The Dartmouth 11/04/2022

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As Dartmouth’s 16th president, James Wright left a lasting impact on the College and the people within it. He focused on diversity and inclusion, raised $1.3 billion in a fundraising campaign that transformed the College with new facilities and expanded College faculty and fnancial student aid for students. Among his family and friends, he is remembered for his kindness and undying support for veterans.

According to a College announcement on Oct. 11, Wright died at the age of 83 on Oct. 10 at his home in Hanover. At the time of his death, Wright was undergoing

treatment for cancer. He is survived by his wife Susan DeBevoise Wright, whom he married in 1984, his children Jim, Ann and Michael and his grandchildren Zack, Meredith, Gus, Andrew, Patrick and Mia. He was predeceased by his grandson, Adam.

“He was Dad to me,” his son Jim Wright said. “He was always there to give advice or guidance, talk about things with and that was really important. There are a lot of reasons I loved him but that was certainly one of them: He was always there when I needed him, to help out, get on the phone and talk through things with me.”

Wright lived a life of academic study and service to others. A Marine Corp veteran who grew up in Galena, Illinois, Wright was hired by Dartmouth’s history department in the fall of 1969 — the same year he fnished his Ph.D. at the University of WisconsinMadison. Emeritus history professor Gene

Garthwaite said he helped hire Wright and later became good friends.

“He impressed us all from the very beginning with his intelligence, and he was wonderfully trained as a historian at the University of Wisconsin, so he was easily our top candidate for that position,” Garthwaite said.

In the history department, Wright studied the progressive movements of the late 19th and early 20th centuries in the American west, according to Garthwaite. He taught a survey U.S. history course and senior seminar courses on American political history.

“His work on that subject made an important contribution to American history, despite the fact it doesn’t have the glamor that other periods have,” Garthwaite said. “His scholarship was original and very well

This article was originally published on Oct. 25, 2022.

Sam Gawel ’23 would have given anyone the shirt of his back, his girlfriend Nik Morgan ’23 said. For many, the idiom characterizes one’s selfessness and kindness, but remains a hypothetical — for Gawel, it was literal.

While on the earth sciences of-campus program — also known as the Stretch — in the spring, Gawel and his friend Carter Welch ’23 met a woman in a small town in Wyoming who collected T-shirts from people she met across town. The woman relayed a bet she had made with her friend to the pair: If she couldn’t acquire a shirt from someone in town, she would owe her friend $10. After a few minutes of conversation, Gawel took of his shirt — which Gawel claimed he had gotten for free, but which Welch thinks he “probably paid for” — and handed it to the woman, Welch said.

“I think Sam’s mission in life, honestly, was to make other people feel happy,” Welch said. “To absorb or smother negativity around a person.”

of her best friends.

“If there’s someone he hasn’t met before, he takes this approach where he makes sure he elevates other people with him,” Stahle said. “He really could just connect with anyone that he met. I don’t know if I’ve seen other people who can do it at the level that he did.”

Sternberg noted how Gawel could always tell when she was in a bad mood, even when she thought she was hiding it well. Gawel had a way of “really listening” to others, Morgan said. Morgan remembered how, during a conversation in the frst week that they met, Gawel remembered “hyper specifc” things about her, like her favorite cup of cofee or the shades of paint that she had just run out of. For Morgan’s birthday, which was soon after they started dating, Gawel bought her her favorite cofee from his hometown cofee shop and all the paint colors that she had been missing, all of which he remembered without having written it down.

“He just always remembered everything and was super attentive,” Morgan said.

Even as Steve Ward, longtime senior assistant equipment manager for Dartmouth football, battled cancer, he never missed a practice that he was physically able to attend.

“At the beginning of this fall, he was out at our practices, and you could tell he was in pain, but at the same time, he didn’t want you to talk about it because it didn’t make any diference to him,” Big Green kicker Cameron Baller ’23 said. “He was going to live his life in the same way and be there and support us even when it was tough for him.”

Ward died at Jack Byrne Center for Palliative Care on Oct. 3, according to the Valley News, after serving Dartmouth’s equipment staf for the past 21 years. He died just weeks before his 66th birthday at the age of 65 and is survived by his wife, Terry, and his two daughters.

Ward was tough and detail-oriented, but players remembered him more for his radiating enthusiasm for Dartmouth football, positive outlook on life, the lessons he taught his players and, above all, his love for his team and family.

“If we were ever in a close game or had a rough patch in the season, Steve would say ‘whatever is happening, you can either deal with it and overcome it, or you can let it bring you down,’” tight end Zion Carter ’23 said. “Steve always wanted us to overcome it.”

Besides serving the football team, Ward spent 26 years in the Marine Corps, worked as a high school basketball ofcial, and was a successful golfer and a family man, according to Dartmouth Athletics’ Twitter.

Ward was tasked with washing, maintaining, storing and distributing gear for over 100 players on the football team. He was also in charge of helping the team travel with the gear. Carter remembered Ward’s ability to be “organized and efcient” with the “logistical nightmare” that is an entire team’s gear responsibilities.

“Everything was always done right,”

Carter said. “He was always very professional, and you could count on him — I just really enjoyed working with him.”

Carter added that Ward was extremely attentive to the individual needs of each player — a testament to his selfessness and principled character.

“I had a special requirement for my shoes, and when I reached out to him, he was very nice and understanding,” Carter said. “Right away, I could tell that he was going to give all that he had to the players, because he took time even with freshmen.”

Other players recalled Ward’s welcoming spirit and the lessons he taught them, even before they stepped foot on Memorial Field: Baller described Ward as a “father fgure” to the team. The team came to appreciate Ward’s toughness, which they said was forged during his military career.

“He was very much a tough love guy. He didn’t always give you what you want, but he defnitely gave you what you needed,” Baller said. “He was a guy that we looked up to because he taught us a lot of lessons — some were harder to learn than others, but at the end of the day, I think we all loved and appreciated him for the time and efort he put into all of us.”

Baller, a kicker, said he had a close relationship with Ward because his position spends more time on the sidelines and has more gear than other position groups. He recounted a story from his freshman year that stood out to him in which Ward taught him and his teammates an important lesson.

“Ward gave [the specialists] our capes [for warmth] and told us quite clearly to bring them back to him personally after a game,” Baller said. “However, we gave our gear to an assistant equipment manager who told us we should hand over our gear to him; that next day, Steve came over straight to our lockers and told us we had been told to do one thing, and we let someone else take them and do another. He was teaching us a lesson to follow rules.”

Carter said he also appreciated how

Gawel, who was from Detroit, Michigan, died by suicide on Sept. 21 in Hanover at the age of 21. He is survived by his parents Leah and Randy Gawel and sister Sophia Gawel ’22. At a memorial service held by his family two days after his death, more than 500 people attended in-person or virtually to remember Gawel.

