The Dartmouth Winter Carnival Issue 2018 by The Dartmouth Newspaper

2.9.18

WINTER CARNIVAL SPECIAL ISSUE JEE SEOB JUNG/THE DARTMOUTH SENIOR STAFF

THE DARTMOUTH WINTER CARNIVAL ISSUE

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EDITORS’ NOTE

FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 9, 2018

Table of Contents Faculty engage in innovative research projects

Student entrepreneurs create their own businesses

Modified and special majors help students create their own paths

College offers classes with nontraditional course designs

Dating at Dartmouth: Shifting norms and blurred lines

Digital arts program offers interdisciplinary study plans

Football team uses state-of-the-art virtual reality tool

Juuling at Dartmouth: Addiction renewed and reimagined 10-11 TIFFANY ZHAI/THE DARTMOUTH SENIOR STAFF

The shortest distance between two points, as the saying goes, is a straight line. But if everyone followed the short and easy paths in their lives, would innovation ever occur? Robert Frost’s oftquoted wanderer in the woods found two roads before him and took the one less traveled by, but it was a path that had already been carved out before him. Innovation requires us to forge new roads — ones that may not lead in straight lines but in their wake foster creativity, progress and achievement. How can one describe the collision of academic fields set on parallel tracks, the resurgence of nicotine use in a demographic that had sworn off cigarettes, centuries-worth of societal norms transforming with dizzying speed or students and professors redefining what it means to learn? Innovation is a word that doesn’t quite capture the dynamism of the concept. It brings to mind dull history lectures on the Industrial Revolution or trite cell phone advertisements. Yet, after hours of brainstorming the theme of this year’s Winter Carnival Special Issue, we came to accept that its conceptual base — fresh, exciting, abnormal, uncomfortable, the inconceivable conceived, familiar things examined upside down — was simply too expansive to be perfectly captured by a single word. So “innovation” will have to do.

Best, Eliza Jane and Alex

Huebner and Szuhaj: What We Talk About When We Talk About Innovation

Sandlund: Our Binary Humanity

Verbum Ultimum: Facing Failure

Through the Looking Glass: Going to France to see Hanover

NIGHT LIGHT

6175 ROBINSON HALL, HANOVER N.H. 03755 • (603) 646-2600

ALEX FREDMAN, Issue Editor

ELIZA JANE SCHAEFFER, Issue Editor

TYLER MALBREAUX, Issue Opinion Editor RAY LU, Editor-in-Chief PHILIP RASANSKY, Publisher KOURTNEY KAWANO, Executive Editor ERIN LEE, Executive Editor ZACHARY BENJAMIN, Managing Editor SONIA QIN, Managing Editor PRODUCTION EDITORS PARKER RICHARDS, IOANA SOLOMON

& ZIQIN YUAN, Opinion Editors

MARIE-CAPUCINE PINEAU-VALENCIENNE & CAROLYN ZHOU, Mirror Editors

NATHAN ALBRINCK, SAMANTHA HUSSEY, EVAN MORGAN & CHRIS SHIM, Sports Editors HALEY GORDON & MADELINE KILLEN, Arts Editors MELANIE KOS & YADIRA TORRES, Dartbeat Editor SAMANTHA BURACK & JEE SEOB JUNG, Design Editors ALEXANDER AGADJANIAN, Survey Editor

ALEXA GREEN, Managing Editor AMANDA ZHOU, Managing Editor BUSINESS DIRECTORS ALFREDO GURMENDI, Finance & Strategy Director ROSHNI CHANDWANI, Finance & Strategy Director SHINAR JAIN, Advertising Director KELLY CHEN, Product Development Director ELYSE KUO, Product Development Director EMMA MARSANO, Marketing & Communications Director MATTHEW GOBIN, Technology Director PHOTOGRAPHY EDITOR TIFFANY ZHAI MULTIMEDIA EDITOR JESSICA CAMPANILE

ASSOCIATE EDITORS: Elise Higgins, Divya Kopalle, Joyce Lee, Michael Lin, Tyler Malbreaux

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.

Light illuminates snow falling outside Baker Library.

MICHAEL LIN/THE DARTMOUTH STAFF

FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 9, 2018

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Faculty engage in innovative research projects NASA’s Mars Science Laboratory, she has continued to work in that The Dartmouth Staff field, even helping direct Mars rovers. Should Republicans pray for She also analyzes data such as delta rain on election day? What do black deposits, using laws and empirical holes tell us about the formation relationships known on Earth to of galaxies? How can we predict “back-calculate” how water may future mass genocides? These are have existed on Mars. the kinds of questions Dartmouth Like Palucis, gover nment professors, along with their colleagues professor Benjamin Valentino agreed and students, are working to answer, that Dartmouth’s academic culture during the one or two terms a year breeds innovation, in particular because of the connections that exist they aren’t busy teaching. The College recently ranked within and between departments. 20th out of 200 research institutions “Because of our small size, faculty worldwide in the Nature Index tend to know each other across 2017 Innovation ranking, based on disciplines and departments in a way patent contributions and researchers’ that maybe doesn’t happen at much influence on their respective fields — larger institutions,” said Valentino, and professors agree that Dartmouth’s adding that a single department at larger university may have upwards culture encourages innovation. When earth sciences professor of 90 people. Marisa Palucis arrived to teach at But at Dartmouth, Valentino Dartmouth last July, she was surprised explained, not only do professors by the interdisciplinary nature of work together on campus, but they exist in the same community away Dartmouth students’ interests. “The breadth and the interest from school. range of a lot of the students is very “We know faculty from every corner of [the College], either wide,” Palucis said. Palucis noted that her planetary because we meet them on campus, or science students are also taking courses … we meet them when our sons and in disciplines like anthropology and daughters are playing soccer on the history and applying their diverse field and we get to talking,” he said, knowledge to all areas of their work. which leads to conversations about “If you only ever take geology common interests, and eventually, classes, you’re going to end up interdisciplinary work. always thinking like a geologist,” she Interdisciplinary idea-sharing remarked. “But if you’re learning has benefited Valentino’s research. principles from the humanities or He co-founded the Early Warning other areas of science and you bring Project, a project that calculates that to whatever your major, I think countries’ risk of mass atrocity. that can lead to a lot of innovation.” Valentino said he utilizes students’ Palucis’ students help her with knowledge in other fields to help her research on Mars — a planet further his work on the project. environmentalists and science fiction “Building these kinds of [risk] models has been enthusiasts part of my work a l i k e a r e “If you only ever for 20 years,” he interested in. take geology classes, explained. “But Palucis said communicating scientists can you’re going to end up the results of u s e M a r s ’ always thinking like a statistical models u n i q u e to the general surface to help geologist. But if you’re public, high u n d e r s t a n d learning principles students how our entire from the humanities or school that come to the solar system other areas of science web page, that’s formed. not something “On Earth, and you bring that to I’ve done before. since we have Nor building a plate tectonics, whatever your major, I we lose a lot of think that can lead to a website.” He added that infor mation, lot of innovation.” students and because the researcher s in surface of the other disciplines E a r t h g e t s -MARISA PALUCIS, EARTH have helped him recycled,” she learn how to best e x p l a i n e d . SCIENCES PROFESSOR communicate his “ O n M a r s, results on the web there [are page. no] active tectonics, so we can study what the Valentino began performing Earth would have been like early in risk-consulting work for the United States government in the 1990s, but its evolution.” Palucis said she hopes to ascertain he said he always thought it a shame at what time Mars had water and that his forecasts weren’t accessible how much there was on the planet. to the public. After a five-year stint working for “There are people besides the

By ABBY MIHALY

U.S. government that could benefit in deep modeling mean machines from knowing what countries are at now have the capacity to decide what features are relevant from a given highest risk,” he said. So Valentino decided to make input. the risk data available to the public. For Torresani, the global impact In collaboration with the Simon- of his work bears great importance. Skjdot Center for the Prevention of “I’ve always had this dream of going somewhere Genocide at the United States “We know faculty I could teach my classes and Holocaust from every corner of potentially make Memorial a bigger impact M u s e u m i n [the College], either t h a n e ve n a t Washington, because we meet Dartmouth, D . C . , because I would V a l e n t i n o them on campus, be able to really launched the or ... we meet them give opportunities Early Warning when our sons and to students who Project. The don’t have these museum later daughters are playing opportunities,” decided to host soccer on the field and Torresani said. the project and Torresani also hire full-time we get to talking.” emphasized employees to the positive support it. -BENJAMIN VALENTINO, experience he has Valentino had teaching at said that he GOVERNMENT Ashesi. a p p r e c i a t e s PROFESSOR “It’s a g reat the connection opportunity for with the public me to be here, that the project and to bring my encourages. ex p e r t i s e a n d “I’ve started inspire some of to get emails on these amazing a fairly regular students and basis from … concerned citizens, people who come maybe convince a few of them to from countries that are high risk,” he pursue graduate studies, maybe at Dartmouth,” he said. said. Valentino added that he has After his work in Ghana, Torresani been able to have constructive will spend six months working at conversations with those who criticize Facebook. It’s a two-way exchange, him, as well as activist organizations Torresani explained: Facebook can looking for a way to make a difference offer him and his students as much in countries the project marks as high as he can offer them. In particular, risk. “That’s exactly what I had hoped would happen,” he said. Computer science professor Lorenzo Torresani shares Valentino’s passion for spreading his work to far corners of the world. Torresani is currently in Ghana on a Fulbright Scholarship, where he is teaching machine learning at Ashesi University. Torresani’s current research surrounds video analysis, which he said he first became involved in during his undergraduate education in Italy, where his thesis tackled lipreading technology that aimed to improve speech recognition. After working at three different start-ups and pursuing a Ph.D. at Stanford University, Torresani came to Dartmouth to pursue an academic career. At Dartmouth, Toressani works with “deep models” which consist of “many, many layers, and each layer extracts some features or representation from the preceding layer,” he sayid Traditional artificial intelligence work, such as the technology Torresani had used for his lip-reading research, required step-by-step manual coding. Recent developments

the company has access to powerful computational technology, which allows for larger and longer-running models and access to data not yet available in academia. “I have good students who can do internships at these companies, and conversely, they have great resources in terms of computer resources, clusters [and] computational power,” he said. All of the professors interviewed shared Torresani’s high regard for their student researchers. Government professor Yusaku Horiuchi said what he most likes about Dartmouth is the “excellent students.” Horiuchi said he is working on upwards of 10 papers and three books at the moment, including a study on students’ preferences on college diversity. Students are involved in many of these projects and often contribute a great deal, he said. Sometimes, a student who began as a research assistant eventually becomes a collaborator due to substantial contribution. Horiuchi recently co-authored an article titled, “Why Should the Republicans Pray for Rain? Electoral Consequences of Rainfall Revisited,” which was published late last year. The paper was written in response to an earlier study that argued that rainfall in the United States was advantageous to Republican candidates. The original paper explained the phenomenon based on voter turnout: when it rains, a higher number of Democrats decide to stay SEE FACULTY PAGE 12

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Student entrepreneurs create their own businesses By EILEEN BRADY

