third period was a more equally contested period, but RPI found the back of the net on a calculated three-on-two rush, bringing the score up to 2-0 with only 3:14 left to play. The goal seemed like the final nail in the coffin — with two and a half minutes left, Cashman pulled Stevenson in a desperation move. A regulation loss meant that Dartmouth would finish last in the ECAC and be the lowest seed heading into playoffs. Coming on the ice as the sixth man, Braiden Dorfman ’25 slid into position, caught a pass and fired a laser top-shelf over the Union goalie’s glove. After Dartmouth regained possession, Stevenson was pulled again — with only 57 seconds left, the puck came to Steven Townley ’25 in the slot and he beat the Union goalie on the low glove side to give the Big Green the improbable equalizer. “I honestly can’t say I’ve ever seen back to back six-on-five goals like that, it was really exciting,” Townley said. “It showed a lot about our group that we didn’t give up.” Having two freshmen score the gametying goals showed potential strength in the program’s future. “We have nine freshmen guys on the
team, so we jumped right in and tried to do our best,” Townley said. Time expired in regulation and the game went to overtime, which meant Dartmouth picked up a point in the standings, enough for them to leapfrog Yale in seeding for the ECAC Tournament. In overtime, Cashman played for the win, pulling Stevenson with 2:18 left in the extra period — one minute later, however, Union capitalized on the empty net opportunity to earn the walk-off 3-2 win. Cashman stood by his decision to pull the goalie in overtime after the game. “We got the d-zone draw and had the guys out there that we wanted, so we went for it,” Cashman said. “I wanted to be aggressive.” Next weekend, Dartmouth will get another shot at RPI in the first round of the ECAC Tournament, as the Big Green and Engineers will battle in a best-of-three series. “We’re in playoff mode, which means we have to end somebody’s season, and that’s tough to do,” Cashman said. “You can’t win the second game unless you win the first, so that Friday night game will be really important to get off on the right foot in the series.”
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FRIDAY, MARCH 4, 2022
Women’s History Month: Remembering Dartmouth’s Coeds STORY
By Eliza Dunn
This article was originally published on March 2, 2022. On November 22, 1971, the front page of The Dartmouth was dominated by four decisive words: “DARTMOUTH TO ADMIT WOMEN.” Although Dartmouth was far from the first institution to admit women — all of the other Ivy League schools had already made the switch — this landmark decision marked a sharp break in the College’s long history as a men’s school and shook the foundations of what many knew as “dear old Dartmouth.” Today, over fifty years later, Rauner Library houses the physical documentation of the co-education decision and its farreaching implications. In these files, press releases, newspaper clippings and letters chronicle the story of the first Dartmouth women and the controversial welcome they received here in Hanover. In the quiet interior of Rauner, I open my first folder of documents. On top is a press release from November 1971, notifying news outlets of the upcoming Dartmouth Board of Trustees meeting, where the all-male board would vote on both co-education and its counterpart, year-round operation — the current-day D-Plan. As the release read, Dartmouth’s “piquant qualities … with its strong male tradition and relative isolation” gave it a singular role in the nationwide move towards co-education. By voting against admitting women, the release continued, the Trustees would “re-affirm Dartmouth’s 202-year tradition as an essentially male college.” By this time, the issue had already taken root far beyond the Upper Valley, as Dartmouth students and alumni alike chimed in on the debate. According to a report to the Alumni Council from January 1971, most students and faculty were in favor of co-education, with 61% and 91% approval rates, respectively. Some alumni voices, collected in an extensive series of Letters to the Editor of the Dartmouth Alumni Magazine, echoed this support, such as Roy Pfeil ’55, who wrote, “it is inconceivable to me that any educational institution … sensitive to the main currents of social progress in America will choose to remain virtually all-male.” A few women contributed to these conversations, as mothers and spouses of Dartmouth alumni. In her letter, Moira Haag, married to a ’70 graduate, wrote that she was “one of the young people who was unable to go to Dartmouth because of her sex.” She insisted that while “some of
the charm of the all-male Dartmouth will be missed,” co-education would create a situation in which men and women could “know and understand one another as individuals. Women are as capable of contribution and discussion as men are: on the Green, in the Hop, and in class.” This opinion, however, was not common across most of the letters. “I am damn mad,” wrote David Ames ’25. “If Dartmouth goes coeducational then it will no longer be the Dartmouth College which did me so much good.” Henry Lowell ’14 echoed this loss of a ‘true’ Dartmouth, writing that “as soon as women become members of the Dartmouth undergraduate body, the ‘Dartmouth experience’ will no longer exist.” In a particularly passionate letter, Whitney Cushing ’39 railed against Dartmouth for following suit with other Ivies. “Be damned to Harvard, Yale, and Princeton!” he wrote. “Dartmouth’s a small college for men in the hills of