At Dartmouth, Gawel was an anthropology and earth science major and member of the Timber Team and Chi Gamma Epsilon fraternity. According to his friends, he was an avid hiker and loved cooking and “making really weird recipes,” nature and the outdoors, mountain climbing, old jazz music and obscure movies, the Detroit Lions and his pet dogs, Walt and Charlie.

He was passionate about snow science and was considering pursuing a master’s degree in the feld after graduation, Welch said. As part of his passion for studying the weather, he loved the wind and could name every type of cloud, Morgan said.

Earth science professor Edward Meyer, who taught Gawel and worked with Gawel on the Stretch’s logistics before the program began, said Gawel was not only present, thoughtful and “clearly passionate about what he was learning,” but also kind and warmhearted.

“Sam was really one of those rare students who was always upbeat, optimistic and caring about his fellow students,” Meyer said. “He made everyone’s lives better for interacting with him.”

Beyond his academic interests, Gawel cared about “the important stuf,” Tal Sternberg ’23 said, which included his friends’ niche hobbies and interests, meeting new people and being himself.

“He was just so kind and so encouraging of the people around him and not in a way that most people at Dartmouth are,” she said. “He was very passionate about making other people feel better about themselves.”

Gawel’s friends noted his unique ability to make those around him feel welcome. Welch, Morgan and friends Marc Novicof ’22 and Nik Stahle ’23 all used the same word to describe how Gawel made them feel: “comfortable.” Gawel was the frst person that Sternberg met at Dartmouth — she said that he walked into her room on their shared freshman foor while she was moving in to introduce himself — and became one

Novicof said that a testament to Gawel’s impact on his friends and fellow students is that despite protracted absences from campus due to the pandemic, an of-term spent working on Mount Washington last fall and of-campus study programs in both the winter and spring,, he still had the ability to make people feel loved and excited from a distance.

Gawel was “unforgettable” to the people who met him, Morgan said — not for his “brilliant” blue eyes and white teeth, which led his friends to call him Miley Cyrus, but because he would interact with people like he had known them for their whole lives. Sternberg said that Gawel was a “pillar of the community” and someone his friends and fellow students looked up to.

“His closest friends on campus spent [a maximum of] six to nine months with him, and yet he had so many close friends on campus,” Novicof said. “The guy wasn’t on campus for a whole year and hundreds of students came to his funeral.”

Gawel’s devotion to his friends extended to his family, for whom he would do anything “at the drop of a hat,” Morgan said. The way Gawel would talk about his mother, Sternberg said, made it seem like she “walks on water.”

“He was always talking about his family and how much he loved them and how amazing they were and how much [his friends] would love his parents,” Sternberg said.

Novicof added that Gawel had an “unbelievable admiration” for his parents and their work as educators. Sternberg remembered that one time, she and Gawel helped teach second and third graders at Shir Shalom Vermont’s Hebrew school, which Gawel’s mother runs.. Sternberg said that despite the crowd’s rowdiness, Gawel knew how to handle them while still encouraging them to be kids.

“I just really loved watching him interact with children because he was just so good with them and just seemed to really understand them,” she said.

Gawel could laugh at anything — even himself, Novicof said. Novicof recounted a surfng lesson he and Gawel did while on the anthropology of-campus study program in Hawaii. Everytime that Gawel would fall from his surfboard — which Novicof said was “most of the time” — the surf instructor would turn to Novicof and impersonate Gawel, likening him to the Hulk. Gawel would get back onto his board with “nothing

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 4, 2022 HANOVER, NEW HAMPSHIRE VOL. CLXXIX NO. 25
Equipment manager Steve Ward remembered
‘He was really a hero to me’: President emeritus James Wright recalled for his kindness, impact
for his tough love, dedication to athletics department
‘He was just magnetic’: Sam Gawel ’23 remembered for his infectious humor, profound sense of caring
PARTLY CLOUDY HIGH 69 LOW 50 COPYRIGHT © 2022 THE DARTMOUTH, INC. FOLLOW US ON TWITTER @thedartmouth NEWS CLASS OF 1989 POLLINATION PROJECT BUILDS HABITATS PAGE 2 OPINION VERBUM ULTIMUM: UWILL HAVE MORE SUPPORT PAGE 3 ARTS THEATER MAINSTAGE ‘PIPPIN’ OPENS PAGE 4 SPORTS WOMEN’S ATHLETICS CELEBRATES 50TH ANNIVERSARY PAGE 5 MIRROR REFLECTION: YOU’RE ON YOUR OWN, KID PAGE 6 SEE WRIGHT PAGE 2
ZACH INGEBRETSEN/THE DARTMOUTH
This article was originally published on Nov.
2022.
1,
PHOTO COURTESY OF NIK MORGAN
SEE GAWEL PAGE 2 SEE WARD PAGE 2

Class of 1989 Pollination Project builds habitats around Upper Valley

This article was originally published on Nov. 1, 2022.

The Class of 1989 Pollination Project, which began as an alumni outreach initiative, has united various campus groups around the issue of sustainable ecosystems, according to vice president of the Class of 1989 and project founder David Hammond ’89. The goal of the project is to increase the amount of habitat for pollinators like moths, butterfies and bees, which play an essential role in the ecosystem by growing patches of wildfowers around the Upper Valley, Hammond said.

Environmental studies professor Theresa Ong said that pollinator health is declining on a global scale, which may precipitate reductions in fruit, vegetable and grain supplies if not addressed. Pollinator populations have declined due to climate change, pesticide usage and habitat destruction, according to Hammond.

“One of the biggest issues is that pollinators no longer have a consistent and diverse supply of foral resources across the seasons,” Ong said.

Pollination is the process through which pollen is transferred from one plant to another for reproduction. Ong explained that one plant’s pollen — a powdery substance from the male reproductive organ of one plant — must

travel to and land on the stigma — part of the female reproductive organ of a plant — of another fower of the same species to pollinate that plant. Pollinators, which include species like ants, bees and hummingbirds, facilitate this reproduction by spreading the pollen among fowering plants.

In order to increase the amount of habitat for pollinators, Hammond said that a seed mix of annual and native perennial plant species was sowed at 10 sites around the Upper Valley, including a Vermont elementary school, the old Dartmouth Cemetery, behind BakerBerry library and next to the Collis Center. The sites are marked by green signs, he added.

Since April 2021, project volunteers consisting of College alumni and students and local middle school students have planted more than 12,000 square feet of native wildfowers at the sites. The project has received additional funding from alumni, and Hammond hopes to double the square footage in the coming year. Contributing to this goal is the establishment of two to three new planting sites this fall, according to sustainability ofce intern Brian Arruda ’25.

Hammond said that he hopes the project will foster an ethos of environmental stewardship at the College.

“When you look at global climate change or habitat loss on a global scale, it’s hard to get your mind around all of it,” Hammond said. “Our efort is to do something — to do anything. Even if it’s

Ward supported Dartmouth football even during his ght with cancer

FROM WARD PAGE 1

Ward’s discipline fostered the team’s success on the feld.