The Dartmouth Staff

In the eyes of Jayanth Batchu ’18, innovation means finding a “better, multifaceted” solution to problems in the world. Through the Dartmouth Entrepreneurial Network and his own biotech business endeavors, Batchu has pursued this goal throughout his time at Dartmouth. Working under the mentorship of faculty from the College and the Geisel School of Medicine, Batchu created Novather, Inc., a biotech startup that focuses on reducing, if not eliminating, the side effects of CAR T-Cell therapy used to treat cancer. Batchu said his interest in biotechnolog y beg an in his sophomore year of high school, when he worked on research associated with heart disease. After participating in the North Carolina School of Science and Mathematics’ Summer Ventures program, he was motivated to continue working on biomedical research. The idea for his current endeavor came to him at the end of his sophomore year of college. To flesh out and formalize his plans, Batchu met with Jake Reder, the head of new ventures at Geisel, who gave him feedback and introduced him to professors who could provide him advice in the future. Batchu spent time improving his idea at the theoretical stage and is now looking for funding to carry out proof-ofconcept experiments. He added that he recently began meeting with professional investors and other biotech companies to discuss partnerships and/or support. Partnerships are the basis of Novather’s business model, Batchu said. “What I do is I help the other technology be better, so if some other company has a CAR T-Cell therapy but it has some side effects, if they partner with me, I can reduce their side effects and give them something better to work with,” he said. Batchu chose to study at Dartmouth in part because of what it offered him and his project. Knowing he wanted to start a company, he explored the Dartmouth Center of Cancer Nanotechnology Excellence, which integrates nanotechnology with cancer research, spoke with biomedical engineering professors and looked into the DEN and the Dartmouth alumni network before deciding that Dartmouth would provide him with many of the resources he was looking for as an entrepreneur. He said his decision paid off. “I’ve only been able to reach this stage by significantly leveraging the DEN and the bigger Dartmouth alumni network,” Batchu said. “If I

hadn’t made use of that, I wouldn’t be able to be in this spot. I’ve gotten tons of great advice.” Beyond advice, Batchu has received monetary support and experiential opportunities through Dartmouth. He has received two DEN Founders Grants, which offer up to $5,000 to “facilitate the start and development of Dartmouthfounded ventures,” gone on two DEN West Coast Experience trips (once as a participant and once as an organizer) and attended “almost every single speaker event” that DEN has offered, he said. Batchu said that in addition to his entrepreneurship, he is currently pursuing both economics and biomedical engineering majors. The balance, he says, is a delicate one which is often difficult to maintain. Pursuing two of the College’s more difficult majors in addition to his own startup has led to many sleepless nights, he added. “In the startup world, if you’re not prepared for the worst case scenario, you will get wiped out,” Batchu said. For this reason, he said he keeps an open mind in relation to things like class scheduling. No matter the situation or the schedule, he can make it work, scheduling his company work around his classes and other commitments. Sherri Oberg ’82 Tu’86, who has served as a mentor for Batchu throughout his entrepreneurial journey, echoed this sentiment. “One thing that effective entrepreneurs figure out how to do is to balance a lot of different things, and Jay seems to be doing a good job of that,” she said. “Kind of like how varsity athletes put a huge amount of time into their varsity practices and games and still have to juggle their academic workload … my guess is that Jay’s doing just fine juggling everything.” Though he said the balance between work and school can be exhausting, Batchu, who plans to continue his current project after he graduates in the spring, encouraged other Dartmouth students to give it a try if they’re interested in entrepreneurship. “My two biggest pieces of advice would be ‘don’t give up’ and ‘always be willing to learn,’” he said. “If you don’t give up, you will eventually reach the end goal, and if you’re willing to learn, then whenever you encounter a roadblock, you can work your way around it or break through it.” Aidan Folbe ’19 is another entrepreneur on campus who serves as a DEN associate alongside Batchu. In 2015, he and his business partner redesigned their app, GiftAMeal, after starting the project a year earlier as a peer-topeer restaurant recommendation

service. The app is now focused on restaurant marketing and branding, transforming restaurants into social enterprises and providing meals to those in need. “Every user who dines at a partner restaurant of ours and takes a photo there and checks in, we provide a meal to someone in need locally through a local food bank,” Folbe said. The app partners with restaurants and food banks in St. Louis, Chicago and Detroit. The food banks then work with local food pantries to distribute the meals, Folbe said. If users share their photo on social media, an additional meal is donated. Folbe said that partnering with GiftAMeal serves as a way for restaurants to help those in need while also improving their own image. Every time a user chooses to share their experience with a GiftAMeal partner restaurant on Facebook or Instagram, the restaurant is associated with a good cause, he added. A gifted meal comes in the form of a cash donation from GiftAMeal to a local food bank. These donations equal the calculated cost of a meal (based on statistics from Feeding America, a nonprofit that works to end hunger in the United States). The donations are funded by the monthly fees of restaurants who have paid for GiftAMeal’s marketing services. Folbe and co-founder Andrew Glantz began developing GiftAMeal while interning at a venture capital firm after Folbe’s junior year of high school. Folbe named this experience as an inspiring factor in starting his business.

“Having startups present to these managing partners all the time, we just decided, ‘You know, it’d be really cool if we were working on something this summer as well,’” he said. Folbe said he believes the update GiftAMeal app improved on some of the shortcomings of popular restaurant review sites, allowing users to read restaurant recommendations from their friends rather than from strangers. Users were incentivized to use the app by receiving 50 cents for each time a friend went to a restaurant the user recommended. The new model, Folbe said, provides instant gratification for users. Rather than having to wait for a friend to visit the referred restaurant, users provide a meal immediately upon dining at a GiftAMeal partner restaurant. After this change, GiftAMeal started receiving more media attention and signing on more restaurants, Folbe said. The app now has 40 paying restaurants and over 100 partner restaurants across St. Louis, Chicago and Detroit. Paying restaurants receive marketing benefits that non-paying partners do not. Like Batchu, Folbe cites DEN and the broader Dartmouth alumni network as two of the College’s greatest assets from an entrepreneurial perspective. Even as an underclassman, he said, he was introduced to venture capitalists and other alumni who helped him practice his business pitches and gave him advice. Folbe, too, has received monetary support through winning The Pitch, an annual event co-hosted

by DEN and Dartmouth’s Digital Arts, Leadership and Innovation lab during his freshman year, receiving $3,000 to put towards his startup. Also during his freshman year, Folbe worked with Dartmouth student interns through the DEN Campus Ventures program, which matches students with real-world startups run by other Dartmouth students or students at the Tuck School of Business. Although Folbe acknowledged that the balance of coursework and entrepreneurship can be difficult, he said that being on a college campus allows him to better understand his app’s audience, which he described as mostly millennials. “Our app really does try to appeal to millennials,” Folbe said. “You’re taking pictures of food, you’re giving to people in need … I feel like the millennials are very socially conscious by nature and enjoy social media. It’s important for me to know what type of apps are appealing to millennials now.” According to Glantz, Folbe does a great job of effectively balancing his classes and his business responsibilities. “I’ve found that Aidan really takes the most from his classes and applies it to GiftAMeal in a really efficient way, so even when he’s in class, he’s also applying those concepts to GiftAMeal,” he said, calling Folbe a “creative guru” who is always coming up with new ways to solve problems. This constant communication, Folbe said, is what keeps him on track with his team members, none of whom go to Dartmouth. “They have no idea if I’ve got a midterm coming up,” he said.

MICHAEL LIN/THE DARTMOUTH STAFF

Students like Jayanth Batchu ’18 and Aidan Folbe ’19 cite DEN as an asset for entrepreneurship at Dartmouth.

FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 9, 2018

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Modified and special majors help students create their own paths typically consist of 10 courses from two departments, with an emphasis in one department. The deliberate breadth of Students who elect to modify a liberal-arts education allows a major must submit a written students to freely pursue a range of statement explaining why their subjects that they find intellectually modification presents a unified, rewarding. While many Dartmouth coherent program. students achieve this through the Students seeking to design more than 60 defined majors special interdisciplinary programs at the College, others find their of study across more than two academic needs better answered disciplines have the option to through unique, interdisciplinary create a special major. Special plans of study. For those whose majors comprise 10 interrelated interests cannot be fulfilled within courses chosen by the student a single discipline or department, and require both a primary and the College allows the modification a secondary faculty advisor. The of existing majors and the design approval process includes a written of special majors. proposal stating the purpose and Major modifications have risen objective of the special major. in popularity at the College in Assistant dean of faculty for recent years. Associate dean for pre-major advising and history student academic support services professor Cecilia Gaposchkin said and dean of underg raduate she typically serves as the first point students Brian Reed said students of contact for students who want often come to Dartmouth already advising for major modifications knowing that they intend to modify or special major proposals. an existing major. In a recent poll conducted by “Each new class comes in, and College Pulse for The Dartmouth they really understand that the from Jan. 29 to Feb. 7, 33 percent of problems that face our world are 763 surveyed Dartmouth students not going to be answered through said they have considered creating one discipline or through one lens,” their own major or minor, but he said. “Incoming students look Gaposchkin said only about three at it a lot more holistically now.” to five special major proposals go Though some departments, through each year. including the While major gover nment modifications d e p a r t m e n t , “I have so many stories a r e fairly r e s t r i c t about the English straightforward, modifications, Gaposchkin others see them major who’s in finance said that special f r e q u e n t l y. or the economics majors involve D av i d Ko t z a d v a n c e d major teaching ’86, interim work by the p rovo s t a n d history. I encourage student and real c o m p u t e r students to follow commitment s c i e n c e from faculty p r o f e s s o r , their intellectual bliss, advisors. For a s a i d h e h a s and you’ll find your special major seen students be approved, vocation somewhere.” to m o d i f y she said, there computer must be an science with an -BRIAN REED, ASSOCIATE intellectual core increasingly to the program of diverse variety DEAN FOR STUDENT study, and it must o f f i e l d s i n ACADEMIC SUPPORT meet the same his time at academic rigor SERVICES AND DEAN Dartmouth. as any existing “We have a OF UNDERGRADUATE m a j o r. S h e few [modified STUDENTS added that an m a j o r s ] interdisciplinary predefined committee — a b e c a u s e group of faculty they’re pretty which reviews common, like special major ‘computer proposals — engineering,’ must also believe but there are basically infinite that the student’s vision cannot numbers of other combinations already be achieved in an existing that are feasible,” he said. “I was major or a modified major. surprised 20 years ago when I first Reed agreed that although he saw a student propose modifying has worked with students interested computer science with studio art, in proposing special majors, they but now I wouldn’t be surprised often find that a modified major at all.” works just as well. Proposed modified majors “We do offer a lot of different

By RACHEL PAKIANATHAN The Dartmouth Staff

ALEXANDER AGADJANIAN/THE DARTMOUTH SENIOR STAFF

Thirty-three percent of 763 respondents have considered creating their own major or minor.

