Rocco’s Brother
A good place to start this story is in the basement of Heorot fraternity. It was there in the tube room that the brothers of Heorot were sitting around some late night during the 1973-74 academic year, watching an old movie. The movie was about an Italian family and was called Rocco and His Three Brothers. One of the viewers, who also happened to be of Italian descent, was my brother Donald, class of '76. The actor who played Rocco bore a striking resemblance to my brother. Because of this resemblance and because Donald had two brothers, his fraternity buddies nicknamed him "Rocco," and the name stuck (much to my mother's chagrin).
It was during Rocco's sophomore summer that I first visited Dartmouth, which makes my association with the College one of seven years standing three years longer than most of my classmates'. I was reminded of this lately when I thought of writing about my im- pressions of how things have changed here in the past seven years. I have to start with the story of Rocco because for the first three years of my association with Dart- mouth I saw it largely through Rocco's eyes. From his humble beginnings in Heorot's tube room, Rocco went on to become president of the house (also much to my mother's chagrin) and he lived at Heorot throughout all of his junior and senior years. When I visited him, which was often, I would stay in the attic.
To the brothers of Heorot I became known as "Little Rocco." They adopted me as one of their own and taught me a variety of useful skills: how to steal a keg from Tri Kap, how to sneak into a party at Kappa Sig without paying, or how to get a seat on the bar near the taps in Theta Delt's basement on a really crowded night. I learned every subtlety of the games of foosball and beer-pong, even learning the local rules for each house lob or straight pong, whether an ace was a drink or not, whether balls could be played off the ceilings and walls. I also learned that to terminate a conversation with one's brothers over some beers to go talk to any woman who may have wandered into the house basement (unless a specific house function was going on) was forbidden. A random female visitor to the fraternity basement was unwelcome; she was cutting into the drinking time with the boys and she was to be ignored. To talk to her was called "groveling" and the offender was identified as a "groveler." My fondest memories of nights in the basement of Heorot are of be- ing a little drunk, yet not feeling sick or out of control, and sitting by the jukebox as half a dozen or so young men sang along lustily to the great old songs.
Perhaps my clearest impression of my time spent here during those prematricula- tion days is of a late-night walk with my brother back from Webster Avenue toward Heorot. We were approaching the Green when I spotted a student ahead of us carry- ing books, apparently heading toward his room after a night of studying. I had come to associate people carrying books in the late-night hours on a weekend with words like "tool" and "geek" even lower forms of life than grovelers. Following what I had seen friends of my brother do, I started shouting something at this student walking ahead of us. But before I could get all of my invective out, Rocco pushed me so that I tripped and fell to the ground, and he told me to shut up and never to do that again. He had made me feel rightfully ashamed of myself, and I've never for- gotten that lesson in respect.
When I finally did matriculate in the fall of 1976, I got off to an inauspicious begin- ning. I lived in South Mass Hall, and the first weekend at school I got drunk with a new acquaintance. Sometime late in our night of revels, we found ourselves on the dorm's fire escape and I threw a whole gar- bage can of water on a campus policeman passing below. I had to see Proctor McEwen who knew my brother well and who shook his head in wonder that even Rocco's little brother could get into so much trouble his first weekend at college.
I can say that I have cleaned up my act considerably since Freshman Week, but most important, I've come to see Dart- mouth from a much broader perspective than the view afforded by looking out the windows of a fraternity basement. I've also come to believe that what goes on here both inside and outside those windows, has changed significantly, and has changed for the better in the past seven years. I could give many examples, but one that seems appropriate to my story is that sometimes someone will shout at me in the wee hours of the morning when I'm walking home from Baker Library's all-night study room, but that happens less often than it did when I was a freshman, and certainly less than when I was a young visitor to this campus. If this indicates that this community has become more sensitive and more respectful of its own members, then I'm awfully glad. If the presence of more women than ever on this campus means that this is a more congenial and relaxed place to live and study, then I only regret that the ratio has yet to become what it should be and even- tually will be one to one. The presence of more women here has done nothing to rob Dartmouth of its characteristic spirit; the traditions that have failed are the ones best left dead.
Some have argued that there should be an equal number of men and women here because that reflects how things are in the "real world." This rationale is also used to justify the presence of more minority- peoples on campus. It bothers me that peo- ple would prefer not to see this community as part of the "real world." Professor Harry Schultz, in his Class Day address last year, said, "Forty-two years ago, I was sitting where you are now, resignedly waiting for the weekend to be over. This is the first Class Day I have attended since 1937. Even then, I was suspicious of what was called commencement, as of something designed to break the continuity of life by insinuating that what was to come would be more important, more real, than what had already been. I hadn't learned that the real world begins the moment one is born, that one is always making the real world out of oneself."
In the seven years that I have witnessed and participated in the changes here, I have seen the fruits of many people's efforts to shape their world, to work change in this community, to affirm that this world is no less real than any other. When I am no longer here to witness and record them, the changes will continue. I applaud them, their anticipation fills me with confidence in the continuing strength of this institu- tion. They spark my hope.
