Stooping
The best location on campus for "stooping" is the stoop in front of Massachusetts Hall dormitory. The Mass Hall steps are like a grandstand from which stoopers can watch the world go by. The most popular time for stooping is between 5:00 p.m. and 8:00 p.m. when the dinner crowd parades by on the sidewalk in front of the stoop on its way to and from Thayer Dining Hall. The morning is the time to get a stoop tan: On a fair day in the late spring and summer, the stoop receives sunlight from just after sunrise until about one o'clock in the afternoon. Midnight is known as the philosophical stooping hour.
We first became acquainted with this particular student pastime two years ago. Since then, stooping has become much more sophisticated. For instance, we noticed recently on the dorm's bulletin board an official set of stooping rules. No books allowed on the stoop. No bicycles allowed on the stoop. No "tourists" allowed on the stoop. Tourists, a denizen who is versed in the stooping vernacular informed us, are people who stand up in front of the stoop and obstruct the stoopers' views of the passers-by. Kegs and six-packs of beer are sometimes consumed.
We have an acquaintance who is Dartmouth's best-known stooper. We were sitting stoop once when a heckler, who lives in Hitchcock Hall, yelled at our acquaintance: "The supporting cast is always different. But the king is the common denominator." King Stoop has lived in Mass Hall for three years and stoops for an average of four hours a day. One day before classes resumed last fall he put in a nine-hour stretch of stooping. Isn't it a waste of time? we asked him. "It's no waste of time," he replied. "It's only a waste of time if you think it is."
King Stoop is a religion and philosophy major. He insists that the stoop is a perfect democracy: "There's no hierarchy. Everybody sits where they want to." We asked him about stooping trends. He observed that the quality of stoopers has declined. "Stooping when I was a freshman meant you'd sit down, have a drink, and sit around for a while. Now, it's a transit type of thing. People come out and stoop because they think it's the thing to do. . . . It's just their attitude." Stooping necessitates a time commitment. "They come out here for ten minutes and say, 'Oh, I'm punting.' And then they go off and study. It's just part of a general trend toward toolishness and geekishness reflected both in the school and in stooping."
The stoop is most popular in the late spring, in the several weeks before final exams, when the days are balmy and the skies Parrish blue. The stoop is least popular in the dead of winter, when even King Stoop can't endure more than ten minutes of stooping at a time. Sometimes in the spring or fall 40 or 50 people will congregate on the stoop. We stopped by on April 12, the first good day for stooping this spring, and counted about 20 stoopers. There also were two college-owned arm chairs and at least one pair of binoculars present.
"It's like an outdoor cafe in New York City," a freshman coed who lives in Mass Hall says of stooping. "You have a good time people-watching." "I hate walking by there," says a senior coed who lives in North Massachusetts Hall. She has walked past the stoop on her way from her dormitory to the dining hall for four years.
"I don't know whether to stare back or sit down and stare, too. I feel like I'm walking the gauntlet." King Stoop's comment: "Most of the chicks kind of walk by and look away. If a girl's got self-confidence, she looks at us and says 'hi.' If she's quiet, shy, she looks away. It's a good personality study."