disciplines to either major in or modify a major in, and it becomes really challenging in some ways to comprise a special major that can’t be housed in one of our disciplines in some form or fashion,” Reed said. Gaposchkin also noted that there are advising structures and advantages that come with being in a department, and students following special majors often have to rely on their advisors for that support system. One of those students is Hannah Gallen ’19, who is currently working on designing her own “social entrepreneurship” special major. Gallen said that her advisors Andrew Samwick, economics professor and director of the Nelson A. Rockefeller Center for Public Policy and the Social Sciences, and engineering professor Peter Robbie have been invaluable in helping her develop her major and research. “Once you find people to back you here and once you find people who are willing to support your vision, it all becomes much easier,” she said. Gallen said she chose to pursue a special major in addition to her declared major — comparative literature — because she believes in an interdisciplinary approach to study social innovation and ex p l o r i n g w ay s t o m e a s u re and define social impact. Her approach, Gallen added, stems from a question: How does one quantify the impact on a human

life? “That question to me requires so much complex thinking from so many different disciplinary backgrounds that you could never hope to address it from just one of those perspectives,” she said. “It’s such an important question, especially in this day and age. The lines are getting blurred between the private, social and public sector.” She said her proposed m a j o r d r a w s c o u r s e s f ro m several departments, including a n t h r o p o l o g y, e c o n o m i c s , engineering, geog raphy and sociology. “I was beginning to realize that I had a whole other side of curiosities, and that those curiosities were in individual departments,” Gallen said. “There was no existing major or minor situation that aptly drew parallels and connections over those departments and across those boundaries.” Past approved special majors have ranged from “digital media and communication” to “humancentered design,” an existing minor at Dartmouth reconfigured as a special major, according to Gallen and the undergraduate dean’s office. Another lesser-known opportunity students have to expand beyond the offerings of the normal Dartmouth curriculum is the Senior Fellowship, a program in which select students complete individualized projects their senior year in lieu of enrolling in courses

and completing a major. To be a Senior Fellow, students must have a vision, diligence and structure of process that most people develop as a part of their professional lives, Gaposchkin said. She added that it is the right option for only a few students, but that it is a fulfilling experience for those individuals. “[Senior Fellowships are] for students who are self-starters, who have a clear vision for the questions they want answered,” Reed said. This year’s Senior Fellows are working on projects, including a case study investigating the inconsistent implementation of recognition laws concerning Native-American tribal termination, a science fiction and fantasy novel that looks at the relationship between music, literature and mathematics, a choreopoem that explores the lives of women of color and clothing trends in the United States from the late 19th century to the early 21st century and a project to reconstruct and contextualize the writings and memoirs of prolific Chilean writer “Iris” Inés Echeverría Bello. Reed added that the Senior Fellows program is a testament to his belief that the major you graduate in is less important than students like to believe. “I have so many stories about the English major who’s in finance or the economics major teaching history,” he said. “I encourage students to follow their intellectual bliss, and you’ll find your vocation somewhere.”

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College offers classes with nontraditional course designs offers students direct service opportunities, launching the SIP The Dartmouth Staff program allowed the center to As college students, we’ve been bring experiential learning to the in school for as long as we can classroom. remember. Over time, taking notes Since last winter, between during class and studying for exams six and 12 SIP courses have has become a routine. been available each term, and In recent year s, however, approximately 630 students have D a r t m o u t h f a c u l t y a n d already enrolled in them so far, administrators alike have worked according to Doolittle. As part together to design experiential of their SIP courses, students l e a r n i n g have, among other courses that things, helped c h a l l e n g e “We’ve heard from create museum s t u d e n t s t o many different installations, design cultivate their websites, produce skills outside of stakeholders that ethnographic films the classroom. [SIP courses were] and examine truancy In up to 12 with the Hartford filling a niche that courses per Police Department, term, students hadn’t existed Doolittle noted. collaborate with before.” “The diversity community of products and organizations deliverables that can o n p r o j e c t s -ASHLEY DOOLITTLE, come out of [the SIP as part of program] are just t h e C e n t e r ASSOCIATE DIRECTOR as vast the as the f o r S o c i a l OF ACADEMIC AND number of social Impact’s newly- SERVICE ENGAGEMENT problems that could launched be addressed in the Social Impact AT THE CENTER FOR Upper Valley,” she P r a c t i c u m SOCIAL IMPACT said. program. Doolittle Associate attributed SIP director of courses’ increasing academic and popularity to their service engagement at the Center unique nature. for Social Impact Ashley Doolittle “The program has just exploded said that the center launched the in such a lovely way,” she said. SIP program in response to an “We’ve heard from many different experiential learning initiative stakeholders that [SIP courses from College President Phil were] filling a niche that hadn’t Hanlon. She added that while the existed before.” Center for Social Impact already Doolittle said that she hopes

By JULIAN NATHAN

students develop real-world skills and a genuine enthusiasm for making a difference in their communities as a result of taking SIP courses. “[When you take a SIP course], you’re not just writing a paper that gets graded and goes on your transcripts and that’s it,” she said. “You are actually making a positive, community-driven impact.” In the future, the Center for Social Impact hopes to expand the SIP program to include up to 15 or 20 courses per term and partner with even more organizations in the Upper Valley, according to Doolittle. She added that while experiential learning opportunities have become increasingly common at colleges and universities across the country, Dartmouth stands out for its commitment to making these opportunities available to students at the undergraduate level. “Undergraduates are applying exactly what they are learning in [their courses] to projects for community partners that require exactly those skills … I do think SIPs are a special model, to be honest,” she said. Other classes also focus on learning outside of the classroom. In English 53.04, “Telling Stories for Social Change,” students work with female clients at Valley Vista, a substance abuse rehabilitation facility in Bradford, Vermont. English and women’s, gender and sexuality studies professor Ivy Schweitzer said that the class incorporates the Telling

BLIZZARD ON BRICK

CAROLYN SILVERSTEIN/THE DARTMOUTH STAFF

Snow falls outside Cutter-Shabazz Hall and the Sustainable Living Center on a cold winter afternoon.

My Story programming developed making them feel as though they by women’s, gender and sexuality are seen and heard as individuals. studies lecturer Pati Hernández “[When it comes to] people into its curriculum. Telling My involved in substance abuse or Story, a nonprofit, works to those who’ve been in prison, we empower marginalized individuals don’t really know what their stories t h r o u g h are. Instead, we perfor mance “In academic settings, kind of label them a n d s e l f - we’re not supposed based on lots of expression. stereotypes and Schweitzer, to make people preconceived who teaches vulnerable because notions,” she the course said. a l o n g s i d e that makes them Schweitzer H e r n á n d e z , open to weakness. said that her said that the But I think it’s really favorite part inclusion of about teaching t h e Te l l i n g important to see the course is that M y S t o r y vulnerability as a each iteration is program into dif ferent from the course’s strength that moves the last, and that c u r r i c u l u m us forward and allows she cherishes the encourages opportunity to people to become its students to challenge her develop novel good listeners.” students to feel perspectives. vulnerable. “ [We u s e “In academic t h e Te l l i n g -IVY SCHWEITZER, settings, we’re M y S t o r y ENGLISH AND WOMEN’S, not supposed program] to to make people GENDER AND SEXUALITY break down vulnerable the kind of STUDIES PROFESSOR because that invisible walls makes them open that separate t o w e a k n e s s, ” us, our she said. “But I prejudices, think it’s really our biases important to see and our sense vulnerability as of judgment,” a strength that Schweitzer moves us forward said. and allows people She also to become good hopes that students will have the listeners.” opportunity to visualize the ways Schweitzer also explained that in which their knowledge can have she has learned important lessons a real-world impact. as a professor because of her “What we’re really trying to do experiences teaching the course. here is really ask people to put their “I’ve learned a lot about myself money where their mouths are and and the system that trained me see what happens when they apply as a teacher … I’ve also had to the theories that they’ve read,” she learn how to motivate students to said. learn and assess students on their Schweitzer said that her class attitude and presence,” Schweitzer challenges traditional teaching said. models in which students strictly Interim provost and computer learn and professors strictly teach. science professor David Kotz ’86 Instead, each individual in the said that while he cannot be certain, program acts as both a teacher he believes that experiential and a student, she explained. learning courses are becoming Schweitzer added that above all more popular at the College else, she hopes that her students will because students increasingly wish gain an appreciation for humility, to learn from both academic and which she said is often sidelined in practical perspectives. academic environments. “Experiential learning forces “When was the last time you [students] to bring together heard anybody talk about humility different skills, knowledge bases [in an academic setting?] They a n d w ay s o f t h i n k i n g, ” h e say, ‘Be bold, take risks, go out explained. there and compete, knock down Kotz added that faculty members the other guy’ … we’re arguing might also find experiential that that’s pretty poor training for lear ning courses particularly being a citizen of a democracy in interesting. which we all have to work together “ Fo r f a c u l t y m e m b e r s , and pull together,” she said. connecting what you know from Schweitzer said “Telling Stories an academic perspective to the for Social Change” also empowers real world could offer a lot of the women of Valley Vista by excitement,” he said.

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Dating at Dartmouth: Shifting norms and blurred lines hooking up, so I’ve got to participate, I can’t be left out,’ and a lot of people The Dartmouth Staff are feeling pressured to fit in by Jordan Bustabad ’21 said there’s engaging in hookup culture.” only one way to truly learn how to According to the 2016 Dartmouth navigate hookup culture. Health Survey, respondents averaged “I feel like the only way you will about two sex (oral, vaginal or anal) know the ins and outs of it is if you partners in a year. Nonetheless, actually experience it,” he said. discussions of campus hookup “Basically, you can watch the game culture persist, and some students of baseball, you can practice it, you do choose to participate — a choice can read about it but until you’re in made for a variety of reasons. the moment playing it, you’ll never “It’s indicative of a larger cultural truly realize the experience of it. shift where, particularly with women, You have to be in the moment to we’re no longer expected to go to understand the complexities.” college to get our ‘MRS. degree’— to But when he had a sexual find a husband,” said Anne Pinkney experience that left him uncertain ’20, who is involved with a number of of his own emotions and desires, he sexual violence prevention and sexual found himself feeling alone in his wellness organizations on campus. struggles. “In that way, it can be empowering.” “I didn’t realize the extent of Dartmouth’s D-Plan can also the psychological effects it had, in make casual hookups an appealing the sense that I was thinking about option. a certain experience for a couple “When you’re only given a days, which is something that I certain amount of time, it sometimes haven’t done before,” he said. “There gives you an excuse to escape that definitely were people I could’ve gone emotional labor or accountability,” to, but my stubborn self decided to Fei said. deal with it on my own, and that But it’s clear that not everyone is definitely was a mistake. It was all actually engaging in regular hookups. I could think about for two days In the 2016 Dartmouth Health straight. I couldn’t really focus on Survey, 29 percent of respondents anything else but what happened.” reported that they were not sexually For students like Bustabad, it can active. So why does it sometimes be difficult to find constructive ways feel like everyone is participating to learn to navigate the emotional in hookup culture? Part of why this travails of hookup culture, sex seems so pervasive on campus, Fei and relationships on campus while said, is because those participating minimizing the consequences that are disproportionately vocal. accompany experience. “We don’t hear when people are The phrase “hookup culture” is having a healthy long-term or longfrequently invoked when trying to distance relationship — those people conceptualize sex and relationships choose to be private and keep it more on college to themselves — and c a m p u s e s. the voices we hear “The percentage of It’s an are students who are environment people engaging in saying ‘I just slept t h a t hookup culture is not with so-and-so’ or encourages ‘we just hooked up,’” casual sexual as high as people think. Fei said. “We don’t encounters Everyone is thinking, have a platform or an focusing avenue for people to on physical ‘Everyone is hooking up, share what a healthy p l e a s u r e , so I’ve got to participate, relationship looks w i t h l e s s I can’t be left out,’ and a like.” emphasis on As Bustabad e m o t i o n a l lot of people are feeling discovered, this attachment. pressured to fit in by culture of casual However, sex can have real s e x a n d engaging in hookup emotional impacts. dating on culture.” “Because of campus the physicality of may not be it, it can lead to exactly as it -TONG FEI, STUDENT feelings of being seems. used for your body, WELLNESS CENTER “ T h e feeling objectified,” percentage HEALTHY RELATIONSHIPS Pinkney said. “It’s of people AND SEXUAL HEALTH all situational — it engaging depends on how SPECIALIST in hookup the interaction goes c u l t u re i s — but in this realm not as high of casual sex, it’s as people think,” Student Wellness very easy to feel used, even if you’re Center healthy relationships and voluntarily engaging in it.” sexual health specialist Tong Fei said. Most students haven’t had much “Everyone is thinking, ‘Everyone is formal education on how to navigate

