The Class of Nodding Acquaintances

When the class of 1983 comes together on a June day half a year hence (that is, for the first time in three years), I will know a few of my classmates well, feel comfortable nodding in acquaintance to many, and will not know a fair number at all. Worse, I find it hard to believe that we will feel any more of a community that we do today- existing as we are, as a desensitized group having little more in common than our title.

While I've always imagined that Dartmouth had the potential to be a more sensitive intellectual community, each passing term has shown me that intolerance is more the rule. A tension that exists even on the nicest afternoons of Indian summer leads to a friction both inside and outside the self. Outside, the hostility is easily found: be it among extremists supporting or fighting the fraternity system, between the myriad forms of student government and the students who refuse to grant legitimacy, or on the pages of our racist, divisive publication. Internally, the tension is hard to locate yet alcoholsoaked weekends, classroom desks scribbled over with fraternity letters, and student reluctance to racial mixing attest to its presence.

Though the expression of tension and loneliness is usually innocuous, we still have a substantial problem here. I hold the Dartmouth Plan, those 300-plus patterns of coming and going, largely responsible. We, the class of 1983, are not Dartmouth in any communal sense of the word; we are small, isolated groups of very similar people, breathing slightly easier once we have found a "group" to belong to. These collections, be they in Collis, Cutter Hall, or a fraternity basement, build up enclosing walls that inhibit any exchange of ideas and foster the production of epithets. The walls also serve one other purpose: they are designed as much to keep the group's members in as to keep others out.

What other school of this relatively small size can boast of one-time friends (of a ten-week acquaintance) who spend as much as half their final three years in different sections of the world? The hundreds of options make for flexibility, but they also magnify the distance between us. It has, quite simply, created the class of nodding acquaintances.

The shortness of the term makes it hard to focus on anything here: Plato, professors, and romances all whiz by with an uneasy rapidity. One becomes, in many cases, distracted by the continuing rush of a life always in flux: ten weeks here, ten weeks there, then move on once again. As soon as one term starts, the time for worrying about the next has arrived. Major courses must be selected, housing cards must be approved, furniture must be moved, job options must be located, and financial aid must be informed. Form after form winds its way into Parkhurst and McNutt, each filed with the appropriate official and most carrying at least two return addresses.

And there are the courses. Syllabi are crammed to the bursting point (one of my professors was so hostile to the ten-week term that he scheduled an extra class meeting each week to accommodate his 12- week course), appalling amounts of work go undone, and midterm and final exam preparations crowd into one another. If one's goal is private reflection, this is not the place to be. If the material gets read before an exam, and if it can simply be repeated, that is usually enough.

Everyone knows the value of internships and foreign study in fact, this flexibility is part of the reason why many came here in the first place. Yet we may have gotten more than we bargained for. There is an increasing realization here that something must be done to the academic calendar, for the cost of disintegration is too high. Too much of the good Dartmouth has to offer, be it in courses, sports, or even in developing life-long friendships, can get passed by in the rush and frequency of educational maintenance. I feel cheated in my time here, but not . because I know of a better school; only that I have a gut feeling that my time here was altogether too much pressured by the demands of coming and going every ten weeks.

I hope a new Dartmouth Plan will come, into being soon. The Penner plan, the one that calls for an academic year of three tenweek terms, is only half the battle, for it is the brevity of a ten-week term that fosters incoherence and isolation. A solution more along the lines of the Wright Report, which called for three twelve-week terms per year, is preferable; in order to relieve the loneliness and fragmentation on a systemic level.

In the end, I expect that the debate over the Dartmouth Plan will continue long after my departure. And that means that future Dartmouth students will be forced to suffer through or become part of the many totalitarian groups that require personal acquiesence and group distinctiveness at all costs. But maybe someday improvements will be made, and some future class may look forward to graduation day together, rather than individually.