“I think he was a really great example of creating a sense of excellence,” Carter said. “As someone who didn’t really have as much to do with the actual game plan, he had a large impact because players learned how to be disciplined on the feld from his meticulous work of the feld.”

Bob Whalen, the head coach for men’s baseball, became close friends with Ward after years of working with him. He noted how much Ward and their friendship meant to him.

“I’d like to think that our friendship was based out of mutual respect,” Whalen said. “He had a good sense of humor; he was the guy you could work with and have fun with. Steve always went out of his way to treat me and my family well, and was very welcoming,

very accepting.”

Whalen explained that Ward’s commitment to the athletics departmentwas something that everyone took note of.

“Steve was a tremendous man with great character and took his job responsibilities seriously,” Whalen said. “He approached the job responsibilities in a very professional way, and I always admired that.”

During Ward’s last full season with the team, football secured the 2021 Ivy League Championship — and players fondly remembered his obvious enthusiasm for the team.

“Ward thought our championship and the work we did to earn it was really amazing,” Carter said. “He was so excited that he was able to get us all this great [championship] merchandise and great hoodies right away. He was just as excited as anybody else, if not more.”

small, that’s okay.”

Arruda said that he successfully pitched the expansion of the project to the buildings and grounds committee, citing the new planting locations across from the McLaughlin residence cluster and behind the Class of 1978 Life Sciences Center, where wildfowers will be planted over the next few weeks.

Theenvironmentalsciencedepartment, the town of Hanover, the Center for Social Impact, alumni and students have all been involved in the project, Hammond said.

“[Some] classes are using our planting sites as a feldwork location for their studies,” Hammond added.

Ong, who taught ENVS 25, “Agroecology,” in the summer, said that she utilized the Class of 1989 pollinator garden at the Dartmouth Organic Farm to “study the impact of growing these fowers on the biodiversity of pollinators and ecosystem services.”

Students in Ong’s class found many bee species and other pollinators visiting the new habitats, Ong said. The number of animal visitors were comparable to the Organic Farm’s traditional, “manicured” fower garden located about 30 feet away, Ong said, but in the future, the project’s usage of native wildfower species may have “a diferent impact on the pollinator community.”

Arruda said that he hopes the Class of 1989 Pollination Project will be ofcially included in Dartmouth’s Our Green Future updated report in April, which outlines goals and steps within felds like transportation, energy and landscape ecology that serve as the College’s roadmap toward a more sustainable campus.

Facilities Operations and Management associate director Timothy McNamara, who serves on a newly-created grounds subcommittee for the Our Green Future

project, said that he hopes the project will look more deeply at the role the College can play to aid pollination around campus.

“I’m hoping the subgroup will deal with the pollinator project as part of their [task] and take a more comprehensive look at where else we can implement this on campus,” he said.

In the next two weeks, student and alumni volunteers will plant wildfower seeds at the new locations, according to Arruda. Now that the Upper Valley is past the frst hard frost of the season, the seeds can be sowed, as they will not yet germinate but will be ready to sprout when the soil warms after the winter.

Hammond said he is excited about the future of the project and has been planting wildfowers with other Dartmouth alumni in Michigan, where he lives.

“If there is a lasting legacy from this project, I hope that we continue to think about ways to work together,” he said.

Wright, who served as Dartmouth’s 16th president, died at the age of 83

researched, and then wonderfully written. He was a very good writer, and his analysis was always frst grade. He was highly regarded in his feld.”

In his years as a professor, Wright’s leadership potential was already apparent, Garthwaite said. He explained that the former history department chair, Louis Morton, had pointed out Wright’s leadership potential “early on.”

According to emeritus Russian professor Barry Scherr, who served as provost while Wright was president, kindness was a key element of Wright’s leadership style.

“One thing I like to emphasize about him is that he was a very kind, warm and compassionate person despite that big voice,” Scherr said, invoking Wright’s booming vocals. “He had always shown a real care for individuals and he was quick to ask about how everyone was doing, how family was doing. He tended to remember key things about everyone.”

Wright’s frst few years at the College — during John Kemeny’s presidency — were marked by change, as women began matriculating at the College in 1972 and Kemeny vowed to increase the College’s Native American enrollment. According to Garthwaite, Wright worked to uphold and continue Kemeny’s eforts.

Garthwaite said that, in particular, Wright supported the start of a Native American studies department at Dartmouth during his presidency. But according to Gartwaithe, Wright’s eforts contributing to the now Native American and Indigenous studies program and other eforts to diversify the student body and faculty were met with resistance.

“The resistance to change was very, very powerful, and it could have gone in quite a diferent direction had it not been for his leadership,” Garthwaite said.

In 1998, Wright began his tenure as president of the College. According to Jim Wright, he could see his father’s dedication both to the work and to his family growing up.

FROM GAWEL PAGE 1

but laughter,” Novicof said.

“His only possible response is just laugh and have a great time with it,” Novicof said. “Any experience that could be bad, it was good with him because the bad could become the good.”

Welch said Gawel’s humor was both infectious and absurdist: “little bursts of absolute hilariousness.” Morgan echoed Welch’s descriptions, calling Gawel “a jokester to the end.” Sternberg said that Gawel shared her sense of humor, which never ofended anyone, with everyone who met him.

“It was almost a gift,” Sternberg said. “Like he was so smart that he was able to pull things that people could laugh at without having to reach down into lower forms of humor.”

Gawel would often Airdrop “some heinous meme” to friends who were in the same silent room as him during a serious situation, Morgan said, adding that he was “always pranking people.” A favorite gag of Gawel’s was telling people he vaguely knew that people unrelated to him were his cousin — convincingly enough “that you’d be like, ‘Wait a minute,’” Morgan said. Stahle added that Gawel used this humor to check in on his friends, such as by sending Stahle obscure English poetry.

Sternberg said that Gawel would leave “really weird” voicemails on her and others’ phones. A friend of Gawel’s recently played Sternberg a voicemail he received from Gawel, in which Gawel demanded his friend come meet up with him.

“[Gawel] picked up the phone and he was like, ‘I’m lying on the foor, all of my skin has fallen of,’ Sternberg said, recounting the message. “‘You have to come now — I’m

melting into the foor.’”

Novicof played back a diferent voicemail that Gawel and Welch had left for him while the two were on the Stretch.

“Hey, this is Sam,” Gawel said in the message to Novicof. “I’m calling to say that I’m in your walls and I’m watching you right now and I’m in your head, I’m in your skull.”

Morgan applied Gawel’s sense of humor toward the Dartmouth community’s reaction to his death.

“Moving rush for someone’s death is incredible,” she said. “I think he would fnd it honestly hilarious that [the Greek Leadership Council] moved sorority rush because he died.”