By JADEN YOUNG

SAMANTHA BURACK/THE DARTMOUTH SENIOR STAFF

In a Jan. 29 to Feb. 7 College Pulse survey for The Dartmouth, students disagree on whether hookup culture empowers or disempowers women.

sexual decision making — to treat others with respect and have confidence in their own desires and limits. Dartmouth students come from all different backgrounds of sexual education and cultural approaches to dealing with sex and relationships. “In middle school and high school, I was taught that abstinence is the way to go — never have sex,” Bustabad said. But what his schools did teach about having sex looked very different from the campus dating scene. “They looked at it through a different lens — like, with the assumption that you were in a relationship and would be doing it with the same person again,” Bustabad said. “I definitely came from a home where the topic of sex was avoided. You didn’t mention it because it just had a bad connotation, sadly.” Because Dartmouth students come from such a wide variety of backgrounds, combating gaps in prior sexual education can be difficult on campus, and communication between partners can easily break down. “When we encounter people from

all these different communities and cultures who have their own set of values and communication styles around sex and relationships, it adds to the dynamic and nuanced situation when we’re dealing with hookup culture,” Fei said. “Not even knowing your own wants and needs and expectations and just jumping into something — given the small campus we have, a lot of problems can happen as a result. Knowing your own limits and boundaries is one thing, but how you communicate that to your partner is another thing. We don’t have a standard of how to communicate that, and we have lot of negative connotations attached.” For Fei, part of the problem is that healthy sexual decision making and communication are not taught to us; we’re expected to just know how to manage. “A lot of these things, we did not grow up learning how to do — you’re expected to just know, for it to naturally happen — and for a lot of healthy relationships it takes practice,” Fei said. “We hear a lot of people saying, ‘You learn from your own mistakes,’ and part of it is true. You have to experience and maybe get hurt and hurt other people

to learn some stuff, but how do we make sure we minimize the harm and tears and emotional labor? How do we minimize the mistakes and try to have a healthy life?” For a topic as taboo as sex, it can be difficult to facilitate productive, helpful conversations about it. But there are people at Dartmouth like Fei and Pinkney and groups and programs like Sexperts, Movement Against Violence, Dartmouth Bystander Initiative and Dick’s House counselors that want to shift the culture away from this taboo on talking about sex. These groups exist to provide knowledge and to support students as they navigate sex and relationships on campus. “All these things — sexual health, sexual violence, consent — it’s incredibly difficult to ‘teach’ that,” Pinkney said. “Self-reflection is important.” Promoting that self-reflection can sometime be a matter of exposing students to thoughtful conversation about sexual wellness. “There’s a lot of stigma about going to a workshop about healthy communication or healthy SEE DATING PAGE 12

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Digital arts program offers interdisciplinary study plans makes good art.” In addition to not requiring The Dartmouth Staff previous artistic ability, digital arts The phrase “digital arts” may classes are accessible to students seem paradoxical: a confluence of without a great deal of coding ability. two fields that have almost nothing “Unlike traditional CS classes, in common. At Dartmouth, however, [‘3D Digital Modeling’] requires students and faculty have worked no coding ability and very little together to create innovative projects computer knowledge even,” he said. at the heart of the intersection “I would say that as long as you can move a mouse and click on things and between art and technology. In the past two decades, the read, you’ll be one hundred percent College has increasingly focused on okay with taking this class, as long as the digital arts, in conjunction with you’re willing to put in the work.” the field’s explosive rise in the wider This accessibility is what gives world. Today, Dartmouth has a digital the program of study such broad arts minor, a modified major and a appeal. Computer science professor specialized graduate studies program Lorie Loeb, the director of digital for students interested in exploring arts at Dartmouth, said the program is working to increase collaboration this interdisciplinary field further. One of the things that makes and crossover across departments. digital arts at Dartmouth so unique “We’re really trying hard to be is the sheer number of departments as interdisciplinary as possible,” it encompasses. With classes available Loeb said. “So students in studio art in the computer science, studio art, are welcome to come and use our film and media studies, engineering, computers, and get help on things. music and theater departments, We’re really working with the faculty the program is one of the most and staff in studio art and film and interdisciplinary at the College. theater to coordinate and cooperate In these classes, students learn a as much as we can.” variety of different skills, including Studio art professor Karolina 3D modeling, 3D animation, digital Kawiaka, who teaches a course in design, Photoshop, virtual reality, digital drawing, also emphasized the diverse array interactive of students who installations, 3D “We’re really participate in printing, laser trying hard to be the digital arts cutting and program. sound editing. as interdisciplinary “My classes in Most students as possible. So digital art have no come into these prerequisites, so I classes with little students in studio get students from to no artistic art are welcome to many departments, ability, and the come and use our i n c l u d i n g course draws engineering and students from all computers, and get different majors. help on things. We’re computer science,” Kawiaka said. Justin Luo ’20, “They take that who is pursuing really working with knowledge and a c o m p u t e r the faculty and staff integrate it with science major in studio art and the different other modified with areas of art that are d i g i t a l a r t s , film and theater offered.” said the digital to coordinate and Students who arts faculty participate in these work to make cooperate as much courses spend t h e p ro g r a m as we can.” countless hours in accessible the studio working to ever yone regardless of -LORIE LOEB, COMPUTER on their projects, for the digital arts previous ability. SCIENCE PROFESSOR program is also one “I think [the of the most handsprofessors] and AND DIRECTOR OF on at Dartmouth. the TAs make DIGITAL ARTS They are guided it really easy for by faculty who someone who are at the peak of d o e s n’t h ave their field, such as any artistic background to be able to come in computer science professor Patricia and just give it their best shot,” said Hannaway, who teaches a computer Luo, describing the “3D Digital animation course. Hannaway was Modeling” class offered by the the senior animator for the character computer science department. “They “Gollum” in “Lord of the Rings: The teach you how to create 3D models Two Towers,” in addition to various that look visually appealing. I think a other film credits. lot of the class was just experimenting Computer science professor and just learning how to be artistic Wojciech Jarosz, who teaches a course too. It taught you a lot about what in computer graphics, has done work

By KYLEE SIBILIA

COURTESY OF LORIE LOEB

Computer science professor and director of digital arts Lorie Loeb said that the digital arts program works to increase collaboration and crossover across departments.

on Disney’s “Tangled,” “Frozen,” and “Big Hero 6.” The experience of professors such as these is valuable in classes in which students are taught the programs used to create famous animated films. “It’s really cool to literally be taught the program that the professionals are using,” Luo said. “It really just shows how much of a hands on department and program it is.” There is no limit to the variety of projects students create through involvement with the digital arts program. Music professor Michael Casey, who teaches several digital arts classes in the computer science and music departments, named some of the interesting projects he has come across in his time teaching digital arts students. “I’ve had students who have done sculpture, and the sculpture’s been interactive in the sense that it has code behind it that will detect when someone’s moving or close to the sculpture, and then it will react in some way,” Casey said. “I’ve had students in music who make digital musical instruments and then play them in a performance.” Loeb also said she has seen a wide array of student projects. “A lot of students work to make a short animated film that they write, and they do all the modeling, animate it, and they render it out and they model it,” Loeb said. “Some students do virtual reality games, or regular video games. Some people use engineering to build interactive drawing machines. It’s quite cool, the range of things people make in class.” Every spring, the digital arts program puts on an expo called the Digital Arts Exhibition in which student projects are put on display. Loeb said the ingenuity of a program

like digital arts is that it combines said her experience with animating such wildly different fields. human models has made here more “Any time you mix two fields like aware of the way people move in real that, art and technology, you really life. are at the cutting edge,” Loeb said. “We had to be observant of what “Does the computer become a tool for things look like in real life, because making art, or does art become a tool if you understand what happens in for understanding the computer?” real life, than you can animate it more Casey attributed the uniqueness easily,” Hodel said. “Even just the way of digital arts people walk, because to its ability to you have to look at walk combine the “My classes in cycles. So now I notice intangible with digital arts have no the different walk cycles the tangible. that people have in real prerequisites, so I “ We a r e life.” finding more get students from U l t i m a t e l y, and more ways many departments, the most influential for the digital thing about digital to become the including arts at Dartmouth is a c t u a l , t h e engineering and the way students and real,” Casey faculty have taken this said. “There computer science. connection between may be code They take that the real and the virtual b e h i n d a n knowledge and and applied it to foster artwork or positive change in the a p i e c e o f integrate it with wider world. e n g i n e e r i n g the different other “There are a lot d e s i g n , bu t of ways that people are at the end of areas of art that are building virtual reality the day it’s offered.” and augmented reality something experiences, both for physical, in games but also to help t h e w o r l d , -KAROLINA KAWIAKA, people deal with PTSD that is being STUDIO ART or stress, or those kinds manipulated of applications,” Loeb or controlled. PROFESSOR said. “It’s an innovative There’s a 3D use of technology and object that is art to help impact being made ... Movement in air that people’s lives.” you hear. It’s not just about being At Dartmouth, students and behind the scenes anymore. It’s more faculty have taken the paradox that and more about things in the real is digital arts and used its apparent world.” disconnect to create art that brings T his connection between people together, whether that be observation and physical creation through film, music, sculpture or is something that students also have countless other mediums. They have noticed. Lindsey Hodel ’19, who is brought that which seems intangible also pursuing the computer science to life, and they have innovated at major modified with digital arts, every step along the way.

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Football team uses state-of-the-art virtual reality tool By JUSTIN KRAMER The Dartmouth Staff

Dartmouth quarterback Jack Heneghan ’18 drops back for the snap, looks to his left to see wide receiver Drew Hunnicutt ’19 streaking toward the middle and fires into the opening for the game-winning touchdown. Only Heneghan is not on the grass of Memorial Field; he is standing in his own room, running through repetition after repetition wearing the team’s virtual reality headset from STRIVR (pronounced “striver”) Labs. Sports Training In Virtual Reality is a state-of-the-art virtual reality training company that Dartmouth football uses to enhance player ingame performance by providing an immersive sports video consumption experience off of the field. The virtual reality product, which launched in 2015 and was named Sports Illustrated’s Innovation of the Year, has spread across the sporting world, making its way to professional and collegiate football, basketball, soccer and hockey programs. Dartmouth football has adopted STRIVR into both its mandatory and optional training regimens, giving the team an edge as the only Ivy League team with the technology. The STRIVR-Dartmouth Relationship Considering the impact STRIVR has made in transforming the Dartmouth off-field training experience, head coach Buddy Teevens ’79’s early exposure to the company was a stroke of luck.

