Hanover Review Inc. P.O. Box 343 Hanover NH, 03755
Volu m e 3 7 , Is su e 5
We d nes d ay, May 3 1 , 2 0 1 7
the commencement issue
commencement We at The Review wish the class of 2017 all the best in their future endeavors!
Image courtesy of Tuck Communications
Lessons from Robert Frost Sexual Assault at Dartmouth Robert Frost Alumnus
Editor’s note: Frost ’96 delivered this commencement address in 1955. The Dartmouth Review offers the College’s graduating seniors the wisdom of Frost’s words as the seniors prepare for their departure into the real world.
This is a rounding out for you, and a rounding out is the main part of it. You’re rounding out four years. I’m rounding out something like sixty-three, isn’t it? But it is a real rounding out for me. I’m one of the original members of the Outing Club—me and Ledyard. You don’t know it, and I shouldn’t tell it perhaps, but I go every year, once a year, to touch Ledyard’s monument down there, as the patron saint of freshmen
who run away. And I ran away because I was more interested in education than anybody in the College at that time. I thought I’d say to you just a few words about that, and so as to lead up to two or three poems of my own. I usually am permitted to say a poem or two—am expected to. I’ll make them short and easy for you to listen to. But you came to college bringing with you something to go on with—that was the idea from my point of view: something to go on with. And you brought it with an instinct, I hope, to keep it— not to have it taken away from you, not to have it taken away from you, not to be bamboozled out of it or scared out of it by any fancy teachers. I’ve known teachers with a real hanker for ravishing innocence. They like to tell you things that will
disturb you. Now, I think the College itself has given you one thing of importance I’d like to speak of. It’s given you, slowly, gradually, the means to deal with that sort of thing, not only in college but the rest of your life. The formula would be something like this: always politely accept the other man’s premises. Don’t contradict anybody. It’s contentious and ill-natured. Accept the premises—take it up where it’s given you and then show ’em what you can make of it. You’ve been broadened and enlarged to where you can listen to almost anything without losing your temper or your self-confidence. You came from the “Bible belt,” let’s say. You were confronted with the facts of evolution. It was supposed to disturb you about your God.
But you found a way to say—either with presence of mind, wittily, or slowly with meditation— you found the way to say, “Sure, God probably didn’t make man out of mud. But He made him out of prepared mud.” You still had your God, you see. You were a Bostonian and you had been brought up to worship the cod. To you the cod was sacred and her eggs precious. You were confronted with facts of waste in nature. One cod egg is all that survives of a million. And you said— what did you say? You found something to say, surely. You said, “Perhaps those other eggs were necessary in order to make the ocean a proper broth for the one to grow up in. No waste; just expense.” And so on.
> FEATURES page 10
Devon M. Kurtz News Editor During the 2012 election cycle, U.S. Representative Todd Akin infamously proclaimed, “If it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down.” While he rightfully received heavy criticism for this confusing, disturbing, and false statement, many people rushed to his defense. This statement may have been egregiously stupid, but it did shed light on the widespread misinformation about and ignorance of the subject of sexual assault and rape culture. Conservatives are often criticized for their questionable track re-
cord on defining and punishing sexual violence. When it comes to sexual harassment, many accuse “conservative” men especially of belittling the experience of being targeted by unwarranted sexually charged comments. In instances of sexual violence, “conservatives” are (often rightfully) criticized for making statements like the ones by Todd Akin in 2012 and by President Trump in the infamous Access Hollywood “Grab her by the p---y” video, or for making the alltoo-common marginalizing rationalizations, “She was asking for it” and “Did you see what she was wearing?”
> Features page 14
the beginning of the end
a review of the drinking age
Bored@Baker: end of an era
TDR Editor-in-Chief Jack Mourouzis discusses the dismal state of the College, with an optimistic edge
We examine the United State’s drinking age laws and raise some questions about the issue
The Review sits down with the administrator of the now-defunct website for some closure
> EDITORIAL page 3
> features page 8
> features page 9