While memories of Gawel’s humor continue to bring smiles and laughter to the faces of his loved ones, friends cite his caring nature as the trait they will hold onto. For Sternberg, it’s his “sixth sense” of understanding what people need; for Welch, it’s the way he would feel “at home” when in Gawel’s presence; for Stahle, it’s how Gawel could be friends with and connect with anyone.

“I think what I’m going to remember is just that everyone around him loved him, and everybody felt strongly about him — I’ve never met anyone who liked him a little bit,” Novicof said. “I’ll remember just how many people he touched and the depth of the relationships that he had.”

Morgan said that she will remember the “little things” about their relationship — cooking with Gawel, listening to jazz music and the camping trips they went on together.

“I want to remember sitting outside with him underneath the stars, sitting next to the love of my life and just how happy he made me,” she said. “I’m gonna try my absolute darndest to be a Sam for somebody else.”

“My father would be working and teaching during the day. We’d eat together every night and then watch some TV and then he would often go back to work or go to his ofce study area in the house,” Jim Wright said. “He would work late into the night, whether it was grading or researching. He was very driven by what he was doing.”

Wright’s work as president was marked by an in-depth, historical understanding of the College, according to Scherr. Before he retired, Scherr said, Wright even considered writing an updated history of Dartmouth College.

“That project got put to the side because

of all these other things that he was doing, but I think he’s somebody who could have done a fantastic job with that,” Scherr said. “It’s almost too bad that he didn’t.”

In addition, Wright helped to pioneer the Yellow Ribbon Program, which helped private institutions of higher education partner with Veterans Afairs to support veterans. It replaced the previous GI Bill, which expanded education aid for veterans but was more targeted at state schools, student veterans association president Ryan Irving ’24, who spent four years in the Marines, said.

“He was really a hero to me. [The Yellow Ribbon Program] really opened the door to private school education to thousands of [veterans] like myself,” Irving said. “... I really talked to him frequently about diferent initiatives or how we could approach a problem together. Most of all, he was [always] very casual with us. We would give him the most respect ever, but he didn’t want it, he wanted to be your friend or friendly.”

After his ofcial retirement in 2009, Wright “didn’t really retire,” his grandson Zack Wright ’15 said. In this period, he wrote various articles and several books including “Those Who Have Borne the Battle: A History of America’s Wars and Those Who Fought Them,” “Enduring Vietnam: An American Generation and Its War,” and “War and American Life: Refections on Those Who Serve and Sacrifce.”

“He used his positioning and authority to make the world a truly better place for veterans,” Irving said. “I cannot overstate how important his work was. It is going to impact millions and millions of people over the course of history.”

Wright’s grandson Patrick Wright ’23 also spoke about the late president’s kindness and passion in inspiring Dartmouth students.

“He had so many interests and things he was passionate about. I think that’s what made him so great for anyone to spend time with,” Patrick Wright said. “There was a genuine connection he could fnd with any person he was talking to.”

Patrick Wright also recalled times that his grandfather would be approached by students while they ate together at Dartmouth, a testament to Wright’s close relationships with the student body.

“He ofered me the advice that life is meant to be lived, not planned,” Patrick Wright added.

Zack Wright received similar advice from his grandfather. While enrolled as an undergraduate student, he often visited his grandfather — who lived in Hanover — for dinners.

“Hearing how passionate he was about the work that he did and seeing how much he was invested in the work that he did … that really gave me perspective,” Zack Wright

said.

Wright was a caring grandfather to his grandchildren. When Zack Wright was an infant, his father Jim Wright studied at the Tuck School of Business at the same time that Wright worked at Dartmouth. Zack said that on some nights when his parents and grandmother were busy, his grandfather would babysit him.

“I think that may have put him a little bit out of his comfort zone and I think I started just crying my head of,” Zack said. Wright put a Mickey Mouse Clubhouse show on the TV to try to calm Zack down, and when the theme song came on, Wright started singing along, replacing “Donald Duck” with “Zachary Duck.”

“I guess I kind of brightened up when he started singing that, and it helped me kind of calm down. So he always called me Zachary Duck,” Zack said. Later when Zack’s brother Adam was born, the two became the “Duck Brothers,” according to Jim Wright.

Beyond his relationships with his grandchildren, Wright’s compassion for others showed in the way he managed challenges and controversy while serving as president, according to Jim. He always had the ability to fnd common ground, Jim said.

“Dad could see the good in people … Some advice he would give me was, ‘Today, we’ve got a polarized political environment and you don’t talk politics — you fnd the things that you agree on,’” he said. “Whether it was working with the students or the alums or faculty I think they all agreed on wanting a stronger and better Dartmouth and then talking about ways to do that, and I think he just had this ability to fnd the common ground.”

Wright’s caring nature came through yet again, when the family was grieving the loss of Wright’s grandson, Adam Wright ’17, in 2017, Jim said.

“He was involved in eulogizing Adam, and he did it — like everything — with such grace and dignity and warmth,” Jim said. “It wasn’t a great time, but the way he spoke about Adam during that period of time was certainly helpful to us, as we were all dealing with a really difcult time.”

According to Jim, Wright shared a poem from the 17th century poet Matsuo Basho at Adam’s memorial service, which read: “The temple bell stops / But I still hear the sound coming / Out of the fowers.”

“I think that sounds kind of appropriate for Dad too,” Jim said after sharing the poem. “Just because someone passes away, you still hear the sound coming out of the fowers, you still hear them over time as long as you keep telling their stories and talking about them. That was something we were encouraged to do when Adam passed away and certainly something we’ll continue to do with my father.”

On Wednesday, Nov. 9, at 3:20 p.m.

Dartmouth will conduct a DartAlert test. DartAlert is an emergency mass notification system consisting of:

• The Outdoor Mass Notification System (OMNS), which uses sirens and speakers that can be heard outdoors up to 10 miles from campus

• The Alertus desktop notification system, which delivers notifications to computer screens that have installed the Alertus software

• The delivery of automated messages to all Dartmouth-administered email accounts and campus phones, as well as to the personal phones of registered users

• The activation of a number of strategically located beacons throughout campus

For more information, please go to: dartmouth.edu/prepare

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 4, 2022 THE DARTMOUTH NEWS PAGE 2
Gawel’s ability to connect with others forged deep and genuine relationships with everyone he touched

Kalach: A reat to the U.S.-Mexico Relationship

Mexico’s careless flippancies with Russia imperil its relationship to its most important ally.

This article was originally published on Nov. 3, 2022.

As the war in Ukraine coils toward a nuclear “Armageddon,” the U.S. and its major allies have consolidated by tightening sanctions around Russia and increasing their support to Ukraine.