Teevens said he first discovered STRIVR when reading a USA Today article about the newly launched company. Having served as Stanford University’s head coach from 2002 to 2004, his interest was piqued when he saw the names of former Stanford kicker Derek Belch, STRIVR’s founder and chief executive officer, and quarterback Trent Edwards, vice president of product, so he called them up. “I said, ‘Hey, what are you into, what are you doing? This sounds like fascinating science to me, and it’s certainly very applicable to sports, specifically the quarterback position,’” Teevens said. “They were guys that I had recruited at Stanford, so we had a relationship and it took off from there.” Still, Teevens had serious concerns before trying on the headset. “I was a little skeptical,” he said. “I had seen some virtual reality demonstrations in the past, and it was like PacMan — not completely accurate and cartoonish.” But when he actually gave STRIVR a try, Teevens said he was astonished. “When they had me put on the goggles, it was a real football team with real guys that move,” he said. “Literally, the ball was snapped, and I moved to catch it. It was that realistic, and that was stunning to me.” At that moment, Dartmouth’s early partnership with STRIVR was born. “They were just starting out, and I expressed my interest, and certainly they were willing to help us,” Teevens said. Heneghan discovered STRIVR in

its early stages during his freshman spring break in 2015, before Dartmouth began using the product. “The first time I heard about STRIVR, it was online — I read a big article that was published about them by Fox Sports and about the traction they were getting with college teams and pro teams,” Heneghan said. “When I came back to school after spring break, I found out that we had purchased a license and were the first team in our league and one of the first college teams to be using it.” His fascination with STRIVR did not end there. Heneghan was so impressed with the technology that he took the extra step of taking an unpaid internship there. “After using the STRIVR headset for about a year, I was going home to Menlo Park, California for the winter and reached out to STRIVR saying, ‘I really like the product, I’ll be home for the six-week break, I’m willing to work for free, and this is something I really believe in,’” he said. As STRIVR became a more important part of the Dartmouth football system, Heneghan watched the Silicon Valley startup soar in popularity. “There was a wall full of pennants where, for each program they worked with, they would get a pennant for them,” he said. “They were putting up a new pennant, it seemed like, every week or every day.” How STRIVR Works Virtual reality has gained prominence in recent years for its ability to fully surround its users in an enthralling alternate scene. Lorie

Loeb, a Dartmouth computer science professor who utilized VR to create homelike experiences for astronauts on extended missions, provided some insight on the technology. “The thing about VR is that it creates such an immersive environment that it tricks your brain into thinking that you actually are there,” she said. “You really are transformed; it’s incredible.” Loeb explained how VR technology functions. “You’re wearing these goggles where you’re seeing an image and you’re surrounded by that image,” she said. “The image that you’re looking at is some sort of 3D immersive environment.” STRIVR aims to capitalize on this technology by giving it a practical purpose: training. Heneghan said he has been blown away by the experience of using STRIVR, logging more hours using it than any other football player at any level, according to Teevens. “When you have the headset on, it feels practically identical to being out on the field as if you’ve just been standing there,” Heneghan said. “You can turn around 360 degrees and see everything that was around the camera, and you can see it pretty clearly as well. It really mimics all of the senses of being out there.” As of now, STRIVR can only stitch film together from plays videographed during practice. “In the context of our team, we would film parts of our practice using the camera, which was basically a tripod with a couple of go-pros tied together on the top,” Heneghan explained. “We would film parts

of practice from different points of view, primarily the quarterback’s point of view, and that footage would be stitched into video that was compatible with the headset.” Loeb said what makes the virtual reality experience work after filming and stitching is completed is the ability to move within the scene. “It’s a real-time render of that scene,” she said. “As you move your head, the scene moves with you. It has software to track your head position as you’re moving.” Players have been able to watch video in a more immersing setting than two-dimensional film as a result of STRIVR’s recreation of live 3D scenes. “What it would allow us to do in preparation is go back and re-watch the plays we had run in practice in three dimensions,” Heneghan said. “This technology allowed us to re-run those plays and relive them afterwards rather than getting a limited number of them during physical practice.” STRIVR’sImpactonDartmouth Football For Heneghan and the rest of the football team, STRIVR has transfor med the training experience and given the Big Green a technological upper hand over the rest of the league. “I think it gave me a huge advantage,” Heneghan said. “For each game in a 10-week season, you might only get three practices, and in those practices, time is of the essence and repetitions are limited.” SEE STRIVR PAGE 13

NORA MASLER/THE DARTMOUTH STAFF

STRIVR, a state-of-the-art virtual reality training company, offers an immersive sports video consumption experience, which Dartmouth football uses for training purposes.

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FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 9, 2018

Juuling on Dartmouth’s campus: a

By Gigi G

With the increasingly common use of Juul e-cigarettes at the College, Dartmouth students have bought into a trend that is spreading across college campuses. Juuls are small, sleek-looking electronic devices, and users purchase and place disposable, nicotine-filled Juul pods inside their devices. According to the company website, one Juul pod allows the user about 200 puffs, and it is considered to be equivalent to one pack of cigarettes. The Juul was originally produced by Pax Labs until the company separated in 2017. Dartmouth alumnus Tyler Goldman ’88 was the chief executive officer of Pax Labs and Juul from August 2016 until December 2017. In a recent survey conducted by The Dartmouth through Pulse from Jan. 29 to Feb. 7, of the 862 College students who responded to the survey, 11 percent use a Juul “often” or “very often,” while another 10 percent reported that they use a Juul “sometimes.”According to the survey, 82 percent of students at the College know what a Juul is; 10 percent of Dartmouth students reporting that they own one; and 41 percent of Dartmouth students report having used a Juul. Juuls have witnessed a rapid growth in the United States since

their release in 2015. These e-cigarettes are among the most popular vaping devices, holding about 33 percent of the e-cigarette market share as of December 2017. Juuls have become especially common on college campuses. T h e U n i ve r s i t y o f I l l i n o i s ’ student newspaper, The Daily Illini, published an editorial in October 2017 warning against the increasingly popular use of Juuls, describing it as an “epidemic.” The Washington Square News, New York University’s student newspaper, also reported in the influx of Juuls on campus, noting their use around campus and inside dorms despite the university’s smoking ban. The U.S. Office of the Surgeon General advises against use of e-cigarettes due to their high nicotine content and potentially harmful ingredients, including “ultrafine particles that can be inhaled deep into the lungs; flavorants such as diacetyl, a chemical linked to serious lung disease; volatile organic compounds; and heavy metals, such as nickel, tin, and lead.” The Surgeon General also notes that e-cigarette use is higher among younger demographics. Because the rise of Juuls and other vaping devices occurred so recently, the College has not collected data

TANYA SHAH/THE DARTMOUTH SENIOR STAFF

Juul usage has become increasingly popular across college campuses, including at Dartmouth.

about the use of these devices in their biennial health surveys, said Brian Bowden, the lead BASICS counselor at Dartmouth. According to Bowden, the next survey, which

ALEXANDER AGADJANIAN/THE DARTMOUTH SENIOR STAFF

In a College Pulse survey for The Dartmouth that received 862 respondents, 30 percent of students use a Juul with friends.

will be released this year, will likely Additionally, 11 percent answered that include questions about e-cigarette they “sometimes” use a Juul. These data use in order to reflect their growing from the first-year class are similar to popularity on campus. those describing other class years at The only information the College Dartmouth. has collected H o w e ve r, f i r s t about vaping year s, by a n ar row “To me, Juuling is a comes from margin, have the highest t h e p r e - trend, so it seems silly rate of Juul ownership matriculation to start an addiction when compared to other survey for the classes at the College. Class of 2021. based purely on social Of the first-year survey The survey, trends — not even respondents, 11 percent wh i ch w a s reported that they own a because you really fielded over Juul. Meanwhile, around the summer, want to, just because 10 percent of the 211 r e p o r t e d other people are doing reporting sophomores, th at ab o u t 152 reporting juniors and 9 p e r c e n t it. It’s a trend that 148 reporting seniors said of incoming depends on human that they own a Juul. first-years Because Juuls and used vaping addiction.” other vaping devices are devices before relatively new, there is c o m i n g t o -A FEMALE MEMBER OF little research about their the College, long-term health effects. Bowden said. THE CLASS OF 2020 The lack of information H o w e v e r, starkly contrasts the large B o w d e n amount of data indicating n o t e d t h at that cigarette usage has this number severe consequences. has likely Bowden cites this reality increased as a major contributor since that to the rise of Juuls and s u r v e y similar devices. occurred. “I think we’ve had Indeed, over the past 20 years The Dartmouth’s survey found that a pretty good campaign [against 10 percent of the 300 first-years cigarettes], so people are aware that who responded said that they use a cigarette smoking is harmful with Juul either “often” or “very often.” lots of carcinogens,” he said. “With

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addiction renewed and reimagined

Grigorian

TIFFANY ZHAI/THE DARTMOUTH SENIOR STAFF

Juuls hold about 33 percent of the e-cigarette market share as of December 2017.

e-cigarettes and with vaping, there’s While the long-term consequences not enough data out there to indicate of vaping remain unknown, research what is harmful, and how harmful it has shown that nicotine-containing is.” devices are addictive. When individuals U n l i k e use products with cigarettes, Juuls “The general nicotine, the substance do not contain is quickly absorbed into testimony at this substances that their bloodstreams and a r e k n o w n t o stage is that [vaping triggers the release of be carcinogens, is] less harmful adrenaline. Bowden said. T he adrenal ine H o w e v e r , than cigarettes. I creates a sensation of Bowden said he don’t plan on doing energy and pleasure. believes that Juuls When that feeling it for my entire will eventually be ends, nicotine users found to cause life. As long as I experience withdrawal health issues. He just relegate it to a symptoms, prompting emphasized that, them to consume right now, “We college thing, I think more nicotine. Over don’t have research I will be fine.” time, nicotine products to support how become addictive, harmful it is.” as users build up an A f e m a l e -A MALE MEMBER OF increasingly strong member of the THE CLASS OF 2020 tolerance to their Class of 2020, who enjoyable effects chooses not to use a and want to avoid Juul and has asked to withdrawal symptoms. remain anonymous To this end, Bowden due to the stigma noted that nicotine surrounding this “is much more highly topic, said that addictive than some she believes Juul other substances.” users understand E-cigarettes, like the potential for Juuls, contain nicotine unknown health consequences. and become addictive when individuals “I do think that people know that become reliant on their pleasurable breathing particulate matter is not the effects. As a brand, Juul advertises its best thing for you, but I think, because products as an alternative for cigarette it’s water vapor, it does seem slightly smokers. better,” she said. Despite Juul’s positive marketing,

the female ’20 said she thinks that many students at the College began vaping even though they had never smoked cigarettes. “I’ve heard [justifications] like, ‘I tried it out because it’s better for you than smoking cigarettes’ from someone who never smoked cigarettes before,” she said. However, she noted, “I also have friends who smoke weed and they [use a Juul] as a mid-ground alternative.” She added that she chose not to use Juuls due to the addictive nature of nicotine in the devices, combined with her disinterest in engaging with the activity. “To me, Juuling is a trend, so it seems silly to start an addiction based purely on social trends — not even because you really want to, just because other people are doing it,” she said. “It’s a trend that depends on human addiction.” In contrast, a male member of the Class of 2020, who identifies as an e-cigarette user and who has also asked to remain anonymous to speak candidly about his usage, said he is “not worried at all” about the risks of vaping. “The general testimony at this stage is that [vaping is] less harmful than cigarettes,” he said. “I don’t plan on doing it for my entire life. As long as I just relegate it to a college thing, I think I will be fine.” While vaping may appear to be healthier than smoking cigarettes,

the male ’20 cited additional reasons for preferring e-cigarettes over the traditional kind. He explained that vaping is appealing to him because it mitigates the indiscretion associated with cigarettes. “I think the main stigma around cigarettes is the smell, the taste and the lack of discretion,” the male ’20 said. “You need a lighter, and it’s producing smoke constantly.” “People rip it in class,” he continued. “That’s a testimony to how discrete to use it is.” He also noted that vaping devices are more desirable than using cigarettes because they are “more customizable.” “You get whatever flavor you want, and you can pick the nicotine level you want,” he explained. When asked about the most common location for vaping, the male ’20 quickly responded, “frat basements.” “In social situations, especially with drinking, is when I hit my nicotine device the heaviest,” he said. The female ’20 echoed this idea, citing parties and her sorority as the common locations in which she

witnesses vaping. The survey results indicate the trend that these students identified. Only 35 percent of 173 reporting fraternity members and 57 percent of 175 sorority members at the College responded that they have never used a Juul. In contrast, the survey results indicate that 67 percent of 478 reporting nonaffiliated students have never used a Juul. Likewise, 31 percent of students at the College answered in the survey that they use a Juul “when I am going out,” and 30 percent of students reported that they use a Juul “with friends.” While Bowden has concerns about the health effects of Juuls and other vaping devices, he said he understands why students use these products. “At this age group, young adults are in a stage of their life where they’re differentiating between themselves and what has been taught to them,” he said. “They are developing their own identity. The way they do that is to test out those things they have been taught and take risks.”

