Vacation 2013: Dartmouth College (I'd Like You to Meet Mohammad, Jugdish, Sydney, and Clayton)

Dartmouth College

Boy is this great! Does this place ever have an Animal House feel! The buildings and grounds at least. The students don't look white and '60s enough to pass for Faberians.

But no matter. As someone who just enjoys college campuses, this one's a jewel. Nice size, varied and interesting architecture, engaged and friendly students (I know, it shocked me), pretty grounds, and a cool little town.

I got into town fairly late on Thursday night. I stayed at the Six South Hotel, about two blocks off from campus. A new hotel with nice amenities and another big room. Very modernistic décor, whatever that means to you. To me, it means bright colors, few flourishes, lots of right angles, and style over comfort. No spotted chicken lamps here.

Dartmouth is located in Hanover, NH, a perfect college town. By that I mean the College represents the town's main concern and business; there's not dozens of Fortune 500 corporate headquarters within a five mile radius (that is, its not Columbia). Everyone has something to do with or some connection to the College. By the same token, don't expect the Hanover newspaper to blow the lid off whatever Dartmouth corruption scheme may be happening, the paper would lose its access and the editors would lose their invites to Deans' luncheons. The town sits in a beautiful stretch near the Connecticut River, right in the middle of nowhere. The College tour guide, whom I shall describe later, said as much. The small town boasts lots of trees and rolling hills, attractive, clean neighborhoods, and interestingly, the Appalachian Trail runs right down a few blocks of Main Street. I even saw a few backpackers walking down the street.  And it doesn't look like the Hanoverites, or whatever they're called, are hurting. I didn't see any poor sides of town. No, Town and Country magazine could do location shots here. I found out later, the poor folks all live in Lebanon, about five miles down the road. I didn't exactly see any checkpoints at the town's outskirts, but high property taxes probably have the same effect. Its what I call the Tarrytown Rule.

Baker Library and Dartmouth Green

Aesthetically, Dartmouth College also lives up to the Ivy League billing. Ivy literally lines many buildings, including the football stadium. Maple trees line nearly every street. I can only imagine how much more charming and beautiful this place will look when the leaves have fully turned. Parenthetically, I've seen many Texas high school football stadiums inside which Dartmouth's stadium could comfortably fit. Priorities. Campus consists of distinguished looking, federal style buildings, with some more modern stone and brick structures interspersed. Dartmouth's Life Sciences Building, for example, nicely blends the federal style and lines with some modern flourishes. The whole campus centers around "Dartmouth Green," a huge undeveloped square around which most of the earlier buildings cluster. Students (I habitually called them "kids" when I asked questions about the college, thus signifying my decline into "middle-aged man" status) played Frisbee football on the green, sat on comfy chairs, laid out and studied, and generally enjoyed hanging out there. Probably not coincidentally, Dartmouth's mascot is the "Green." That's right, its the "Dartmouth Greens" playing the Harvard Crimson, etc. They probably used to have some mascot now deemed politically incorrect, like the "Indians," or the "Redmen" or the "Murderous, Raping, Bloodthirsty Savages" (in the parlance of the times). I guess the Ivy colleges just assigned each school its own color, to use as its new mascot. Its kind of their take on Homeland Security's color-coded threat level chart. Anyway, the serene, attractive campus evokes early 1960s Animal House images. All colleges should look like this. I half expect to see Boon and D-Day walking up, or Otter driving up in that red '61 Corvette.

I took the campus tour the next morning. It was raining miserably just before the tour, as I walked around campus on my own. Several people, not one, but several people came up to me and asked me if I was a professor, asking directions and other college-related questions. Uh, no, not so much. Do I look like I live in a one-bedroom apartment, think Obama is too conservative, and hit on 19 year old girls? I guess if you're over 30 and don't have a nose ring or face tattoo, that makes you a Professor on major American college campuses. Now if I could just distract Gilligan long enough to fix the damn radio and get everyone off the island I'd be gold.

The rain subsided, mostly, just as the tour started. We were fortunate enough to have a total bro lead the tour. This guy looked kind of like Emo Phillips, albeit sporting a yellow-dyed Mohawk and a Life-Saver striped t-shirt. He couldn't have weighed more than 120 pounds, though he was taller than me. The effect was to make it look like he had a giant banana attached to his head, and a roll of Life Savers for a body. Very disconcerting. Question: Is "banana" a Life Savers' flavor? He explained that he did the hair as some sort of student retreat team-building exercise. The explanation didn't really make much sense. Suffice to say, dude needed a buzz cut badly. To top it off, he totes spoke in brosach speak. Things were "epic." He concluded every point by asking "does that make sense?" and "or something." As other students passed by, he "shouted out" to each of them, pointing at them or pumping a fist or making a "V" or "peace sign." Very bro-ish of him. At one point during the tour, one of the prospective students (i.e., a high school girl), asked why someone would choose to become a student advisor. Sensible question. The guy's response? "Well, why would anyone choose to do anything?" Why indeed. I think Keats once said something very similar. Oh, and this guy kept pointing out he used to minor in theatre. Minor. But it became too time consuming so he had to focus on his geography major. That's right, "geography." Reading maps. Hey guy, my iPhone basically has made your chosen profession obsolete. Good luck at Domino's.