Mexican President Andres Manuel López Obrador, on the other hand, has progressed his relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin to a “friendship.” Russia’s geopolitical game in Latin America is centered around stroking anti-U.S. sentiment and advancing its own interests. Mexico’s geographical proximity to the U.S. and its role as America’s most important trade partner make the country an attractive target for Russia as Putin tries to stoke anti-American sentiments in Latin America. What López Obrador views as “friendship,” however, is instead a one-sided scheme that has “Z” — a symbol used by the Russian army — written all over it. López Obrador is playing with fire, and the U.S. might be the one to get burnt.

Putin’s invasion of Ukraine set off the largest military mobilization in Europe since World War II. Despite facing significant disadvantages, Ukraine has been able to build a strong defense. This is largely due to the considerable investment from the U.S. and its allies in NATO. Other countries — in Asia, Africa, the Middle East and most in Latin America — have resisted the European Union’s lobbying efforts and have chosen to stay neutral. López Obrador’s flirtations with Russia and open rhetoric blaming the U.S. for escalating conflicts in Ukraine for “hegemonic interests” call into question Mexico’s official position of “neutrality” Even if Mexico did decide to join the West in sanctions, it wouldn’t fundamentally change what’s at stake for Russia or shape how the conflict progresses. Neutrality, though, went quickly down the drain. In March, the MORENA party, Mexico’s left-wing political party, launched the MexicoRussia friendship caucus and invited Russian ambassador Víktor Koronelli, making clear that Mexico would not be joining in sanctions. In response, members of the U.S. Congress threatened to revoke the visas of any Mexican legislator who supported and participated in the Russian-Mexico caucus.

López Obrador has also gone as far as to say Mexico is benefiting from the war. According to López Obrador, Mexico is expected to receive large inflows of foreign investment capital that would otherwise have been sent elsewhere. To López Obrador the war — which has resulted in human and economic woes — means “more investment, more growth [and] more employment.”

The traditional left in Mexico has most often supported policies that counter Western imperialism while still questioning liberalism. Taking this into account, MORENA’s response isn’t surprising. From their view, sanctions are a form of imperialism and are part of an endeavor to corner Russia. Mexico’s left has swallowed and regurgitated anything Russia has given to them, from disinformation and propaganda to becoming a spokesperson for Russia’s attempts to disseminate war crimes committed by Russian troops in the Ukrainian city of Bucha.

Earlier this year, the Mexican Secretary of Foreign Affairs, Marcelo Ebrard, introduced

a peace proposal that would achieve a “truce” between Ukraine and Russia for “at least five years.” Unsurprisingly, Mexico’s futile peace plan was met with vast criticism. The master plan consists of creating a “committee for dialogue and peace” to mediate a conversation between President Volodymyr Zelenskyy of Ukraine and President Vladimir Putin of Russia. Members of the proposed committee include Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India, Pope Francis and United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres. Mykhailo Podolyak, an advisor to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, tweeted shortly after: “[López Obrador], is your plan to keep millions under occupation, increase the number of mass burials and give Russia time to renew reserves before the next offensive? Then your ‘plan’ is a [Russian] plan.” Mexican Twitter users have responded, calling the proposal “another circus to divert attention from the real problems in Mexico” and telling López Obrador to fix the problems in Mexico before “opening his mouth.” Ukraine’s ambassador to Mexico also rejected the project and strongly urged the Mexican administration to cease its relations with the Kremlin. López Obrador defended his proposal, claiming that the backlash he received from “a lot of people” was “due to sectarianism or elite interests.”

Given that Mexico trades significantly more with the U.S. than with Russia, assessing priorities is crucial. The Biden administration recently published the National Security Strategy, a key goal of which is to counter the expanding influence of Russia and China. Mexico’s resources, industries and territory will be crucial in achieving this aim. López Obrador’s responses to the war in Ukraine don’t signal a strong ally. For the sake of the U.S. and Mexico, American lawmakers should be more concerned.

Critics claim that the polarizing strategy put forth by López Obrador is likely to transform the bilateral relationship. After all, in supporting Russia, Mexico is siding with America’s biggest rival. And if the relationship became seriously threatened, it would likely be reconstituted by Mexican opposition before the details reached Biden’s desk. This line of thinking leaves out that López Obrador is leading under heavy-handed, ineffective institutions that are unlikely to adapt or respond. In the past decades, when it comes to global affairs, Mexico’s diplomatic payload has been sloppy and incongruent, particularly when compared to other powers. During his presidency, López Obrador has managed to remove checks and balances, weaken autonomous institutions and seize control of the military budget with no significant resistance from the Mexican congress or other authorities. This will remain true if López Obrador decides to advance his relationship with Putin at the expense of the one with the U.S. This should be a huge red flag for American lawmakers.

López Obrador has brought Mexico’s diplomatic relations to a new low, risking the country’s important relationship with the U.S. and other allies. Mexico has little to lose from the war itself, but it runs the risk of losing its most important partner. Mexico’s main costs won’t come from its relationship with Russia — they will come from U.S. retribution. As America’s neighbor and main trade partner, López Obrador should wake up and see that Mexico has more to lose from its so-called, very much pro-Russian “neutrality.”

Verbum Ultimum: UWill

Have More

Support

The College’s recent partnership with UWill provides more mental health support to students and makes great progress towards listening to students.

It has been two weeks since the Day of Caring, a day in which the fast-pace of the Dartmouth term slowed to allow students to pause and grieve the recent deaths of several students, faculty and staff. Words cannot describe how vital the Day of Caring was for the Dartmouth community: The pandemic and all its resulting disruption has yielded nothing short of a full-blown mental health crisis among students, exacerbated by the College’s lack of action. A study of Dartmouth students found that symptoms of anxiety and depression increased in spring 2020 — the first full academic term of pandemic-era restrictions — mapping onto national trends from the early pandemic. What’s more, at least five Dartmouth students died by suicide from November 2020 to September 2022.

In response to all of this, Dartmouth students have protested the lack of mental health resources that have been available for students to get support. This has ranged from multiple cases of vandalism on campus to countless columns written in this paper arguing for the College to end involuntary mental leaves, improve the 24-hour crisis hotline and repair the workaholic culture of campus, among others. This and previous Editorial Boards have all called on the College to give students space to grieve and listen to its students’ “cries for help” — a simple request that went unheeded for years.

Until this week. On Tuesday, Dartmouth rolled out its partnership with UWill, an online therapy and wellness provider that students can use from anywhere in the United States. The service provides students with unlimited teletherapy from licensed mental health professionals, in treating a wide variety of conditions. UWill also offers 24/7 crisis support to students. These services are available at no cost to all Dartmouth students, including those on off terms and on leave.

We cannot overstate the magnitude of this change. Dartmouth’s partnership with UWill follows extensive advocacy from students and organizations on campus, and UWill’s services directly address shortcomings in Dartmouth’s mental health infrastructure. Unlike Dartmouth’s own Counseling Center — whose weeks-long wait and lack of long-term care resources are

an impediment to students seeking mental health support — UWill is designed to offer support quickly and conveniently for whatever length of time the patient needs.