TANYA SHAH/THE DARTMOUTH SENIOR STAFF

Fifty-nine percent of Dartmouth students say they have never used a Juul.

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Students aid professors Students weigh in on hookup culture on Dartmouth’s campus with research x-ray and infrared radiation, looking for “signatures” of these black holes in home from the polls, due to firmer telescope images. His team uses data and images from other researchers, party support among Republicans. Horiuchi and his colleague, Woo including data from telescopes in Chang Kang of Australian National space, as well as collecting some University, conducted a “replication data at the Southern African Large and extension exercise” to examine Telescope and MDM Observatory the study’s findings, Horiuchi said. in Arizona. They repeated the same experiment, If a galaxy is the size of Earth, but changed the way they analyzed Hickox said, the black hole at its center the data. The original study made a would be the size of a centimeter, key assumption: that rainfall doesn’t and it would weigh anywhere from a change voter preference. But Horiuchi million to over a billion times the mass and his co-authors offered a different of the sun. Hickox added that he is encouraged by the conclusion. new information “We argue his team has that … it’s “One of the things uncovered possible that that I’ve loved about regarding the when it rains, Dartmouth is that location and people’s behavior of these p r e f e r e n c e I’ve felt completely black holes, thanks may change,” connected to the t o i n n ov a t i v e Horiuchi said. techniques. T h e i r broader landscape “It’s like an a n a l y s i s of scientists working a rch a e o l o g i c a l showed about in my area. For me, dig,” he said. 1 percent of “We’re finding voters likely Dartmouth has been changed their really great at allowing stuff that no one had ever had the preference in right tools to be rainy weather. us to innovate on a able to see.” H o r i u c h i large scale, as part of Hickox explained said their the whole community that new x-ray conclusion observatories allow fell in line of researchers.” for better visibility with previous through dense findings clouds of gas, and in o t h e r -RYAN HICKOX, PHYSICS new techniques d i s c i p l i n e s : AND ASTRONOMY that combine data “When it PROFESSOR together help find rains, many, hidden black holes many studies in unprecedented in psychology ways. and health Hickox’s research science [found] is just one example that the rainfall affects people’s mood … When people of Dartmouth professors making a are not in a good mood, they tend to splash in the greater academic world. Though Dartmouth’s smaller size be risk averse.” In political science, Horiuchi may suggest Dartmouth professors said Democrats are often perceived are less visible among the academic as riskier choices for office. This community, Hickox said he has found risk aversion during poor weather quite the contrary. supported Horiuchi’s findings that “One of the things that I’ve loved rain makes Americans more likely about Dartmouth is that I’ve felt completely connected to the broader to vote for Republicans. Like Horiuchi, physics and landscape of scientists working in my astronomy professor Ryan Hickox area,” he said. “For me, Dartmouth said that students are essential to has been really great at allowing us to his work at Dartmouth, and that innovate on a large scale, as part of undergraduate students, graduate the whole community of researchers.” students and postdoctoral scholars Hickox expressed gratitude that the College’s environment encourages are all involved in his research. “The work that I do would not be faculty and students to discuss their possible at all without these fabulous work, even across departments. “It makes your mind flexible,” he people,” he said. Hickox is an extra-galactic said. astronomer, specializing in black Though Valentino didn’t expect holes and what they indicate about this culture of innovation when he how galaxies formed and how they’ve chose to make Dartmouth home, he changed over time. Hickox and his said it’s a “happy byproduct” of the team observe the radiation that black kind of place Dartmouth is — small, holes produce as they grow, such as close-knit and interdisciplinary. FROM FACULTY PAGE 3

she said. “If you incentivize these things, people will engage in the relationships because you don’t resources.” necessarily want to be seen as For students who do choose to participate in not having that hookup culture, k n ow l e d g e, ” there may be a few Pinkney said. “Maybe 10 bad considerations to “You have to hookups will teach keep in mind. To get students you one good thing Fei, hookups are to engage rarely worthwhile. v o l u n t a r i l y about being in a “Maybe 10 w i t h t h e s e healthy relationship, bad hookups will re s o u rc e s. I t e a c h yo u o n e think a big part but we have to good thing about of it is word consider the being in a healthy of mouth. opportunity costs; relationship, but we Getting the have to consider word out to what are you losing the opportunity s t u d e n t s i n through the process? costs; what are a way that you losing through does not seem How much good are the process? How imposing or you getting out of much good are you putative is it?” getting out of it?” key.” she said. Pinkney And their casual, n o t e d t h a t -ANNE PINKNEY ’20 noncommittal there are nature could make additional it easy to lose sight b e n e f i t s fo r of treating others participation with respect. in these “Are we taking accountability?” conversations. “Sexperts, for example, you get Fei said. “Do we have the courage to a PE credit for that [training],” separate from something that’s not FROM DATING PAGE 7

what we wanted? Are we respecting other people by parting respectfully, or are we just not dealing with it because the term goes so quickly and you don’t have to see this person next term?” A c c o r d i n g t o P i n k n e y, consideration of the nuances of hookup culture, like effective communication, is also vital. “That’s extremely hard to do, especially considering the role alcohol plays in hookup culture,” she said. “Be aware of power dynamics like upperclassmen versus lowerclassmen. Be aware that hookup culture relies heavily on entrenched societal norms. Be aware ... that in hookup culture, feelings of attachment are not at the forefront. It’s a physical connection.” Whatever choices students make in their sex lives, resources on campus are there to support them, if students are willing to access them. “If people are like me, pretty stubborn and ignorant, you’re gonna try to deal with it on your own, but you don’t realize that there’s so many avenues of support here and so many resources you can take advantage of that you would be a fool not to,” Bustabad said.

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Virtual reality tool used for football training

LUKE, I AM AN ICE SCULPTURE

FROM STRIVR PAGE 9

TIFFANY ZHAI/THE DARTMOUTH SENIOR STAFF

This year’s Winter Carnival snow sculpture features Darth Vader’s helmet.

Heneghan would use STRIVR six days a week, 10 to 30 minutes on non-game days and 30 to 40 minutes before every game. Teevens strongly attributed Heneghan’s emergence as a premier Ivy League quarterback to his extensive use of STRIVR. “To see his development in terms of decision-making and reaction time was exceptional,” Teevens said. “He worked very hard [with STRIVR], and he worked hard on the field as well, but to be able to watch multiples of plays in different pressure situations or blitz profiles of different teams and react in real-time to what people were doing helped him tremendously.” The sheer number of repetitions outside of practice is where Teevens sees STRIVR making its biggest impact. “The wonderful benefit of STRIVR is that you can take an exponential number of visual snaps without being on the field or having to go through a practice format,” Teevens said. “A guy does a limited amount of work on the field, but he can double, triple, quadruple that sitting in his dormitory, the study lounge or the video library.” The for malized training program for using STRIVR also allows players to fully comprehend their coaches’ feedback. “[Getting feedback] makes sense in terms of the verbiage, but when you actually see it on tape it’s ‘Wow, man I know what he’s talking about,’ so it’s a tremendous teaching tool,” Teevens explained. Beyond the formal program, the technology is available for any player who wants additional training, which mimics football practice, even off the field. “The nice thing is, it’s flexible,” Teevens said. “[Heneghan] and some of the other guys would take [STRIVR] to their dormitory, so maybe before bed for 10 to 15 minutes they would take some snaps. Those little pockets accumulate over time. It’s real time, people move the way that they move on a field and the reaction of the quarterback can be accelerated just through repetition. It’s really been beneficial.” While STRIVR was vital for the team’s success this year, some of the main future beneficiaries of the system may have not yet garnered much playing time. Heneghan said using STRIVR earlier in his career allowed him to practice even without playing many minutes. “When I was younger on the team my freshman and sophomore year, I wasn’t playing as much in the games or in practice,” Heneghan said.

“So when you’re not getting those physical reps in practice, getting those visual ones really helped me learn faster and develop faster.” STRIVR may even benefit Dartmouth in relation to students not yet enrolled, as Teevens said he believes that it can serve as an important recruitment tool for years to come. After a successful 8-2 season filled with late comebacks and excellent play from Heneghan at quarterback, Dartmouth looks to keep improving in 2018 with the help of STRIVR. STRIVR’s Potential Impact on the Sport of Football With STRIVR in tow, the Big Green have found some success, but any technological advantage figures to close as more teams innovate with companies such as STRIVR. “I think it has the potential to make quality of play a lot higher particularly at the higher levels,” Heneghan said. “Right now, it’s something that only professional teams and upper-end colleges can afford, but I think those teams have seen a huge benefit in using it and it’s made the game that much more enjoyable for fans to watch.” Heneghan identified health and safety as a primary, large-scale priority of the football community which STRIVR could further. “I think [STRIVR] also has the potential to keep making the game safer; that’s something that people talk about a lot in all aspects of football, but this is one where there is a pretty direct correlation between use of VR and the physical reps you need to take to be prepared,” he said. “If it limits some of the physical practice that needs to get done, that has the potential to cut down on injuries.” For similar reasons as Heneghan, Teevens sees STRIVR creating a safer football environment and hopes other programs will realize this benefit. “People sometimes are hesitant in this profession to move forward and be progressive in their thoughts,” Teevens said. “My attitude is that’s the way the game is going. In training effectively and safely, this will be critical, and this is a tool to really enhance performances of players in a safe fashion.” For now, at least, Dartmouth football seems to be ahead of the sports technology chase. Until the rest of the league catches on or other products come onto the scene, their players will reap the benefits of Dartmouth’s innovative acquisition, both on the field and in the comforts of their own dormitories.

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STAFF COLUMNISTS JULIA HUEBNER ’20 AND BENJAMIN SZUHAJ ’19

What We Talk About When We Talk About Innovation A candid discussion on what it means to innovate.