English Dept. Reading Room

Now, notwithstanding all that, dude was extremely jazzed about Dartmouth and went to great lengths to pump it up. Not exactly as jazzed as the history grad student tour guide at the Mount (uh, John Hinckley thought that guy was a little obsessed about Edith Wharton), but pretty enthusiastic. He took us all over campus and answered all our questions in a very "bro" way.

Even before the tour began, and after as I continued to walk around, I noticed that the students all seemed unusually and extraordinarily friendly. Several said "hi" to me or waved, and many of them smiled as we passed each other. As I interacted with them at various places, like the gym or the dining hall, they all continued to act very friendly. It was like being on an SEC campus, or at Louisiana-Lafayette. It was definitely not like the University of Texas, which I found to resemble going to work. Law school was different, but in undergrad I may as well have been at the factory.

The tour guide gave a hint why this might be so. Dartmouth goes to great lengths to emphasize "community." He pointed out "its in the middle of nowhere" so the students and broader community have to look inward to get by. So they must take people that either exhibit this approach to life, or instill it in them once they arrive. Other interesting points: nearly all students participate in some sort of study abroad program (the guide did his in the Czech Republic), 65% of all students belong to a Greek organization, 80% live on campus, and Dartmouth routinely hosts the first Presidential primary debates. Brosach told some epic stories about meeting Hillary Clinton. Dude! Famous Dartmouth alums? Dr. Seuss, for one. Who was fired from the school paper and then, to circumvent the firing, began writing under the pseudonym "Seuss." He added the "Dr." after graduating.

Dartmouth Memorial Stadium

On the tour, this one guy my age, there with his daughter (who asked the student advisor question), kept relating fascinating tales from his own Dartmouth experience. Several times, puzzled that some building or feature seemed missing, he learned that it simply wasn't there any more. When he asked, at the library, "where's the card catalog," his daughter, finally fed up, said in that witheringly sarcastic way that only teenage girls speaking to their parents can manage, "Dad, they don't have those anymore, times have changed." That right there may have been the single greatest moment on my vacation.

I ate lunch at the main student dining hall, the Commons Food Building or something imaginative like that. I noticed that customers had the option of a clear plastic glass, or a red "social cup." Using a "social cup" signified that the user welcomes social interaction with others. That. Is. Brilliant. Because not only can you signify when you want to talk to others, you can let people know when they'd just better not come up on you. That's what I generally need. Probs works way better than my usually misunderstood death stare, often taken as simply having a headache. (Today, some crazy woman kept asking me to give her my hand when I was walking into a barbecue joint...should have told her not to mess with me, I'm a Professor). Food messaging really has come a long way. It used to be only at Pancho's, where you'd raise your flag to tell the waitress you were ready for more Tex-Mex from the "all you can eat" kitchen. They've just taken it to a new level. The social cup has limitless possibilities. Bars and clubs should use them to let other crawlers know when they're available (and not).  Workers can use a colored cup to indicate when they're able to speak with co-workers. Parents can have a colored cup to let kids know when Mommy or Daddy needs quiet time. In fact, they should have mood cups. You could assign a mood to every color. Green could stand for "jealous." Maybe "white" could mean "totally bored." And so forth. Meanwhile, back to my post, I saw a guy wearing a Texas Longhorns hat, and I asked him about it. He's actually from Austin, but went to Dartmouth to get away from home, get out of the heat, and because Dartmouth is a great school with really friendly people (see, I told you!). Dude didn't have a red social cup, but we still visited for a bit. I wished him good luck and then moved on.

I'd planned to go on to Concord after the tour, but it was already 2:00 and Concord was about an hour away, so given the rainy weather and the time, I decided to bag it and just keep walking around the area and enjoying the sights. Afterwards, and after having a smoothie at the locally renowned  Dirt Cowboy Café, I worked out at the Zimmerman fitness center on campus. I have to say, its the best college weight and exercise facility I've ever seen, at least as far as having a variety of equipment and activities. Gregory Gym at the University of Texas is the best overall facility, however. Anyway, I worked out among the students and a few administrator/faculty types, then had dinner on Main Street, after which I watched the second "first run" movie I've seen in a long time: The Family. No spoilers, but its very funny and interesting, despite a bit more violence than I cared to see.

The next morning I woke up "early," and ran about an hour, which took me somewhat out of Hanover. Along the way I passed a food coop, a country club, a Corps of Engineers research facility, then the wilds of the Vermont-New Hampshire boundary. Dartmouth was hosting a cross country meet at the club (I guess up here cross "country" means "country club"), and I had seen several teams in Hanover the day before. Tons of people lined the golf course at 9 a.m. on a Saturday morning. Either these were parents, or you quickly run out of things to do living in Hanover. Or both. Because I stayed out longer than I planned, I ran up against the 11:00 a.m. checkout time (what is the deal with all the hotels up here having 11:00 a.m. checkout times? Seems pretty obnoxious to me, why not just make people check out right after they check in?).  And the only place in Hanover still serving breakfast was packed to the gills. So on the way out of town, I stopped at The Fort in Lebanon. The Fort is pretty much a truck stop. Which is awesome, obvi. It definitely employed truck stop waitresses, who that day were bitching about the Patriots, even though they're off to a 2-0 start. The word "patootie" was actually used. Nice that it could come all the way from 1947 to join us. Anyway, I filled up on enough bacon and oatmeal (training food) to hold me until I could reach the Kancamagus Highway, my next destination.

NEXT-the Kancamagus Scenic Highway and Manchester, NH. We're getting near the end.