Aw, Shucks

It only took me a day or two to get back into “college mode” after arriving back on campus. After the early-September doldrums back home, actually seeing people I know has been a rush. Almost seems like none of us had actually left: I still laugh with people, confide in others, and feel just as awkward with even more. Books have been purchased, classes have begun, and room furniture has been rearranged. And after I get tired of doing my own laundry, waking up early for class, and having to leave my building to get food, I’ll slip comfortably back into “lazy mode”–whose solutions to the aforementioned problems include nudity, caffeine, and Domino’s–until two or three days before finals. And so it was written, and so it shall be done.

Do not mistake the lack of blogging to mean that nothing exciting has been happening; exciting things rarely happen, yet many continue to blog. No - you owe this update to all of the reading I need to do this evening. In fact, I have so much reading that I plan on writing several different posts in the next day or two to fill up both space and the various categories with which I’ve confined myself.

Besides, I’ll be able to come up with even more post titles, which is more or less why I do this thing to begin with.

Like I said, I’m back at college, and everything’s pretty much the same. Unfortunately, the set “everything” includes “things I didn’t particularly enjoy the first time around.” This means I still need to deal with oversensitive people who, instead of blogging, use their procrastination time to add several layers of misery to the lives of everyone else.

Our story begins on the morning of Tuesday, September 20th. I slept in and had a dream about a girl I knew in Middle School. But the entire Dartmouth Class of 2009, after days of orientation, rose early and, dressed in clothing that could only be described as smart casual, trekked to Leede Arena for that morning’s Convocation ceremony. During the ceremony, Noah Riner ‘06, the President of the Student Assembly, the Dartmouth Administration’s very own student-run puppet government, spoke to the ’shmen as other SA Presidents had done before him. The speech started off innocently enough:

You’ve been told that you are a special class. A quick look at the statistics confirms that claim: quite simply, you are the smartest and most diverse group of freshmen to set foot on the Dartmouth campus. You have more potential than all of the other classes. You really are special.

And then he took a step into some unique territory, mentioning Dartmouth grads that were “very special” but “very corrupt,” most notably:

William Walter Remington, Class of 1939, started out as a Boy Scout and a choirboy and graduated Phi Beta Kappa. He ended up as a Soviet spy, was convicted of perjury and beaten to death in prison.

Daniel Mason ‘93 was just about to graduate from Boston Medical School when he shot two men – killing one – after a parking dispute.

Just a few weeks ago, I read in the D about PJ Halas, Class of 1998. His great uncle George founded the Chicago Bears, and PJ lived up to the family name, co-captaining the basketball team his senior year at Dartmouth and coaching at a high school team following graduation. He was also a history teacher, and, this summer, he was arrested for sexually assualting a 15-year-old student.

Fair enough. Crazy people do exist, even at Ivy League institutions.

For example, in the past few weeks we’ve seen some pretty revealing things happening on the Gulf Coast in the wake of hurricane Katrina… we’ve been disgusted by the looting, violence, and raping that took place even in the supposed refuge areas. In a time of crisis and death, people were paddling around in rafts, stealing TV’s and VCR’s. How could Americans go so low?

My purpose in mentioning the horrible things done by certain people on the Gulf Coast isn’t to condemn just them; rather it’s to condemn all of us. Supposedly, character is what you do when no one is looking, but I’m afraid to say all the things I’ve done when no one was looking. Cheating, stealing, lusting, you name it - How different are we? It’s easy to say that we’ve never gone that far: never stolen that much; never lusted so much that we’d rape; and the people we’ve cheated, they were rich anyway.

Let’s be honest, the differences are in degree. We have the same flaws as the individuals who pillaged New Orleans. Ours haven’t been given such free range, but they exist and are part of us all the same.

…All right. I suppose it’s nice he’s not trying to come off as superior to other people, but I sure hope he’s not going where I think he’s going…

Character has a lot to do with sacrifice, laying our personal interests down for something bigger. The best example of this is Jesus. In the Garden of Gethsemane, just hours before his crucifixion, Jesus prayed, “Father, if thou be willing, remove this cup from me: nevertheless not my will, but thine, be done.” He knew the right thing to do. He knew the cost would be agonizing torture and death. He did it anyway. That’s character.

Jesus is a good example of character, but He’s also much more than that. He is the solution to flawed people like corrupt Dartmouth alums, looters, and me.

It’s so easy to focus on the defects of others and ignore my own. But I need saving as much as they do.

Jesus’ message of redemption is simple. People are imperfect, and there are consequences for our actions. He gave His life for our sin so that we wouldn’t have to bear the penalty of the law; so we could see love. The problem is me; the solution is God’s love: Jesus on the cross, for us.

Okay. He went exactly where I hoped he wouldn’t. But I guess that’s what you get when you elect a member of the Navigators, the “evangelical Christian” (their words, not mine) group on campus, as SA President. Regardless, Noah had a good thing going there: Jesus Christ is a fine example of character, and to include why he looks to Jesus is perfectly understandable. But he hangs himself rather quickly when he uses “us” instead of “me” and insists that Jesus is the answer to everyone’s problems. It’s a statement I don’t necessarily disagree with, but a speech for college freshmen at Convocation is not an appropriate forum for personal religious views. As much as I dislike bubblegum speeches given by bubbleheaded student “political figures,” Convocation is one of those rare times when a worthless speech is exactly what’s needed. I don’t remember a thing about the speech I heard last year, and that’s fine by me.

Anyway. What bothers me about this situation is not that Noah made a mistake, but rather the reactions from everyone as a result. Outcry against any Christian message on a college campus is damn near inevitable, but that doesn’t make me like it any more. In the days after the speech, Kaelin Goulet ‘07 (whose facebook profile reveals a photo of a young woman–presumably her–holding a sign that says “Honor Our Troops and Their Moms” and that she is looking for “Random Play”), the SA Vice President for Student Life, resigned with these delicately phrased comments:

I consider his choice of topic for the Convocation speech reprehensible and an abuse of power… I… thought we were in agreement for what SA stands for. Apparently, I was incorrect… Frankly, I guess I misunderstood the aims of this body, and I will not stay on to help clean up for the mistakes of Assembly leadership.

A team player in the truest sense, Goulet was not the only one who took offense. Paul Heintz ‘06, who ran against Riner during the election, responded to Riner’s speech in “Guy and Fellow,” his daily comic published in The Dartmouth, the local paper:

I’ve always loved “Guy and Fellow,” but of course, letters were written to the newspaper after the comic’s publication. People defended Riner and shared how they were appalled at Heintz’s portrayal of Jesus as a pot smoking hippie, as people who write letters to small college newspapers are wont to do. And this outcry also bothered me. Anyone who takes “Guy and Fellow” seriously probably… well, probably spends a good deal of their Saturday afternoons writing letters to college newspapers. Nevermind.

I look to Brian Martin ’06’s editorial in The Dartmouth for a suitable way to handle this whole scandal. While I disagree with his earlier use of “fire-and-brimstone” to describe the speech (try as he might, Riner is no Jonathan Edwards), Martin ends the editorial with some sage advice for everyone involved:

To anyone else offended by the speech, I say two things: forget about it, and welcome to Dartmouth. The ‘09 class will have a tremendous four years here, and you don’t need to decide whether Jesus is your savior. Most of us will like and appreciate you anyway.

Exactly.

And the Dartmouth College Marching Band will have its say in the matter during halftime at Saturday’s game. I’m a co-writer for the halftime show, so I’ll post it after the game’s over. The only reason controversies like this are entertaining is that I get to make fun of them over a loudspeaker at a college football stadium.

It’s the little things, you know?