JH: Ben, I was thinking — nothing these days seems original. BS: Oh, you mean how we have a “9th Star Wars” and a 37th “Kidz Bop?” JH: Only 37? What a shame. But yeah; same goes for tired conversations with the same talking points on campus: the Greek system is problematic; Dartmouth Dining Services is corrupt; Phil Hanlon is an uninspired leader. BS: Can’t argue with that! JH: I guess the same goes for the “Design Thinking” class [Engineering Sciences 12] that you’re in, Ben. I’ve seen three terms now of “Design Thinking” projects, and the same solutions keep coming up. For example, the foamcore model roller coasters: I’ve seen the “Olympic” theme every term, sometimes twice per term! Engineering professor Eugene Korsunskiy isn’t bothered by that. He said that the value is in the process of design, not in the deliverable. BS: I think he’s right. Teaching kids a process that could help them one day to invent or create truly original solutions is important in its own right. JH: Totally. And I would love to create real, original designs someday. But doesn’t it bother you that this day is not today? BS: For me, that day is today. Whenever I sit down to write, I get to create something original. Like right now. I bet the sentence “Mauve snails only leave their slime residue in the catacombs of the Galapagos” has never been written. JH: The more you know! But seriously, is there any utility in creating completely original sentences just for the sake of creating them? BS: The utility doesn’t rest in the sentences themselves — it rests in the human potential to express ideas in a vocabulary that is truly inexhaustible. JH: You must be an English major. BS: Actually, I am! JH: How did you find yourself in Thayer for this “Design Thinking” course? BS: “Design Thinking” is one of the courses required for my human-centered design minor. It’s actually pretty typical for English majors to pick up human centered design minors. JH: Why’s that? BS: Well, think about it. The tenets are strikingly similar. The process of reading and interpreting a text is similar to that of studying a user in design. The process of writing a paper is similar to solving a design challenge. You are given a prompt to solve within a set

of constraints. You need to pay attention to detail, conduct research, prototype, write and rewrite. But above all, when writing or designing, you need to have empathy.

comparison?

BS: Exactly. As a creative writing minor, I feel like I can’t write anything worth a damn without understanding people — how they work, think, feel, act, act-out, interact.

JH: I’ll plead the Fifth. But honestly; it’s crazy to think that my friends taking humancentered design classes could be the next Fadell. As you know, I’m a teaching assistant for “Design Thinking” this term. The other TAs are a few of the most insightful undergraduate and graduate students from all corners of campus. No wonder everyone is positive — it’s our job to tell our friends that if they dream it, they can design it. Imagine throwing out all the constraints, all the circular logic, all the politics. You can bridge “What Is” and “What Can Be” through just, well, thinking. Most of my own ideas are garbage, but the process is freeing.

JH: I wonder, in 20 years, if human-centered design will just be, well, design. It seems unfathomable that any company or person could create successful non-human-centered products. To some extent, isn’t all design human-centered? Aren’t we all designing for humans, or at least, designing with humans in mind?

BS: Your prototypes might be trash, but so are my first drafts. You have to start working to warm up. That’s something I’ve learned in my creative writing classes: You can’t wait for inspiration to strike before getting to work. The painter Chuck Close says it best: “Inspiration is for amateurs — the rest of us just show up and get to work.”

BS: Ideally, yes. All design is human-centered. And in a way, all design sort of is. Everything we engineer is engineered to benefit people, or at least some people, but that doesn’t mean that the user experience is as intuitive, delightful or quality-of-life-boosting as it should be.

JH: That should go on my dorm room wall.

JH: I totally agree. If there’s one takeaway from “Design Thinking,” it’s the importance of empathizing with the user. If you don’t have a firm grasp on the user — their latent and stated needs, their fears, their environment, their societal norms — you’ve got nothing. The best designs are user-facing, user-focused.

JH: Yeah. Even though we design with humans in mind, the “human-centered” part, in my opinion, is grounded in empathy. Human-centered design is empathetic design. It’s design that knows the user so well — their pain-points, their desires — that the solution seems intuitive or even obvious. BS: What do you mean? JH: You know how we joke about how anyone survived before smartphones? Or before Tamagotchis? Take the Walkman, for instance. Of course, in hindsight, the iPod seems like an obvious invention — being able to listen to personal music from anywhere, available on-demand through a virtual music store, is delightful. That was Tony Fadell’s idea. He combined the technology of the MP3 player with a music sales service. No one wanted the iPod until everyone needed it. Now we have a slew of iProducts, Spotify, etc. BS: Yeah, and honestly, I think that’s what creativity is. Combining two fields, two products, two services that nobody else has thought to combine. Or maybe other people have thought to do it, but you actually have the guts to go and do it. In fact, you could argue that every invention, book, movie — any creative thing really — is just the sum of two, three, four other works similar to it. The iPod? A MP3 Player plus a digital music store. The movie “Alien”? It’s “Jaws” on a spaceship. JH: And Dartmouth is Harvard in the woods! BS: You sure you want to draw that

BS: Yeah, it’s Instagrammable. But yeah, I think that’s why, in our “Design Thinking” class, we have to keep daily lists of “Something Beautiful” and “Something Unexpected.” I get our professor’s thinking. We see moments that have the potential to inspire us everyday, but we usually forget or overlook them. Writing down particularly evocative moments in one place is a great way to concentrate the inspiration you’ve been gathering your whole life. JH: I had a similar experience last spring. I took “Impact Design” [College Course 18], a project-based class in which students designed delightful experiences for elderly couples in the Hanover area. To prepare for class, we were asked to tweet about delightful experiences on a daily basis. I’m looking back through my old “delight Tweets” now: “Impromptu piano on the green!” or “Went for a run with a friend on Friday. 15 mins later, we’re having a mud fight on the bank of the Connecticut.” Let me tell you, Ben: I was annoying as heck last spring. I wouldn’t shut up about delight because my grade depended on noticing it around me — not so much that I resented it, but that it was always in the back of my mind. And because my headspace was oriented to find delight, it was easy for me to notice delight and be delighted. I don’t know a better prescription for happiness. BS: So you’re saying to be happy I need to tweet more? JH: Usually, to be happy, I’d suggest to tweet less. But in this case … BS: I get your point. Focusing on happy things will make you happier. Dwelling on sad things will make you sadder.

JH: And fixating on the Hanover cold will make me colder! Sometimes I wonder why more classes aren’t like “Impact Design,” why more classes don’t feel human-centered. BS: Realistically, some are and some are not. Ideally, the seminar experience should allow you to communicate your thoughts and listen to your peers and professor, to grow as an intellectual and a person not simply by reading a text, but by discussing it with others, to see their points of view, to agree or disagree, to engage in dialogue. JH: You mean, what we’re doing right now? BS: Meta. If I’ve learned anything from Dartmouth, it’s how to engage in constructive dialogue. JH: I’ll endorse you on LinkedIn for that one. BS: My deepest gratitude. But to my point. Sure, seminars may be human-centered, but that doesn’t mean all classes need to be. It’s unrealistic to expect intro classes to be intimate and conversation based. And that’s okay. Just because there is value in humancenteredness — in dialogue, in face-to-face interactions, in the intentional and sometimes forced generation and articulation of new ideas — just because there is value in all those things, does not mean there isn’t value in absorbing older, more canonical ideas, whether that be by listening to a professor lecture in Psychology 1 or by reading a biology textbook by yourself. JH: Oh no. This is beginning to sound like the STEM versus humanities argument. BS: Maybe … But I don’t think of them as being diametrically opposed. The two overlap. JH: That’s right. I’ve used ethnography in a creative nonfiction class and creative nonfiction in an engineering class and engineering in my on-campus job. God, that sounds self-serving. BS: Or a great pitch for the value of the liberal arts! JH: Aren’t those synonymous? BS: Says the admissions tour guide. JH: Kidding aside, you’re right. That is the power of our curriculum. And the humancenteredness of campus — the bonding of Homecoming to the camaraderie of Winter Carnival to the willingness of professors to mentor students — makes Dartmouth, Dartmouth. It’s common knowledge that you “come to Dartmouth for the people.” Maybe that’s the purest form of human-centeredness right there: our everyday experiences — our freestyle conversations made public in The Dartmouth — with each other out here in the woods of New Hampshire BS: I couldn’t have said it better myself.

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STAFF COLUMNIST WILLIAM SANDLUND ’18

VERBUM ULTIMUM THE DARTMOUTH EDITORIAL BOARD

Our Binary Humanity

Facing Failure

Progress does not mean anything without the ability to question it. Today we associate innovation primarily with science and technology as opposed to the arts and humanities, where the more nebulous word “creativity” has more resonance. The word “innovation” conjures images of open-plan offices where ideas are discussed by gaggles of rich, smart, young people. Creativity, while still a part of this sleek new world, also raises the spectre of the starving artist, misunderstood in her own time and not long for this life. We now live in a world where innovation takes precedence over creativity. Our intellectual idols are now businessmen working in the technology sector — Jeff Bezos, Jack Ma and Mark Zuckerberg — who can be far more short-sighted, self-centered and change-averse than their public images suggest. We shouldn’t make such a strong, value-based distinction between innovation and creativity or arts-humanities and sciencetechnology because these fields of knowledge utilize the same human capacity for insights that can improve our lives. The current imbalance in how we view such a dichotomy has tangible consequences, evident in the unintended social disruption caused by recent innovations in technology. An objector would raise the obvious differences in how science and art are pursued. Scientists follow a strict framework for inquiry, while artists are frequently portrayed as relying on intuition and inspiration. But artists must learn a method specific to their artistic form. Poets learn the principles of meter and rhyme, and painters spend thousands of hours sketching imitations of reality. Albert Einstein once said that, “After a certain high level of technical skill is achieved, science and art tend to coalesce into esthetics, plasticity, and form. The greatest scientists are artists as well.” It seems that once mastery of a given field of knowledge is achieved, one can extend that field of knowledge beyond its prescribed boundaries. It is strange to think of art as a field of knowledge. However, it is an exploration of subjective experience as opposed to science’s objective reality. What artists convey is this personal exploration, and when absorbed by others, it in turn stimulates another individual’s subjective experience. That is why you can leave a movie theater feeling as if the world looks different. It is also why art released to the public ceases to belong to the artist. Similarly, scientific breakthroughs do not belong to individuals but form part of a canon of ideas. This procession of ideas strives to make lives objectively and subjectively better. But we are always left wanting more — otherwise we would have stopped this endless march long ago. The argument for brushing aside the creativity-art versus innovation-science dichotomy is supported by recent research. Rex Jung, a neuroscientist who studies creativity, believes that the human brain evolved to solve using “best guess” reasoning. Homo sapiens first existed in a world without “rule-based” systems of logic and had to infer how processes around them worked. In short,

the absence of knowledge leads humans to generate plausible explanations. During the creative process, brains use two forms of reasoning — first relying on daydreaming and speculation in the default-mode network then relaying these ideas to the cognitive control network, your “internal analyst,” which assesses how to implement these ideas. This helps explain why going for a walk can help when solving a problem or writing a paper — a period of idle daydreaming allows you to make novel connections, which you can later analyze. Given these findings, why do we compartmentalize creativity and innovation, science and art? Our current way of thinking about these concepts are indebted to ideas of the Renaissance and Enlightenment periods. Previously, creative acts were perceived as processes of discovery rather than invention. As Dartmouth history professor Darrin McMahon will tell you, the Latin word “genius” originally connoted a person who acted as a conduit for the “god of our conception.” But during the 17th century, humanists ascribed a name to the especially creative, innovative person — the “Renaissance man.” This idea of creativity as a sort of divine intelligence, possessed by a fortunate few, was refined during the Enlightenment by the Romantics. It was also during this moment in the 19th century that Francis Galton observed how statistical measurements of intelligence adhered to a normal distribution and conceptualized the “average man” — an empirically based ideal form to counter that of genius. But this does not explain why we think of creativity and innovation, art and science, as so different today. If anything, previous intellectual movements indicate that we thought of these concepts as one and the same. I don’t have the column space or intellectual chops to answer this question, but it likely has much to do with the advances made in computational power over the past 30 years. These developments have forced us to question the utility of creativity in the face of reasoning existing outside of strictly human boundaries. Innovation is something that happens to technology, and creativity is something that happens to people who are becoming increasingly obsolete in modern society. Even though innovation’s mystical cousin creativity still gets mentioned when people talk about Steve Jobs or Silicon Valley elites trying to get in touch with their souls, it’s simply seen as a means to enhance the drive to “innovate.” Nonetheless, we still crave alternative forms of creativity or innovation untouched by the march of progress. So we listen to music, and we watch movies and we sometimes read stories or poems. But these are things our society no longer values as ends in and of themselves. And so Dartmouth constantly scrambles to explain why the humanities still matter, when it is self-evident that we need to be able to discuss, imagine and question the implications of innovation as much as we need to innovate.

