Why Dartmouth is Better with Men
Oh, but of course you can get a tip-top education at Smith and Wellesley. But there are some things you just cannot learn without men.
I SPENT 13 YEARS AT A SOUTHERN ALL-GIRL SCHOOL with the motto "What we keep we lose and only what we give remains our own." Single-sex ed sent me down paths of irony paved with responsible leadership, manners, intellectual competition, and fierce field hockey. What I didn't learn about was men. That gender seemed to me to be good for only one thing, which was courting.
And then I came to Dartmouth, where four years of crying for amour in the wilderness led me to amend that perception. Quite frankly, very few men are much good for courting. But they are nice to have around nonetheless. I offer seven reasons.
When I first arrived on campus I was delighted to be surrounded by boxer shorts, beer mung, and baritones. Motorcycles were parked at random, and dogs proliferated, some with bandannas around their necks. True, it was a bit tougher to hold the floor in class. It was a bit more distracting to sit, reading, from one of the perches in Sanborn when you saw certain individuals show up for afternoon tea. But skinny dipping took on a different meaning, which leads us to the first reason why Dartmouth is better with men than as an all-female college: heterosexualpheromonal swirl.
At the same time, those same hairy-chested boys didn't seem to mind if women strutted their Phi Beta intellectual Kapital. And so, a second reason for having Dartmouth men around is: They're smart men.
Because of them, my studies were filled with a passion they lacked in my earlier days (they say in some schools of literary criticism that desire fuels both writing and reading). At Dartmouth, we all learned to get studying done early so we could go out at night; we budgeted our time for friends and beaux. This social incentive was intellectual stimulation.
After a few unsuccessful tries at Eros Clamantis in Deserto I discovered yet another advantage of the male presence: Thebuddy factor. My platonic friends encouraged defiance in me, and for that I am forever grateful. They infused me with a don't just talk about it do it spirit that has led me into all sorts of scrapes and learning experiences. I listened to politically incorrect rap music with Brant in that most freshman of dorms, French. With Tim one summer night I swiped Froz Fruit popsicles from Thayer Dining Hall. I went J.D. Salinger-hunting with Josh in the Upper Valley towns of Wilder and Cornish. There was buddy material everywhere, like the brave-hearted boys in women's studies courses and the gentlemen who didn't pinch their faces when you came to the Thayer table with a PMS tray laden with french fries and junk food.
Then there were die non-buddies, who offered additional, more perverse, assets. I recall the wonder and horror of discovering a secret fraternity newsletter in which a fellow I admired contributed a vignette describing me as a "diesel dyke ho." That budding fraternity writer proved the theory of Foucault, the French philosophe, who said that institutions work their way into the mind slowly, like a disease. First the institution (read fraternity) names itself, then it isolates its members (in a house), then it runs under its own rules (which are rather twisted, don't you think, with all those women hos and bimbos), until everyone accepts them. Fraternities offer a good boot camp (pun only partly intended) to prepare women for the inner workings and glass ceilings of corporate life. A Dartmouth woman, like an elephant, succeeds because she never forgets.
And so Dartmouth is better with men also because the social life motivates many women to take their first crack attherapy. After three years of love-life misery I went to Dick's House. "Why can't I get anyone to go out with me?" I asked a whitecoat. "Why am I a diesel dyke ho?" Was my therapist Jungian, Freudian, 12 step? I don't know; we couldn't begin to answer my question. Still, I liked the idea that there were people ready to help me deal with the fact that Dartmouth is better with men. I nonetheless took more solace from my buddies like Mike, who looked me in the eye one day in Lou's and said earnestly: "Don't hate men. Men are good guys."
And, by golly, some of them are. But Dartmouth isn't better just because there are good guys. It's better because there are men. As a whole, they made me tough as nails, and if you mess with me you'd better watch out. Which brings me to the last reason why it's better with men at Dartmouth: Because of it, I'm a littlebit closer to being one myself.
Gotta love 'em. Well, like 'em. Dartmouth linebacker
Mike looked me in the eye one day in Lou's and said earnestly: "Don't hate men. Men are good guys"
Jane Hodges lives in New York, a town she prefers with men, and is a reporter forAdvertising Age.
