Love Story
WHAT can you say about a 200-year-old college that had no women? That it was isolated? That it was lonely on Friday and Saturday nights? That it was awkward when the first group of women finally arrived on campus in 1972?
All of the above were true, and remained true to a certain extent even after Dartmouth admitted its first class of women. But in time the inevitable mixing of the sexes began, and after the residual Big Greener hostility faded, the campus was even dotted with "couples" on lazy spring afternoons.
Though the prospect of hearing a young couple describe how they began their courtship while next-door neighbors in Mass Hall might drive ante-bellum graduates into fits of apoplexy, these aberrations do exist and must be dealt with in a mature fashion by the rest of us. Gone are the days when a taunt of "coed lover" would silence even the toughest Dartmouth animal. Counterinsurgency tactics and systematically rude behavior (known in the parlance as "horrification") have gradually abated over the past few years. These days the wild men are more likely to sidle shyly up to a coed in the library than fling a wet sponge at her across a crowded fraternity basement.
For some time Dartmouth women complained that love meant never having to say you were a coed. A number of girls had great sport at fraternity parties trying to pass themselves off as students at Smith or Colby-Sawyer, traditional havens for Dartmouth men. These treacherous women refuse to divulge the results of their duplicity, though one relates with especial delight the expression of her Friday night Lothario when he saw her in a Monday morning class.
"Dating a coed," my freshman IDC adviser once told me, "is like kissing your sister," summing up a then prevalent notion that Dartmouth men and women were practically relatives by virtue of their close contact in classes and dormitories. On the other hand there were always road trips to assuage the Hanover sorrows of our young swain. Part of the lure of the women's colleges seemed to be the lack of accountability: No one there could hold Friday night over one's head on Monday morning.
On any given evening in the various haunts of Baker Library — particularly the 1902 Room, the Reserve Corridor, and Sanborn Library — one can diagram the courtship dance in full detail. Many people have a sort of assigned seat in these places, where all of their various admirers know they can be found. So the clever hunter will stake out a blind in a strategic location: one which will provide a good vantage point but will not scare off the game. He, or she — as Cathy McGrath '80 notes, "Girls here are more aggressive about meeting guys" — will then settle in for the wait. At about ten o'clock the library crowd heaves a collective sigh of relief, pushes aside books, and gets down to more serious pursuits. Now is the time to make contact or, for the bolder, plans for later on. Our stalking hunter vacates his or her chair and ambles over to the prey to make small talk. Sometimes they will leave the room to lounge on the leather couches in the main lobby of Baker. This is one step beyond the '02 Room chat, but a step short of the late-night break at Peter Christian's tavern, where many an "understanding" is hammered out over a cup of mocha java.
Assuming that this tactic has met with some success, our couple must then find nonchalant ways of making contact — bumping into one another at fraternity parties, studying in proximate locations, dining at Thayer Hall's line #4 (where Dartmouth's beautiful people eat and tablehop), and walking to and from classes at the same time — before taking the irrevocable step of being "seen together" officially.
There are many carefully delineated paths toward romantic involvement, but perhaps none more exciting than the bright hopes of Friday night on Fraternity Row, According to Becky Randall 'Bl, the opening gambit usually takes place across a crowded room when a come-hither look is cast in a particular direction. A meeting can then be arranged through the agency of mutual friends, perhaps even the girl's current boyfriend. Small talk leads into an invitation to dance, which has the convenient feature of ending every ten minutes or so, giving both parties the frequent opportunity to re-evaluate the situation. The next critical stage begins as the party grinds to a slow halt. The jockeying for position begins, since you must be ready to leave at the right place and time in order to walk home with this week's individual of your dreams. This is more difficult for women than men, society being what it is, since they must usually wait to see if their paladin will approach. Cradling a coat will give the hint, and the line "I'm not ready to leave yet" will fend off unwanted offers, but it won't make Robert Redford appear in the doorway, clad in a green ski-team vest, asking, "Mind if I walk up campus with you?" Some clever fraternity men avoid this problem completely by taking their chosen one's coat upstairs early in the evening "so it won't get ripped off." This guarantees that one's enamorata cannot leave the party without first running the gauntlet of your room.
Many are the circumstances which keep green infatuations from developing into lasting attachments. The Dartmouth Plan, otherwise known as "musical friendships," may be the greatest obstacle, says Bill Petit '78. The long-distance relationships occasioned by deviating enrollment patterns are a tricky business, since "letters stink and phone calls make it worse" in the words of Jim Fownes '78. Spring strolls in the cemetery, basking on the crew docks, earnest autumn walks around Occom Pond, and twilight rendezvous in the Bema fade into the realm of memory under the strain of long absences, academic and career pressures, and the need to be with "the group." The all-purpose line, "I have to be free," waits at the end of the line for most starry-eyed romantics. One tends to be skeptical of this excuse, since many who invoke their freedom to end a relationship with one person can be seen, almost simultaneously, trying to lose it to someone else.
Romance at Dartmouth is, like most everything else, a learning experience. The desire for companionship conflicts with the fear of commitment — and the career goals of most Dartmouth undergraduates obviate the possibility of settling down early. In fact the mere suggestion gives most people hives. Dartmouth students are busy people, and as Ovid, the classical poet of love, observed: "You who seek an end of love, love yields to business: be busy, and you will be safe."