Embracing failure leads to innovation. Long after the final class ends and the for example, and end up with a poor final Commencement stage is torn down, students grade. Spending hours on that application put the granite of New Hampshire in their for funding through the Rockefeller Center rearview with their eyes pointed to the real may result in a rejection letter. The research world. Reflection on the past will produce proposal submitted for that history foreign many good memories and hopefully will study program may have been too narrowly bring many past successes to mind. But too construed to be supported by archival often, the memory of success has the effect of information, resulting in a complete flop. obscuring or completely erasing the failures. Even though they sound like horrible It is imperative to acknowledge that failures cases to be avoided, students should not are not mere interludes but rather the main fear risk but rather embrace it. In the event events. They should not be forgotten — they that the expected result is not realized, the are the defining moments. experience of failure is equally worthwhile. All too many Dartmouth students Failure is the key for figuring out what does arrive having never substantially failed. not work, assessing what should have been The competitive admissions process allows done differently. But more importantly, it very little room for it; a high GPA, is a time for self-realization — a process strong standardized test which, in turn, produces scores, extracurricular micro-level innovation. i n v o l v e m e n t a n d “Innovation does not Innovation, then, is extensive community have to only occur on an not some amorphous, service hours indicates a b s t r a c t bu z z w o r d high potential — and individual level. If the f l o u t e d a ro u n d i n probably low amounts College can incentivize elite circles of “design of sleep. It is no wonder thinkers.” It is the result risk-taking, it can why the Ivy League of a process grounded in a d m i s s i o n s p ro c e s s create an entire culture concrete steps taken by favors the “perfectionist” of innovation that is the individual to actively student. pursue failure. When O b t a i n i n g t h a t manifested outward in those risks are taken, standard of perfection the form of creativity.” the seemingly mundane is fairly straightforward. process of trial and error There is nothing can give birth to the imaginative about extraordinary. college resume padding. Every step is planned, Innovation does not have to only occur usually in the early stages of high school. on an individual level. If the College can Parental and societal pressure may push incentivize risk-taking, it can create an entire children toward particular fields of study or culture of innovation that is manifested career paths. The rational student, in reaching outward in the form of creativity. One for these contrived notions of success, is forced way it can do this is by creating spaces to take the safest route possible, so he or she for group collaboration. For instance, in becomes risk-averse and avoids failure at all 2013, the College established the Office of costs. Entrepreneurship and Technology Transfer But this is not right. It is better to take to promote innovative partnerships between the path laden with risk than to wander the the school and the private sector. As a result, roads worn by countless others. And while in 2016, Dartmouth was ranked in the top the incentive to do that before arriving at 100 schools worldwide for number of patents Dartmouth did not exist, the College offers granted, according to the National Academy a variety of opportunities for that to change. Inventors. Thus, students who arrive with a Dartmouth boasts a strong liberal passion to invent can turn ideas into actual arts curriculum with an intense focus on objects. undergraduate learning. If students want This innovation has a measurable impact to explore how two areas of study intersect, in a global context. The Nature Index 2017 they can turn those interests into a modified Innovation Supplement ranked Dartmouth major. Cultural enrichment through programs 20th out of 200 universities. The index like foreign and domestic exchanges are tracks how much science research conducted made easily accessible with financial aid and at Dartmouth is cited in patents granted. careful D-plan selection. And even outside of Dartmouth is the only Ivy League school to the classroom, students can chart new paths. make the list’s top 20. Funding is available through the appropriate Continued investment to incentivize riskdepartments to finance almost any research taking has tangible benefits for the College. project or experiential learning trip. The Indeed, if Dartmouth measures itself as an Dartmouth Entrepreneurial Network gives institution by the amount of change it makes students direct access to venture capitalists in the world, then it must remain committed willing to invest in start-ups. The Center for to this goal. For the “sons and daughters of Social Impact provides funding to explore Dartmouth,” the “spell on them that remains” personal growth through independently- must amount to more than a bachelor’s degree. organized service projects. Therefore, students must take advantage The editorial board consists of the issue opinion of these opportunities while they are here. editor, the issue editors, opinion staff columnists, the It does require a fair amount of risk; one opinion editors, both executive editors and the editormay take a class out of intellectual interest, in-chief.

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THE DARTMOUTH WINTER CARNIVAL ISSUE

FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 9, 2018

Through the Looking Glass: Going to France to see Hanover COLUMN By Charlie Blatt

During my sophomore spring, I spent 10 weeks alongside 15 other Dartmouth students on the Paris Foreign Study Program. We were immersed in language and culture through our homestays and classes. Prior to leaving for the program, I could not have been more excited, imagining stereotypical visions of strolling down the Champs Élysées with a croissant in hand. Looking back on my experiences in France almost two years later, my FSP marks a clear moment of transition in my Dartmouth experience. This moment is best summarized through a quote by the late-19th-century British writer G. K. Chesterton that professor Paul Christesen shared in the first class of Classics 1, “Antiquity Today: An Introduction to Classical Studies.” Chesterton noted, “Do you suppose that I go to France in order to see France? Do you suppose that I go to Germany in order to see Germany? I shall enjoy them both; but it is not them that I am seeking. I am seeking [London]. The whole object of travel is not to set foot on foreign land; it is at last to set foot on one’s own country as a foreign land.” Christesen’s point about Chesterton was that it is helpful to study ancient Greece and Rome to better understand contemporary society, but I thought that the quotation struck closer to home. My experience of Dartmouth College and how I have attempted to innovate over my four years at the College on the Hill are inextricably linked to my time spent seeing France through American eyes. I was woefully unprepared for the reality of spending 10 weeks separated from my loved ones by an ocean. Though there were many delicious

croissants to be had in France, I consumed far more sitting alone while doing class readings than while strolling down the Champs Élysées. I loved sitting in Place des Vosges and people-watching at the Musée Rodin, but I was wholly estranged from the familiar and found myself alone with my thoughts for 10 weeks. I am naturally quite terrible at French, but I delighted in learning a second language. Yet love of acquiring a new skill did not translate in Paris, neither literally nor figuratively. It is hard to communicate, “All of my friends are in Hanover,” “I am struggling with unfamiliar emotions” and “I am not fulfilled by my classes,” while trying to bond with my host family and improve my French. I began to collapse inward, my usual extroverted personality disappearing. I went back to my homestay apartment and sat by myself each day after class, further isolating myself from the others on my FSP whom I perceived as having an amazing time. However, during this period of intense introspection, I began to do exactly what Chesterton suggested. I started to see America and my role as a government major in a new light. Each morning as I rode the metro to school, I would listen to the American news, immersed in the amazing diversity of the Parisian commute while hearing about the 2016 American election, criminal justice reform and the occasional human interest story about an escaped zoo animal. I began wandering the many winding streets of Paris listening to “This American Life,” hearing Ira Glass’ commentary about my own country contrasted with the sights, sounds and smells of France. When I mentioned to anyone that “J’étudie la science politique,” the first question I would get in response was, “What do you think of President

COURTESY OF CHARLIE BLATT

COURTESY OF ELI BURAKIAN

Donald Trump?” In discussing American politics with those I met in France, I began to think deeply about my country’s values and how I can contribute to what it means to be an American interested in government and foreign policy. What I took away from my FSP was not deepened knowledge of France (though I can tell you a great deal about Baron Haussmann’s architecture and Charles Baudelaire’s poems), nor improved French language skills (though I am a far better French speaker now than before I left for Paris). Instead, I left France with a sense of purpose surrounding my passion for politics. Upon returning to Hanover for my sophomore summer, I threw myself head-first into my studies in the government department. I devoured the reading for professor Jeffrey Friedman’s course Government 85.29, “Lessons From America’s Foreign Wars” and started doing research on a term paper that would ultimately become a published journal article. I began preparing the Dartmouth College Democrats to hit the ground running for fall 2016 campaign work. Most importantly, I reconnected with other government majors who were as excited as I was to discuss issues ranging from national security to Hillary Clinton’s portrayal in the media. Campaign work and my government classes had always been among my top priorities, but by going to France, taking a step back and “set[ting] foot on one’s own country as a foreign land,” my view of myself shifted, a form of personal innovation. Instead of studying government research, I wanted to do it. Instead of learning about how campaigns worked, I wanted to take a leadership role in one. My experience of an FSP serving as a turning point for personal innovation

at Dartmouth is not unique. I recently being that maybe when I’m 34 and I’m chatted with my freshman roommate finally a neurosurgeon I’ll like my job, and friend Anissa Gladney ’18 about as opposed to liking what I’m doing her experience on the Linguistics FSP now,” she said. in New Zealand during her junior Anissa’s FSP provided her with a winter. similar introspective opportunity to Anissa arrived at Dartmouth arrive back in Hanover with a new intending to be a pre-med neuroscience perspective, goals and determination. major and linguistics minor. But as she It seems striking that a set of continued her pre-med studies, she freshman roommates who spent three found herself unfulfilled and worried terms together in a cramped double that she was spending her time on the third floor of French Hall pursuing a career could both look back that she would not at their Dartmouth “I began ultimately enjoy. experiences and point “Before I went wandering the to their FSPs as a [to New Zealand] turning point in how I decided that I many winding they viewed themselves, was going to give streets of Paris their passions and what myself this time wanted to do with listening to “This they for the first time in their lives. Yet because all of Dartmouth American Life,” of her FSP, Anissa had that I hadn’t taken hearing Ira Glass’ the courage to change a pre-med class her intended career, to only work on commentary a complete personal linguistics and see about my innovation, while I what happens … left my FSP full of own country the term was good, gratitude for my loved and when we got contrasted with ones and filled with to Tonga and did the sounds and a renewed sense of field research at purpose. the end of the term smells of France.” It may not seem I thought that I like I “innovated.” I would be doing a went right back to my disservice to myself -CHARLIE BLATT ’18 studies in government, if I never got to do which I had loved [that] again,” she before I spent a term in said. Paris. Yet going abroad Upon return allowed me to gain fromher FSP, Anissa clarity on how I wanted changed her major to spend the remainder to linguistics and is of my Dartmouth writing a thesis on experience, focus the intonation and on the things most speech patterns of black students important to me and create deeper in creative contexts. She plans on bonds with my friends. eventually pursuing a Ph.D. and To spark this innovation and to see conducting further linguistics research. the big green forest from the trees, I “I decided that I didn’t want my had to go to France in order to see life to be a means to an end, the end Hanover.