And it adds real weight to the push to recenter campus culture following the Day of Caring. One day was a noble start, but that alone is hardly enough to remedy years of institutional failure to respond to mental health concerns. In other words, one Day of Caring cannot foster the future of caring this campus deserves. UWill starts to bridge the gap between a single day and a mountain of change, offering around-the-clock access to treatment for both acute and chronic mental health conditions and improving the general well-being of the study body.

For this, we ask one thing of the student body: Take advantage of UWill.

We ask this of our fellow students knowing it may be a big step for some. Dartmouth’s historically failing mental health infrastructure has left many students — including a number of us on this Editorial Board — hesitant of any mental health support offered by the College. And it’s true that we cannot know what impacts UWill will have on campus, be they positive or negative. Still, we are encouraged by high rates of student satisfaction at other campuses that use UWill, especially as it isn’t associated directly with any one institution — crucially, honesty during teletherapy sessions is not punished with forced emergency mental health leave.

UWill is not perfect — no service can be — nor does it solve all of Dartmouth’s problems concerning mental health. Namely, the forced medical leave policy is still inhumane and strips students of agency, and many students do not trust the Counseling Center for fear of being sent home on medical leave. Students must continue to pressure the administration to promote positive change for campus. Nonetheless, the leap that UWill makes for improving campus is monumental, and we ought not take for granted the benefits of free, readily available mental health support for students.

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

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 4, 2022 THE DARTMOUTH OPINION PAGE 3 THE DARTMOUTH EDITORIAL BOARD
CONTRIBUTING COLUMNIST ALEXA KALACH ’ 25
CONNOR NORRIS ’25: SELF-TITLED 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. For any content that an author or artist submits and that The Dartmouth agrees to publish, the author or artist grants The Dartmouth a royaltyfree, irrevocable, perpetual, worldwide and exclusive license to use, reproduce, modify, adapt, publish and create derivative works from such content. SPENCER ALLEN & NATALIE DOKKEN, Opinion Editors MEGHAN POWERS & CARIS WHITE, Mirror Editors WILL ENNIS & LANIE EVERETT Sports Editors DANIELLE MULLER Arts Editor OLIVER DE JONGHE & ANGELINA SCARLOTTA, Photo Editors PHILIP SURENDRAN, Data Visualization Editor LUCY HANDY Design Editor GRANT PINKSTON Templating Editor TOMMY CORRADO, Multimedia Editors FARAH LINDSEY-ALMADANI & EMMA NGUYEN, Engagement Editors NINA SLOAN, Crossword Editor EMILY LU, Editor-in-Chief DIVYA CHUNDURU & SAMUEL WINCHESTER Strategy Directors MEHAK BATRA & ISABELLE KITCHEL Development Directors BENJAMIN HINSHAW & SAMRIT MATHUR Digital Media & Analytics Directors EMILY GAO & BRIAN WANG Finance & Sales Directors EMMA JOHNSON Director of Software PRODUCTION EDITORS BUSINESS DIRECTORS AMY PARK, Publisher LAUREN ADLER & ANDREW SASSER, News Executive Editors THOMAS BROWN, CASSIE MONTEMAYOR THOMAS, JACOB STRIER Managing Editors MIA RUSSO, Production Executive Editor

eater MainStage ‘Pippin’ aims to spread hope, joy on campus

This term, the Dartmouth theater department will put on pop musical “Pippin” as its MainStage production.

The show opens on Nov. 4 and will run until Nov. 13 for a total of seven shows. The two-act musical, written by Roger O. Hirson, composed by Stephen Schwartz, follows Pippin — the heir to the throne of King Charlemagne — as he tries to find purpose by experimenting with art, war, religion, power, love and revolution.

Through a team of award-winning special guest directors — including Shirley Jo Finney, “Pippin” examines what it means to live meaningfully. The story is told by a troupe of traveling actors, led by the Leading Player. Upon returning from university, Pippin is searching for a purpose in life. He tries out diferent professions, lifestyles and places, but in the end, discovers that true happiness is more complicated.

According to Dan Kotlowitz, chair of the theater department and lighting designer for the musical, the main reason the MainStage committee chose “Pippin” was because of its joyful nature. The show is also about someone who is around college-aged and trying to fgure out what they are going to do with their life.

“We look for something that seems

relevant to the times, that we can cast and that the students are excited about,” Kotlowitz said. “And [‘Pippin’] is particularly relevant for college students.”

Kamila Boga ’25 — who plays Catherine, the love interest and ingénue — noted that the cast is giving the show a surrealist twist by placing it in a timeless era.

“We pay homage to the show’s original 1970s funk, especially through choreography,” Boga said. “But we also added this insane modernist, intergalactic vibe through costumes and visuals as well.”

Highly infuenced by Rene Magritte’s paintings that juxtapose clouds with umbrellas and other items that seem out of place, the cast has incorporated similar abnormalities into the show. In a war scene, for example, instead of using swords, the cast brings out umbrellas.

Unique design elements are also found in the costumes, which were designed by Laurie Churba. The costumes are intricate and feature pieces made of computer chips and wires. A sun and clouds that fy in and out of the scene, in addition to a distorted, checkerboard foor make the audience feel like they are inside of a Magritte painting.

Although there is no definitive ending of “Pippin,” Kotlowitz noted that he hopes the audience finds

pleasure in the music and dancing. He added that he wants attendees to leave the show with a sense of hope and the comfort that they are not alone in their struggles.

“There’s just some sort of uplifting sense of joy, which I think you get when you’re in a crowd of people in a theater watching live performers that’s diferent from anything else,” Kotlowitz said. “That’s what we hope the audience walks out with.”

Boga said that the most difcult part of the production process was fnding a balance between rehearsal, schoolwork and other extracurriculars.

“We would normally meet for three hours a night,” Boga said. “Fully being able to separate yourself from the outside stressors, being fully present and devoted to the art that you’re creating in such a short amount of time is something that I found challenging.”

According to Kotlowitz, the show is similar to previous theater department productions in terms of its size and rehearsal process. However, the design elements are a bit unusual because many props and pieces of scenery fy in and out of the set.

“[Flying] is unusual for us. We do it sometimes, but we don’t do it to this extent,” Kotlowitz said. “There are a lot of scene shifts in the show, so that’s been complicated for tech, but it’s been extra fun to do.”

“Tech week is always fun because it’s busy and it’s crazy and you’re in these long rehearsals, but it’s also kind of like a ‘we’re all in this together’ vibe that happens,” Ginsberg said.

“Pippin” is the final theater production that will be performed at the Hopkins Center before renovations begin. Because of this, Boga said the entire cast and crew are approaching these performances with additional gratitude.

“For anyone who comes to watch,

we just want them to be fully immersed in the story and feel like they have a stake in it as well,” Boga said.

