Animal Acts

Funny. A person never quite realizes how place, above reason, intellect and categorical imperatives, can dictate behavior. Never, that is, until it hits him in the face like a spilled beer, or a snowball through the living room window, or a hard, cold slap.

I refer specifically to a trend at the College which a bunch of us around the ‘D’ offices one afternoon casually dubbed “jerk-ism” the feeling that acting as irresponsibly, as arrogantly, and as ob- noxiously as one can not only is acceptable public behavior, but wins medals of honor.

Case in point: One young alumnus, on a binge at the first football game of this season, was verbally and physically in- sulting to newly appointed Assistant Dean of Students Ann Craig. When her compa- nion, fellow Assistant Dean of Students Jim Bryan, asked the alumnus to “cut it out,” the alumnus blurted to Craig, “Who ! is this, your pimp?” His fraternity brothers cheered. :

Second case in point: Jerry Jeff Walker, a popular country-western singer noted for his “redneck” image, recently played two shows in Spaulding Auditorium. The audiences were dominated by students who had been drinking heavily before Walker appeared and continued to drink during the concerts. The first crowd made such a mess from spilling beer, vomiting, and spitting tobacco juice that Hopkins Center housekeeping crews had to do a full clean- up job between shows. The vomit outside Spaulding that didn’t quite make it to the men’s room was cleaned up by volunteer ushers. Jerry Jeff was a critical success, but the audiences drew mixed reviews: a wrist- slapping at the next Inter-Fraternity Coun- cil meeting and a “foot-stompin’ gettin’- into-it crowd” from The Dartmouth’s reviewer (nostra culpa, nostra culpa . . . ).

I and anybody else on campus could continue to cite examples of the kind of behavior this jerk-ism produces. It is even obvious by now that this behavior just does not go in the “real world.” The JackO’Lantern, in its Commencement 1977 issue subtitled “The Real World Survival Issue,” pointed out this very thing in its own inimitable way. “Dear Jacko,” wrote a fictional ’76, “I’m at this bar, see, and I splash some chick with beer, and what does she do? She has me arrested for assault! What gives?” “Be it known,” the Jacko somberly intoned later in the issue, “that such activity as trashing candy machines is actually illegal in the real world.”

Fine. So why is it not only not illegal, but acceptable and even laudable on the Hanover Plain? What kind of atmosphere fosters the sort of rampant drunk-and- disorderliness that seems to be de rigueur at any social function short of tea at the Kemenys’?

Many tend to write off rowdiness to school spirit, the sort of work-hard-play- hard philosophy that supposedly sets Dart- mouth apart from the cradles of the effete. Nobody begrudges any loyal son or daughter of Dartmouth the right to yell- till-hoarse for a Big Green team, or to tell a rival fan where to go. But where does it say that school spirit includes putting your hand through a plate-glass window, or vomiting on the nearest administrator?

Likewise, many tend to write off a good deal of rowdiness to excess drinking, a tradition, it seems, as old to the College as school spirit. (Why else would the 1975 Esquire poll of big drinking colleges place Dartmouth right off the list, claiming it was “unfair to mix amateurs and professionals”?) Admittedly, at Dart- mouth. we are given the chance to be irresponsible so we can learn what it is to be responsible, but many never make it past the first stage, especially where drink- ing is concerned. The result is a brawl such as the Jerry Jeff Walker concert and kegs thrown through fire doors.

Again, what fosters such behavior? The Dean’s Office has been concerned about the issue of excess drinking for some time, and it is now beginning to consider some of the hidden institutional sanctions. Why, for example, is Baker Library closed at 5:00 p.m. on Saturday, and not reopened until 2:00 p.m. on Sunday? Can it be that the College is saying that no self-respecting Dartmouth student should be caught dead studying on a Saturday night? That he should be out at a party, perhaps one at which liquor is served? (The conclusion is almost inescapable, since little in the way of social alternatives is currently provided.) And that of course he will not be ready to resume studying until Sunday afternoon because of the “bad head” he in- curred the night before? And why is it that kegs and not some other form of reward are offered as prizes for many College- sanctioned competitions: the blood drive held every term (to the dorm and fraternity producing the most per-capita pints), energy-saving in the dormitories, guarding the freshman bonfire?

Perhaps, the deans feel, the College is literally pouring the stuff down our throats. Then is it noblesse oblige not to enforce some of the -basic rules of conduct violated by partakers of the College’s generosity?

Whatever. The point is, no matter why jerk-ism is sweeping the campus, we are all paying for it, literally and figuratively. In the mysterious two- and three-dollar charge for prorated dorm damage tacked onto each term’s College bill. In the possibility that, because of the past perfor- mance of a few houses, the Athletic Coun- cil and Hopkins Center may refuse in the future to sell fraternity blocks of tickets. In the guilt-by-association that led the Wellesley News to indict all Dartmouth students, and falsely accuse one fraternity in particular, of decapitating a 19th- century statue over Harvard Weekend.

The solution is not easy, mainly because rowdiness is such an intrinsic part of the “high spirits” that makes Dartmouth the special school it is. It was the spirit of camaraderie and fraternity that first at- tracted me to and eventually sold me on the College on the Hill,'and I still find that camaraderie intoxicating and beautiful, whether it comes out in a house block at a football game or between two people wear- ing green on the streets of Cambridge. It reaches across lines of age, sex, and race which is perhaps the most beautiful thing about it. I am only afraid that abuse of the spirit and terms of this camaraderie, this fraternity, is instead drawing lines around the Dartmouth community, setting us too far apart from the “real world” and deluding us into thinking that we don’t have to play by the world’s behavioral rules. If that is so, then we’re in for a huge shock.