New Hampshire and no females should clutter up the best damned college in the land … Damn!” I flipped through page after page of scathing letters, full of white male alumni grappling with the inconceivable concept of educating women in the hallowed halls of dear old Dartmouth. One entry, from S.C. Strout ’18, made me pause, not only because it was a rhyming — and derogatory — poem, but because it illustrated the world into which these women would be entering. “But, after all, why not put it straight,” Strout wrote. “It makes it easy to get a date!” At the time, the idea of women entering Dartmouth as full-time students was uncharted territory for students of any gender. As the reality of co-education grew clearer, the Dartmouth social fabric would have had to shift substantially. The role of female students within the Dartmouth community was still unscripted: would they be accepted — both academically and socially — as legitimate Dartmouth students? Or would they be seen simply as potential love interests, a new surplus of weekend dates? The questions of the effect that a female presence would have on the College persisted even after Susan Corderman ’76 matriculated as the first female Dartmouth student. The welcome for Corderman and her fellow “coeds,” as these first women were called, proved rocky from the very start, when during the 1972 matriculation ceremony, six male students protested the switch from singing “Men of Dartmouth” to “Dartmouth Undying.” During that first year of co-education,
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men outnumbered women nine to one, creating an extremely uneven power dynamic within the student body. As one professor observed, “as long as the coeds are in a minority, it will always seem that they are not equal.” “Can you imagine being one of the 400 girls on this campus right now?” a student wrote in the alumni magazine. “They must feel incredibly self-conscious and inhibited walking across campus … Can you imagine walking across the Green and thirty guys are walking by saying ‘Hi!... Hi!... Hi!’” Surrounded almost entirely by men, the coeds faced a school that was not designed for them, and that was often set staunchly against them, particularly in terms of social life. One account describes how many female students were “disheartened that the general social life focuses on fraternity row,” and a 1979 Time Magazine article titled “Hanover: The Big Green Battle of the Sexes” wrote that female students were warned not to go near certain fraternity houses “without taking a solidly protective date.” Some coeds faced physical danger — such as broken windows or shouted obscenities — and all of them bore the emotional brunt of carrying out a longawaited and deeply fracturing change in Dartmouth history. Particularly at a school like Dartmouth, where tradition is held in such high regard, the first coed years
provoked passionate and, at times, hateful responses from students and alumni. Clicking through photo archives, I found a shot of Russell Sage — the dorm where I live now — covered in banners reading “keep Sage all male,” “No Coeds!”, “Hell no we won’t go,” and “it’s all a damn Commie plot.” The Time article quoted a fraternity member saying, “have you seen many of the women up here?” he says. “I doubt if the “Playboy” people could find anybody they’d want. Men get in here because they’re good athletes and are generally pretty good looking. Women get in because they are smart.” In his sexist but glaringly backwards argument, this frat member touches on some of the countless prejudices faced by the coeds. As the number of women at Dartmouth grew, the name “coed” turned into the slur “cohog,” a combination of “coed” and “quahog,” a type of clam and a derogatory reference to female genitalia. In 1975, during a performance of “Hums,” the clever — and often inappropriate — jingles performed by fraternities during Green Key, the “Cohog Song” marked its debut. Ultimately voted “Most Creative and Original” by Dean of the College Carroll Brewster, the “Cohog Song” proclaims, among other equallyvulgar lines, that the coeds are “all here to spoil our fun,” that “they’re all a bunch of dirty whores,” and that they “have ruined
our masculine heaven.” The chorus, sung to the melody of “This Old Man,” goes: “with a knick-knack, paddy-whack / Send the bitches home / Our cohogs go to bed alone.” The first coed years at Dartmouth were certainly troubled as women struggled to find a home in Hanover. Reflecting on the co-education transition in an Alumni Magazine article, Professor Joan Smith put it perfectly: “we have still not addressed the underlying questions of what it means to have women in Hanover.” Looking back fifty years later, it is clear that these questions of gender also underlaid questions of race, class and other social classifiers, which were conversations that had not yet gained momentum in Dartmouth’s homogenous student body back in 1971. Although in 2022 we have come a long way from the “Cohog Song,” Professor Smith’s words still hold some resonance. Dartmouth’s struggle with gender equality — across all gender identities — is far from resolved. While many decades have passed since Dartmouth was an all-male institution, vestiges of that time period are still visible throughout campus culture, particularly within Greek life. As a school, we are still working towards the ultimate goal of gender equality, towards which coeducation was a crucial first step. In doing so, we follow the footsteps of those first coeds, who, over fifty years ago, claimed Dartmouth as theirs, too.