Ginsberg said she hopes that the show reminds the audience of the joys of live theater. She urges students to come to see “Pippin” because of the talent and the hard work that everyone has put into the show.

“Everyone gets their moment to shine,” Ginsberg said. “If there’s somebody that you know or love in the show, you will fnd even more to love in them by seeing them on stage because everybody is just phenomenal and has put so much hard work into this, and I’m very proud of everyone involved.”

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 4, 2022 THE DARTMOUTH ARTS PAGE 4
EXHIBITION HIGHLIGHTS THIS FALL Park Dae Sung: Ink Reimagined Madayin: Eight Decades of Aboriginal Australian Bark Painting from Yirrkala
Leading Player Emma Ginsberg ’23 noted how stressful, yet “magical” the week leading up to the show’s opening has been.

Women’s athletics celebrates 50th anniversary with homecoming programming for alumnae, current athletes

This article was originally published on Nov. 3, 2022.

In addition to traditional Homecoming activities, the College celebrated 50 years of women’s athletics since coeducation at Dartmouth with programming throughout the weekend. Events included a talk with Olympic runner and flmmaker Alexi Pappas ’12 and a dinner at the Hanover Inn for current and former female athletes, according to associate athletics director for external relations Lori McBride.

While the celebration highlighted current women’s sports, it was primarily an opportunity for alumnae to reconnect and honor decades of activism that has supported women’s sports at Dartmouth, McBride said.

“It really was the culmination of bringing together all these fabulous women across sports, which was so much fun,” McBride said. “It allowed them not

only to get to know each other but also to [learn how] they supported each other back as student-athletes and then stayed friends.”

The weekend’s festivities commenced with Pappas speaking at the Black Family Visual Arts Center on Friday in an event which attracted a “lovely cross-section” of athletes, students, faculty, alumni and dedicated fans, McBride said. At the event, Pappas outlined her career as a professional long distance runner, flmmaker, author and mental health advocate.

“So much of what I learned about being a human being was done through sports, and done through sports at Dartmouth,” Pappas said in her talk, which touched on mental health, chasing dreams and relishing the present.

On Saturday, McBride said that women’s sports events — including an equestrian competition and rugby, feld hockey, soccer and ice hockey games — were staggered so that alumnae could support current athletes as much as possible. McBride added that attendance was free to boost spectatorship.

On Saturday night, over 300 people attended a dinner held at the Hanover Inn Ballroom, including alumnae from all varsity and club sports, current and former women’s coaches and two current student-athlete representatives from each team. At the end of the evening, athletic director Mike Harrity announced that the jersey of basketball alumna Gail Koziara Boudreaux ’82 — whose prolifc career in basketball won her the NCAA Theodore Roosevelt award and a spot on the AllAmerican team, while her professional successes led her to her current position as CEO of Aetna healthcare — will hang in the rafters of Leede Arena. Hers will be the frst jersey, male or female, to hang in the arena.

“This was just an unbelievable show of commitment and respect to the women athletes of Dartmouth,” McBride said.

While McBride said that she was proud of the progress that women’s athletics has made in recent history, she acknowledged that “a lot of advocacy has been necessary to get to where we are today.”

Chris Brownell ’87 — who was a threesport athlete at Dartmouth, former head

coach of men’s and women’s squash and is the mother of two Dartmouth women’s athletes — said she has observed four decades of this advocacy.

“I have a lot of old friends in the feld, and I think our experiences at Dartmouth were much better than their experiences at other Ivy League schools,” Brownell said.

She described many of the women staf members in the athletic department as “warriors” who stood up to other stafers to secure better resources for women athletes.

“As a student myself, I felt like we got 100% of what the men got,” Brownell said. “I never, ever felt like we were second-class citizens.”

Track and cross country athlete Anya Hirschfeld ’23 added that women face diferent realities than men in sports, and equity alone may not be enough for female athletes to achieve their full potential. This is due in part, Hirschfeld said, to the double standards that women face in terms of appearance and demeanor and also because of gendered diferences when it comes to menstrual

care, nutritional needs and mental health. Hirschfeld said that when it comes to gender-specifc aid, the College still needs to hire more female coaches who may be more attentive to the needs of female athletes.

“It’s obviously uncomfortable to make broad generalizations along the gender binary,” Hirschfeld said. “But I do think that female coaches are a little bit more responsive to my physical and emotional needs than the male coaches that I’ve had in my past.”

As Dartmouth celebrates fve decades of women’s sports and the activists who paved the way for the successes of current athletes, Hirschfeld said that it’s important to remember that female athletes face unique challenges in their domain — and hiring more female coaches may be the best way to attend to them.

“It’s really important that people are aware of the kind of pressures that female athletes are under,” Hirschfeld said. “I think that a really good step is just the existence of female sports teams and a very rigorous support network for them.”

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 4, 2022 THE DARTMOUTH SPORTS PAGE 5
SPORTS

Home Sweet Dorm: Some of Campus’ Quirkiest Dorm Rooms

This article was originally published on November 2, 2022.

Scrolling through an “Architectural Digest” article on the most beautiful college dorms in America, I’m not even a little surprised that Dartmouth didn’t make the cut. Although my family and friends from home have often called our campus idyllic, that’s probably because they’ve never had to use the gender-neutral bathroom in the Masses or decide whether or not to turn on the sterile overhead lights in the Choates while they’re hooking up with someone. Despite the challenges presented to students by our shabby dorms, some have managed to make it work.

“The Cabin,” Allie Roehm ’25 — Butterfeld Hall

“We call my room ‘The Cabin,’ because that’s what it feels like — an old log cabin,” Roehm commented. “It’s very much a meeting place for my friends.”

I interviewed Roehm while sitting on her couch, comfortable and plaid — something akin to furniture I could only fnd at my aunt’s bed and breakfast in Northern Wisconsin. Her overhead lights were of, but the room was still perfectly lit by lamps and candles scattered across

the room.

Roehm thinks these two attributes — the seating and the lighting — bring her room together. “And defnitely the wood paneling,” she added, which adds a home-like atmosphere to her dorm — at least more so than the typical white plaster walls.

“I lean into [the cabin style], too.”

Roehm has this design down to a T. Not a single item in the room feels out of place — from the paddle hanging from her ceiling to the Ledyard jacket above her couch and the vintage National

For Roehm, her goal was to fnd the balance between too much decoration and not enough. “My room back home is so minimalist, so I went too maximalist in my freshman year dorm. I wanted to dial it back this year.”

Needless to say, she has done more than meet that target — she has created her own quaint cabin out of her little slice of Dartmouth.

Kellner lives in an of-campus apartment just down West Wheelock Street. I could see her room from the street before I even entered the house — a brightly-lit space covered in trinkets and assorted posters.

“I like colorful things and I like weird stuf,” Kellner said, introducing me to her wild cocoon of a bedroom. “I like collections of objects.”

