The Life and Time of My '02

When the class of 2003 arrived on campus, the kid defied my expectations. I thought he'd be feeling superior to the pea-greeners since he was now a worldly sophomore. Instead he began to suffer. It couldn't be because they had seven percent more valedictorians than the '02s. No, there was a far more gripping reason for the kid's dismay. "The freshmen are so lucky, " he moaned. "They get to go on a D.O.C. trip. I wish I were going." He settled for helping with freshman orientation after the '03s returned from Moosilauke.

Too bad he didn't linkup with some other upperclass students who hadn't thought to go on the trips by leading them. The night before the trips began, 17 students paid a little visit to the trip leaders who were camping out on Pitcomb Island, just south of Ledyard Canoe Club. Borrowing canoes in the dead of night, the raiders stealthily paddled to the island, donned stocking masks, surrounded the sleeping trip leaders, moaned until they woke up, showered them with candy, then paddled back to campus.

But the kid's trip envy was allayed somewhat by the early arrival of football-playing friends. Several of them moved into an off-campus rental, so the kid suddenly had a new place to hang out in the evenings. "The House," as the kid already calls it, is one of the few Hanover rentals the College did not acquire in its recent purchase of 19 downtown properties. The College hasn't yet announced its intentions for these houses, but some student residents, suspecting that both rents and scrutiny will increase, are not too happy with the College's extension into town. If the College repairs the houses, though, the kid's friends might start to wish that the College would take over their place. The basement, the kid reports, is so dank that it induces instant wheezing in anyone who dares to descend into its depths.

The kid, much to my maternal relief, lucked out with fallterm housing. Or rather, his roommate did, getting a low number, and therefore high priority, in the room lottery. They secured a three-room triple in Hitchcock, "the best dorm," according to the kid. The room's biggest attraction, he reports, is a fireplace. And that was just the beginning of the ideal decor. "I wish we had a big fridge," he daydreamed aloud. "You don't need one," his father pointed out professorially. "You're a block from the dining hall."

True, the kid nodded. He quickly turned his attention to finding a used couch.

The kid was looking forward to one advantage of being a sophomore rather than a freshman: rushing a Greek house. "Yeah, this maybe the last rush 'as we know it,'" he tells me, but he says he's not upset about it. Students, he reports, are just

waiting till November to find out what the Trustees want to do about revamping social and residential life.

Whether Greeks are ultimately doomed or not, the Interfraternity Council is proceeding with rush. An I.F.C. letter sent home during the

summer listed the advantages of fraternity life leadership, volunteerism, friendship, academic and personal support. "At present, the Greek System is the only campus organization that mandates alcohol education for all new members," the letter informed parents, though I wasn't sure whether to be reassured about the

training or worried about the need for it. The I.F.C. is urging '02 men to consider a minimum of four houses. The kid tells us he only has a couple in mind. "You could rush a

sorority," his father suggests. "You already spend a lot of time there. They seem to like you. Besides, the Trustees

want to make social life more coeducational." Whether this is a rebellious call to arms from a sixties' dad or just a fatherly joke, the kid says nothing. But I'm thinking, I wonder if they'd let him in.

The '03s got upfrontand personal beforetheir D.O.C. trips.