Wordle Me This: How Can a Mini-Game Build Community? STORY
By Arielle Feuerstein
This article was originally published on March 2, 2022. No matter what I’m doing, when the clock strikes midnight, I drop everything and open up the day’s Wordle. The premise of the online word game is simple: A player has six tries to guess one five letter word, which changes every day. After each guess, the player learns how close their word was to the answer, and they can use that information to guide their next attempt. I know I’m not alone in my fascination
with the game; according to the New York Times, over 300,000 people play daily — and at least a few of those hundreds of thousands of players are Dartmouth students. June Dong ’22 began playing during winter break after her friend sent her the link, and Dong “immediately became addicted.” “I think that it’s honestly the perfect game,” Dong said. “This game feels so genuine and simple.” Everybody has the same word to guess each day, and when a player correctly guesses a word, they have the
option to share their results in the form of a blank colored grid, revealing how successful each player’s guesses were without spoiling the day’s answer. Dong was particularly drawn to Wordle by how easy it was to connect with others through their shared experiences playing. “There’s something so satisfying about sharing your score and seeing how other people did also and just talking about it, even if it’s just for a minute or two,” Dong said. Many students have formed group chats dedicated to sharing their Wordle
SUMMER HARGRAVE/THE DARTMOUTH STAFF
results with friends or family. Jake Hanssen ’22 began to “get into” playing Wordle because he liked to send his results to someone he had “gone on a few dates with,” and he eventually began sharing his results regularly with a group of his friends. This gave him a glimpse at his friends’ playing habits, which he found entertaining. “I ended up getting a group chat of four or five people … where we would all just send [the results] every day, and it would be really funny to see whether it was at 12:05 in the morning or 8 a.m. or way at night at 11 p.m. when you almost missed it.” Hanssen is far from the only student to be in such a chat; Wordle group chats became so popular that Alex Aronow ’23 formed a campus-wide GroupMe for any Dartmouth student to share their Wordle successes and failures. Before Wordle’s popularity peaked, Aronow was in a campus GroupMe in which members shared their solve times for the New York Times Mini Crossword. After Aronow saw a friend playing Wordle, he asked the crossword chat if anybody else was playing. After receiving several positive responses, Aronow was inspired to form a dedicated Wordle GroupMe. The chat originally had about seven people in it; now, that number is approaching 300. “It’s half people I don’t even know and half people who I know pretty well, and we all just send in the Wordle every day and it’s kind of a lot of fun,” Aronow said. Aronow did not anticipate that the GroupMe would attract so many people, but he said he is “pretty happy about it” because “it’s a very cool way for people
to interact.” “I’d really just done it because it’s a fun thing to do; it’s like a fun little competition between friends,” Aronow said. “Then after like, two weeks, I started to realize that this is going to become a lot larger than I ever expected it to.” Hanssen noted that sharing the Wordle in the campus-wide GroupMe gives him a connection to many Dartmouth students that he may not have otherwise had a reason to communicate with. “I think the GroupMe is really cool because it’s kind of an eclectic collection of people from around campus,” Hanssen said. “I wouldn’t interact with these people on a normal basis, but now I get to look into their lives. It has become sort of an experience, something that has brought a lot of people together who wouldn’t otherwise be together.” Beyond just sharing the day’s grid results, players have found other ways to use Wordle to connect with others. Dong, for instance, has begun creating personalized Wordles with her friend and “sending those to each other randomly.” Although the game is simple, students have appreciated that Wordle provides a small pocket of happiness in otherwise troubling or stressful times. Dong is grateful that people are willing to take time out of their fast-paced lives to play the game. “I’m very happy that so many people play it,” Dong said. “In a time when there’s so much going on in the world and so much going on in everybody’s individual lives, we can still find time every day to come together and do this simple little word game and find joy in doing it together as a community.”