That statement rings true: She has more posters and magazine clippings than I can count, pieces of yarn strung across her walls and vintage baby dolls pinned up next to her window. “I just happen about [my decorations],” she said. “I accumulate a lot and I move stuf around.”

On the origins of her style, Kellner remarked that she only began decorating in such an eclectic way when she moved into her current home, where she was able

to settle down after bouncing around during the COVID years of college.

“I started decorating things like this when I lived in my friend Ryan’s house because of COVID. We had the whole space and we decorated it with a lot of found objects — ‘Playboy’ cutouts especially. But I was really able to accumulate stuf when I moved into this room about a year ago,” she said.

Kellner, who majors in studio art, treats her bedroom as a living space as well as a creative one. “I like to think of [my room] as a studio space, or also just curated objects,” she said. “I like to make a little museum out of it.” Every inch of Kellner’s room ofers something new; a few treasures amongst her collection are a large knitted spider web, her own paintings, poems written on diner tickets and a small shrine to Shane from “The L Word.” “Playboy” cutouts still adorn her walls, and their gaze followed me across the room like tiny naked Mona Lisas.

During her freshman year of college, the only decoration Kellner had was a lone Fleetwood Mac poster that she had to toss during move-out, a sparse comparison to the decorations she has amassed today. “I’m in my room much more now than I ever was before I decorated it like this,” she commented.

Like just about everyone, Kellner hates the thought of moving. “I’m really anxious about taking things out of this room,” she said. “I’m between wanting to prevent stress and waiting til the last second and enjoying it while I have it.”

Kuys’ dorm feels like you’re in a bed room that belongs to the resident “cool girl” of a teenage sitcom. Everything is a fantastic pop of color — from the tiny blue butterfies pinned on the wall to the neon “BAR” sign over her 1960s-esque fridge and her pink carpet. When I was interviewing for this article, two of Kuys’ friends reached out to me and said I just had to talk to her — and I can see why. Her dorm is every girl’s dream — ftted out with cool lights, mini disco balls and a velvet couch: perfect for getting ready

for a night out or just spending time with friends.

“I would describe my aesthetic as fun, even funky,” Kuys commented. “I really like the look of cool New York loft apartments with a ‘pop art’ design, so that’s where I got my inspiration.”

Posters depicting everything from the shores of Nice, France, to vintage advertisements for Dartmouth’s Winter Carnival line her walls from top to bot tom. Despite the variety and number of her decorations, the room remains coherent; everything just works.

Whilst decorating her freshman and

sophomore year dorms, Kuys took ad vantage of the jump from high school to Hanover to reinvent her style. “I feel like in high school my room was just a collection of stuf from growing up, but college was nice because it was like a complete redo. I could try out new ways of designing.”

Right now, most of us are far away

Reflection: You’re On Your Own, Kid

This

“Library patrons, the Orozco Mural Room closes in 15 minutes.”

The clock strikes midnight, but I refuse to let go of the day. Taylor Swift’s “Midnights” provides the background to my thoughts, but I will not leave a glass slipper behind — only a scribble on a piece of paper of this morning’s predictions for what today might have been. Maybe tomorrow, I’ll get that fantasy back. For now, I will walk home through the sterile white lighting of FFB and say goodnight to the lampposts on my route.

Although our midnights may not feature such high-stakes refections on our archnemeses, fatal faws, the love of our life and expensive wine, I fnd Swift’s new album fascinating and almost relatable in how it refects themes of growth.

Almost.

My sleepless nights are not unique to Dartmouth, but Hanover nights have been painting my midnights with diferent shades of insomnia. Dartmouth — and settling in here — is a challenge. Ten-week terms combined with a relentlessly demanding understanding of socializing bring a lot to get adjusted to, like the strange combination of newness and familiarity of my life at Dartmouth. New friends send me tumbling back into high school dynamics, new failures bring up familiar fears and new feelings lead to the old habit of all-nighters.

It’s easy, in a new environment, to defne

our lives by the absences — lunch dates we miss, friendships we grow out of, readings we don’t do, time we don’t have. There is never enough time, never enough sleep. At the dawn of the new day, we mourn uncrossed to-do lists. We change the date on the paper to not waste another page.

After “Folklore” and “Evermore,” the sound of “Midnights” caught me of-guard. But in the context of Swift’s career, there is nothing surprising about the album. With simpler production, honest songwriting, and — finally — permission for the 32-year-old singer to curse, “Midnights” felt like a demonstration of the refection and introspection I’ve been avoiding.

I stay awake thinking about problems that have existed, that will exist, that are not real — problems that I created, solved and ignored. I stay with devastating nostalgia. I stay awake, in love again. Sometimes, my new feelings use the same chord progressions from a younger, stranger time. That is okay. I stay awake — I fnd other people who are willing to stay and wait with me. We wait silently to hear our roots growing. The starstudded night illuminates as we study, party, complain, share and fll in the blanks left over from buried absences. We get bold enough to tear down the calendar page, and call it yesterday.

The satisfaction of resisting sleep and the sense of community at Dartmouth overlap in strange ways. I stay up with thoughts, with homework, with friends in an attempt to claim my time back after a long day. Some

midnights, I end up revisiting the past. I fnd unread pages in my journal. They make me smile.

Other midnights are marked by new experiences: Seeing a pair of tired eyes in the 24/7 study spaces with a sense of mischief, just before your friend does something incredibly weird and distracting; the unusual quiet of Novack when a friend working behind the counter makes you a

drink before closing time; the cold air on your face walking to your best friend’s dorm for a warm cup of tea to end the night.

Taylor Swift’s new album provides a new companion for late-night contemplation and midnight revelry. Although I hate working hard and partying harder, there is no denying it’s that culture that creates the midnights we’ll remember for years to come. Spending sleepless nights in Hanover is a

from the place we’ve called ‘home’ our whole life. It can be hard to fnd a way to replicate that comfort in a new place, but Kuys feels she’s done just that.

“In college it’s hard to really feel at home, everything is so diferent. But I feel like since I’ve covered every wall and surface, it feels more like my own space, like my own home.”

special experience. There is so much to do in a tiny bubble and nothing at all beyond that. Eventually, the night yields to another day and with it, another chance. But each night after dark, we grow up together. There is nowhere else to go.

“Library patron, the Orozco Mural Room is now closed. Please exit, and get some sleep. We’ll meet at midnight. Until then, You’re On Your Own Kid.”

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 4, 2022 THE DARTMOUTH MIRROR PAGE 6
MIRROR
Geographic magazine covers on her wall. It feels like you just walked into someone’s home, not somebody’s dorm in Butterfeld Hall. “The Museum,” McKenna Kellner ’23 — West Wheelock Street (ofcampus)
CRICKET CANNELL/THE DARTMOUTH
article was originally published on Nov. 2, 2022. TESS BOWLER/THE DARTMOUTH “The Penthouse,” Chelsea Kuys ’25 — McLane

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